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[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Lost and Found\n\nGenre: adventure\n\nWord Count: 2990\n\nPrompt:\n\nSet your story in a lighthouse surrounded by powerful gale-force winds." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "On my last shift as a lighthouse keeper, I climbed the seventy-six spiral iron stairs and two ladders to the watch room, the number of steps the same as my age. The thwomp and snare of each step laid an ominous background score. Something wasn’t right. At that very moment, Richie Tedesco was pointing a fire extinguisher at the burning electrical panel in the engine room of his boat a few miles offshore.\n\nThe placard in the watch room read “Marge Mabrity, Lightkeeper—First lighted the depths on March 2nd, 1985, and hasn’t missed a night.” Already so close to forty years. I could still read the skies like a book. The lighthouse smelled of aging wood, dried-out moss, and the bitter acid spritz of corrosion. But out on the gallery deck, leaning against the handrails, there was the unmistakable scent of petrichor. The clouds in the distance grew taller, black shading growing across their swelling bellies, with the storm caps flattening under the weight of the system. I tasted the metallic hint of ozone on my tongue. I felt the intensity of the pressure in my ears and on my forehead.\n\nI know what you are thinking. Why had I even done it? For all those years. I guess finding lost things was always the one thing about me that was uniquely my own. And I didn’t know if I could give it up.\n\nA few miles back toward the mainland, Cappie patrolled the Long Island ports and seaways on his tug, waiting for salvage and rescue calls. There were still enough of them to get by. Especially with these yahoos taking up boating. But the seas were not what they used to be, and Cappie barely eked out a life of sustenance back on land. Lone rangers like us were going extinct in this world of ubiquitous connection and universal alienation. It was a world of gadgets now. But it turned out our kind was more needed than ever when the gadgets failed.\n\nThe three of us, in our solitary orbits, were bound on an intersecting course.\n\nHow many things had I retired from in a lifetime of retirements? However many it was, this one felt different. A transplant from Norway, full of Viking blood, I’d had a brief career on the national downhill skiing circuit. I’d hung that up for university. Then I’d hung up the mantle of a student for a job in forestry. Quit that to start a family. That transient period that seemed never-ending before the kids left home turned out not to be. My marriage ended too. And on and on. But the longest stint was my forty years as the Lighthouse Keeper at Montauk Point.\n\nIt was to be a ceremonial night.\n\nStill, it felt wrong.\n\nEven if I was pushing eighty. Who was I to buy into this twaddle about graceful exits and diminished capacity?\n\nMy thoughts were disturbed by a call on the radio.\n\nChannel 19.\n\nIt was Cappie.\n\nI didn’t want a mayday call.\n\nNot tonight.\n\n* * *\n\nRichie Tedesco was lost at sea.\n\nAs lost as lost can be.\n\nThe fire in the engine room had only taken minutes to put out, but the electrical lines were irreparably damaged. Hours later, when the last of the juice in the ship’s backup batteries ran out, Richie watched as the monitors with the electronic ocean maps and satellite-supported GPS positioning flickered and went black.\n\nRichie might as well have been surveying the moon. He had no idea of his location. It’s odd how easily we take for granted that we know where we are, never realizing how often we are hopelessly lost and don’t even know it.\n\nNight navigation is a real son-of-a-bitch. A swabbie mug untrained in navigation would be facing long odds of surviving such a calamity. And on the spectrum of swabbie mugs, Richie wasn’t even at the top of the class. But how did Richie get here?\n\nA few months back, Richie had bought a custom Sea Ray Sundancer 370 when he was promoted. Of course, he couldn’t afford the new model. He settled for a year-old model with the same look and feel, but which had been heavily used and abused by the prior owner, who was a real boater. But no bother. It was his prized possession.\n\nRichie hadn't accounted for the cost of marina dues and other ancillary costs. With the hefty loan he’d taken on the boat, he lacked the funds for all the accouterments of the boating life, things both expensive and confusing for the uninitiated seaman. These turned out to be necessary.\n\nRichie had skimped on maintenance and hired an inexperienced handyman named Louie (who was known around the marina as ‘Louie the Wrench’) to help with keeping the vessel seaworthy. A gamble that failed. Louie spent a lot more time on the phone with his bookie than with his wrench in hand.\n\nThe sun lounge and dining area in the hollowed-out front hull was what first had sold him. Richie had imagined spending long romantic weekends, with Rene, from the spring to the fall, jaunting from marina to marina, exploring the New England coast. Enjoying white wine or a martini together in the sun lounge at sundown, over a decadent charcuterie board, and raw seafood on ice.\n\nBy Richie’s calculations, this routine would somehow make up for his soulless existence earning obscene—but still inadequate-to-the-expected-lifestyle wages—spending all his daylight hours keeping his employer out of hot water by enforcing labyrinthine government regulations, effective only in the great lengths his employer was willing to go through and the great costs his employer was willing to expend to completely avoid the salutary, remedial purposes the regulations stood for in the first place.\n\nRene didn’t care about the predatory nature of the enterprise or how monotonous and unsexy the work was, but the fact that Richie was not the top dog. Not by a long shot. And there was little hope of improvement there. Five years for a promotion of title with a raise in bonus but not base pay? Rene knew what that meant long before Richie did.\n\nRene was not an adventurer. She was a social climber. Replacement Richie had a proper yacht, a newer model Mercedes, and a pricier high-rise condominium. He ran his own company doing something that sounded borderline illegal, and let’s be honest, probably was. He cheated on his taxes. Replacement Richie wasn’t apologizing for it either—it was a kick. He took what he wanted.\n\nRene spent the weekends with Replacement Richie and her exchangeable NPC girlfriends sunbathing on the deck of Replacement Richie’s yacht, surrounded by a display of designer bags and branded bathing suit pullovers and slides. The yacht stayed permanently moored at the Star Island Yacht Club & Marina (more prestigious than Richie’s Jersey City marina). The yacht was used exclusively for marina clout and cocktail convos. It never once saw the open seas all spring and summer. But everyone had a fabulous time of it and didn’t seem bothered at all.\n\nRene’s Instagram post of her engagement ring, anchoring her fates to Replacement Richie had done it. NPC girlfriend Vic was sure to comment first, for everyone’s knowledge, that it was, in fact, a 4.05-carat round diamond with a perfect “colorless” grade. The NPC’s knew on sight, like puppies who can sense one of their litter about to be adopted. It took Richie longer to find out. It was a $250K ring.\n\nIn one moment, Richie knew for certain that this romance would have no second act. He did the only thing that made sense at the time. He took to the open seas. Alone. Without telling anyone.\n\nRichie sat out in the sun lounge alone in the darkness trying to gain enough night vision to make out a landmark in the fog of dark. Richie had made all the rookie boating mistakes. The first rule of boat safety is not to go out alone. Chart a course. Tell a friend. Most people who get lost at sea stay lost. That is true on land as well. Despite getting his boating license, Richie skipped on-water training. The list went on and on.\n\nPerhaps worst of all, Richie couldn’t tell land-based lights from navigation lights from buoys and markers. He’d spent the last two hours heading further out to sea and nearly scraping the side of a three-meter-tall red ocean buoy that towered over the deck of his humble cruiser.\n\nAnd that was when he panicked and started firing off his flares.\n\n* * *\n\n“How is my best girl tonight?” Cappie asked.\n\n“Don’t be fresh with me. You old rake. You mean, with it being my last night?”\n\n“Ahh, fiddlesticks. Last night my arse. We both know you are gonna be buried on that rock, and me with you.”\n\n“As romantic as that is, I like a nice dinner and some wine before committing to a joint burial.”\n\n“Well, well. You little siren. Whetting my appetite. Marge, you’re gonna love this one.”\n\n“What is it Cappie?”\n\n“I’ve been tuned in on Channel 19 for the last fucking hour.” Cappie chuckled. His voice rattled. A deep raspy bass that hit like a fine brass-colored Scotch. It intoxicated my senses and warmed my chest off the first sip. It sang a lifetime of hard songs, but the calloused old heart was in there. He was old salt. Everything you imagined a seaman to be. Gray beard, sun-scorched skin, and a temperament mercurial enough to match the open seas. In his mid-seventies, Cappie was still fit and lean. But a little tired of a lifetime of wandering.\n\n“Sounds delightful,” I said. “Did they locate your chivalry and manners? Or have those gone the way of Davy Jones too?”\n\n“Get this. Some clueless yo-pro has been singing an off-key Rhianna playlist—Ree-ann-eh—all the way through, non-stop, not realizing his radio line is open. Must have pushed the microphone button into something. The radio went dark after sundown.”\n\n“God help us.”\n\n“You see that black squall coming in from the west? Well, this yo-pro, let’s call him Chadwick. Well, Chadwick here, he has been headed east out into the open seas, and he’s going to get clipped by that sail shredder on his way back to port, if he even knows enough to head back to port. Coast Guard has been trying to reach him, with no response.”\n\nI could hear it in his voice. Cappie’s full name was Jack “Tommy” Rogers. And Cappie was always into a bottle of his namesake. Cappie only had a few rules, and one was that he never touched the bottle until he’d finished his calls. Someone could lose their life if he broke that rule like he’d done tonight. Something serious was going on with Cappie.\n\n“How are the seas tonight,” I asked.\n\n“Seas are building. Cthulhu is growing restless. We are just chugging along on the gasoline breeze out here waiting for our damsel in distress to call for a knight in shining armor on his noble stallion or in this case a hundred-year-old tugger.”\n\n“Oh, Cappie! I didn’t know it was your hundredth birthday today. Happy birthday!”\n\n“Touché,” he said.\n\nCthulhu is what he called his tugboat. I asked once. I regretted it. To this day. Something about how his straight lines were like the tentacles of some weird Octopus god.\n\n“She’s all buttoned up, tight as a button, and I’m getting a bit high off the diesel fumes.” It was more than the diesel that Cappie was high on.\n\nI imagined Cappie out there. Be careful to avoid the reef, old man. I can see him threading through frigates, tankers, cutters, and cruise ships (like floating cities). I worry about Cappie.\n\nAnd that night, I wanted to tell him how I felt. But I tried to restrain myself.\n\nIt was a big night. No sense in complicating it.\n\n“I was afraid this was going to be a mayday call,” I said.\n\nThen it occurred to me, that maybe it was one.\n\n* * *\n\nIt was a moonless night. Richie couldn’t tell the sea from the sky. It was so dark that all that was visible was the wake of the ship drawing a white foam trail through the otherwise black void. There is that verse in Revelations where the heavens and earth pass away and there is no longer any sea. Richie didn’t believe in that kind of thing. But it had happened. All that was left was infinite negative space.\n\nRichie’s skin crawled, and his forehead dampened. The night was muggy, and an invisible cooling mist enveloped the cruiser. The only sounds were lapping waves, and the only smell was a briny whiff of sea foam.\n\nHow lost are you when you have lost your bearings and don’t know the distance to any safe harbor? Richie had not considered this before. The darkness is impartial. Absolute. Unforgiving. But in its grip, you felt that its horrors were custom-tailored, handcrafted, and made-to-measure. Just for you. Richie sure felt that way.\n\nThere was that foreboding, ominous sense. That the evils at play, which seemed resolved to engineer your demise, are the earned wages for some sin, the gravity of which you failed to appreciate. Whose wrath was stirred by your trespasses? God? Nature? Some malignant spirit of vengeance? What evil deed tipped the scales to a sentence of death? These were Richie’s thoughts.\n\nThe gas gauge became an instrument of terror.\n\nRichie cursed his reckless disregard. Why didn’t he pack extra canned goods and five more reserve five-liter fuel cans?\n\nHow could he have been so arrogant?\n\nSo foolish?\n\nAnd then, the rains started to fall, like icy darts from the heavens.\n\n* * *\n\n“Marge to Cappie. Where are you?”\n\n“Headed out to sea.”\n\n“What?”\n\n“Chadwick isn’t going to save himself.”\n\n“Cappie! You old fool. It isn’t safe.”\n\n“Don’t get sentimental on me now, you old cow. I’ve got a job to do.”\n\n“Stay safe out there, will you.”\n\nCappie barked like a dog. “Roof roof.”\n\nAnd that’s all I needed to hear.\n\n* * *\n\nNo one was coming to save him. That was Richie’s last thought before firing off his last flare.\n\nHe pulled out a pack of Marlboro Reds and lit one up.\n\nRichie smoked on the sun lounge and thought about his life, which might be coming to an end.\n\nHe judged his life poorly. He hadn’t lived it. He’d bought the marketing in the pamphlet but hadn’t pursued the dream the pamphlet was selling. And now it was too late.\n\nFor the first time in years, Richie felt reinvigorated. Clear. Awakened. Alive.\n\n* * *\n\nCappie’s tugger was at full tilt, boat-jumping the waves. The gales of the squall buffeted the front visor and tossed the ship among the crests, pushing it off course, making it hard to keep a broad breach and hit the waves at a clean 45° to avoid the worst of the punch of the storm.\n\nCappie located Richie’s cruiser. And then reached it. He took out a bullhorn and tried to tell Richie he was there, but the winds were like a dark room for sound. And Richie had no idea Cappie was out there.\n\nCappie pulled up and started setting the straight wires, attaching them to the stern of Richie’s cruiser. After a while, Richie came out and realized what was happening. He stood there holding tight to the table in the galley as the cruiser bobbed in the wake. After the winch brought the ships together, Cappie came aboard.\n\n“What you doing out here son?”\n\n“Long story. Can you get me back to shore?”\n\n“Can I? Will do is more like it. First, let’s check the vessel.”\n\nWhile Cappie was on the galley, inspecting the cruiser, a sadistic gust rocked the boat and Cappie tumbled over the safety pole. Richie looked down and saw he had grabbed the ropes along the trim and molding and was rocking with the boat, his legs gusting in the winds.\n\n“Get the line from the capstan on my boat, get it to me.”\n\n“The what?”\n\n“The circular thing with the ropes.”\n\nIn seconds, Richie was back with the rope. Cappie clutched it and climbed back aboard. He slumped on the deck, breathing heavily.\n\n“Not bad son. You’ve graduated from Greenhorn to Seaman tonight. Congratulations. Now let’s get you back to shore.”\n\n* * *\n\n“Cthulhu inbound,” Cappie called back to me.\n\n“Thank God,” I said.\n\n“Chadwick’s name is Richie. Works in finance. Heartbroken Greenhorn. Can’t make this up.”\n\n“Do you see the beacon?”\n\n“Like I need a beacon to get me back to you.”\n\n“You old salty dog.”\n\n“The kid told me he’s leaving finance. Might move to Montauk. Said the sea is calling.”\n\n“God help us.”\n\n“So, are you following through on this thing?”\n\n“I’m an old woman, Jack.”\n\n“We could do it together.”\n\n“Give me a break.”\n\n“I’ll spend nights up there with you. Patrol days.”\n\n“Don’t tease me.”\n\n“I’m serious Marge. I’ll be back in half an hour. Once the emergency folks take Chadwick here to the hospital, I say we have that dinner and those drinks.”\n\n“We’ve known each other thirty years.”\n\n“You want to wait for forty?”\n\n“I just…”\n\n“Just nothing Marge. I almost died tonight.”\n\n“What?”\n\n“But my last thought was that I almost let you fucking retire.”\n\n“You almost died?”\n\n“I’ll be back in a half hour and I’m coming up there, invited or not, so get yourself ready. And you are not retiring. That’s also not negotiable, Marge. Not up for discussion.”\n\n“Where has this Cappie been all my life?”\n\n“Lost at sea, I guess. But I’m coming ashore.”\n\nI’m a modest woman, so I won’t tell you how it all turned out. But let’s just say, it’s hard to refuse an old salty dog that won’t take no for an answer." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: The Last Man Kneeling\n\nGenre: african-american\n\nWord Count: 2025\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about a gallery whose paintings come alive at night." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "(*warning; Implied racism and mentions of slavery. *)\nTHE LAST MAN KNEELING\nThe man in the painting was nameless, but he knew three things for certain:\n1. He was depicted kneeling on a plush red carpet, his face locked in a stern expression as he gazed into the flickering flames of a grand fireplace.\n2. The artist who had brought him to life and placed him on display was known as Asher Vanderbilt, his elegant signature adorning the bottom of the canvas in golden letters.\n3. And most importantly - at night, the nameless man would come alive.\nIt was a strange transition from being a mere observer, to being an active participant of this thing called life. To go from frigid to soft. During these times, he was able to feel the soft fur of the carpet, he felt it gain weight as it seemed to push back against him. \nHe didn't know if it was a curse or not, but he found himself looking forward to those moments when he could see beyond his confined surroundings and observe the other paintings in the gallery. He noticed that while there were many vibrant and colourful paintings, he was the only figure with dark skin. \nBut this fact didn't bother him too much. He wondered if it was supposed to.\nLately, the gallery had been busier than usual. He could sense it in the increase of shadows passing by during the day and the rise in noise levels. The man noticed that he saw more black members of the public. And they were particularly interested in him. The man did not know why. Trapped in his painting, the social bonds of race- the meaning of race - had not been implanted into his brain.\nThere was one particular woman with curly black hair and bright red lipstick who would visit him daily. She would pass by all of the other more colourful paintings and make her way straight to him. She would stand with her arms crossed and her lips pursed as she studied him. Sometimes, she would even bring a notebook and jot things down before leaving. The man couldn't help but wonder what it was about him that fascinated her so much. Perhaps she was just a big fan of Asher Vanderbilt's work and admired his creation.\nAs the clock struck midnight once again, the man's mind began to wonder. In moments when he felt more human and present rather than cold and empty, he often thought about his creator, Asher Vanderbilt. He couldn't help but admire the artist for drawing him into existence with such care and detail, dressed in a comfortable dark green attire against a scenic backdrop. Did the other paintings in the gallery also think about their creators? Did they long with a faint eagerness to meet them? \nThe man, trapped in the painting from his very existence, had neither learnt of the concept of death which his owner had succumbed to. \nThat night, the man felt an adventurous streak take over. He wanted to test the limits of this newfound \"life\". Could he even step out of his painting? The thought excited him. Slowly and carefully, he climbed out of his frame and onto the wooden floor. It was strange walking on solid ground rather than the familiar red carpet in his painting. As he explored the gallery at a slower pace to avoid dizziness, some of his fellow paintings looked over in curiosity. They weren't feeling as daring today, but that just meant more space for him.\nAll the paintings shared a similar style and taste in clothing thanks to their creators. Each one showcased figures dressed in similar attire, with lavish fabrics and intricate details. The colours were mostly muted, with deep jewel tones and dark shadows.\nA sculpture stood tall and statuesque in the centre of the room, its elegant curves and sharp edges catching the faint light in all the right places. Its surface was smooth and pristine, with no visible imperfections. It didn't seem alive, fortunately. Its imposing presence made the man slightly uneasy.\nHe continued his self-guided tour of the gallery, venturing further than he ever had before. As he observed every corner of the room, one fact became clear - he was the only dark face in the whole gallery. He wondered again if he should perhaps feel something about this and paused. Well…he should feel unique. Yes. Asher Vanderbilt had uniquely created him in this overwhelming sea of pale faces. His creator had wanted him to stand out. No wonder, he captured attention from visitors. \nSpeaking of Asher Vanderbilt – his creator had quite a few pieces around the place including one titled \"The Golden Girl\". It featured a blonde woman sitting in a cosy home with a tray of tea and biscuits in front of her. The man found himself smiling at this. His creator was clearly very talented. In the back of his mind, he wondered faintly why he himself had been painted with a frown, rather than a smile like this woman. It would be more comfortable for his face if he didn’t have to frown all the time. But never mind that – at least he could smile now. \nHe was about to move on to the next painting when he spotted it; a name. The name of the woman in the picture; Gilda Mason.\nSo, people in paintings could have names. \nIt may not have seemed quite the ground-breaking realisation. But the man had just assumed that nobody really had names. That only the artists themselves had names. And as he walked and looked more closely, he noted that it wasn’t just Gilda that had a name. Everyone else had a name too. Annabelle. Fitzpatrick. Lisa. Benedict. Name after name, an overload of them. \nOnly in that moment, did the man come to realise how important a name could be. And this was when he decided to rush back to re-examine his own painting. He must have missed it all those times before. Asher Vanderbilt seemed a very talented and respected artist – he must have given him a name. The man just needed to look harder. Yes. That is exactly what he would do. \nHe walked as fast as he could without getting dizzy; he rounded the corner and found himself in the familiar room gallery he had become accustomed to. His painting looked strange without him in it; a space on the red carpet right where he should be kneeling.H\nHe peered at the bottom of the frame and saw Asher Vanderbilt's name followed by a description: \"A slave playing dress up, 1748.\"\nThe man read this sentence over and over, as if trying to decode some hidden meaning; some hidden name between the vague description of ‘a slave.’ Had Asher Vanderbilt really forgotten his name? Or maybe the word ‘slave’ was enough. The man frowned a little. He had really wanted a name. And he wasn’t too sure what a slave was. \nAnd playing dress up? He glanced down at the satin material of his clothes. Did they not belong to him? Was he borrowing it from someone? And if so, when was he going to give them back?\nLost in thought, he remembered seeing security guards handing out leaflets near the entrance of the gallery. He grabbed one and hoped it would provide some useful information about himself and his circumstances.\nWelcome to the main art gallery of West Virginia! We're thrilled that you've decided to visit.\nThe words oozed with excitement as the man skimmed through the brochure. He flipped through a few pages showcasing various paintings and sculptures before coming across something more intriguing. It was a picture of that same black woman, someone he had seen frequently at the gallery in the past month. However, in this particular photo, her expression seemed harsher, almost menacing. It was not the most flattering image to choose.\nThe writing on that particular page - page 5 - was titled ‘’The Issue of The Civil Rights Movement and how it pertains to this art gallery.’’ \nAn article by Steve Crowner, dated 18th June 1963.\nIt caught the man’s eye and he began to read;\n‘You've seen it on the news. And if you haven't, then you've surely witnessed it on the streets. When I first opened this gallery, I never imagined it would become a platform for political debates. But somehow, politics has found its way here. Ada Wells, pictured below, has made sure of that. I welcome everyone into my gallery - I don't believe in segregation. So I allowed Ada, a journalist, to come to me seeking entry out of pure kindness. Little did I know she would use her visit as an opportunity to defame my name in the local newspapers because of one painting displayed here. The piece by Asher Vanderbilt from 1748 was one of his last works. His personal beliefs about race are not my concern. This is the danger with certain movements; they seek to destroy everything that came before them. This gallery stands with Vanderbilt and that's final’\nSteve Crowner's words left the man feeling overwhelmed and confused. He may not have fully understood every word, but there was definitely a heated debate about Vanderbilt's character happening beneath the surface. And that confusion itself was perplexing to him. After all, Vanderbilt was the creator of this man. He must have been a good person, right?\nThe man felt a sudden urge to learn more, but the rest of the brochure seemed quite plain in comparison. \nAlthough the biblical reference would go over his head, the man had taken a small bite from the tree of knowledge; and now there was a small crack in his worldview.\nAs he climbed back into his painting, he felt a little less proud, a little more muddled. He had climbed back in the same way as he had left it; nameless, but with a few more questions. The clothes on his skin did not sit as they once had; they lingered instead. And God knew there was a difference. If they could, they would make his skin itch. And that frown which had been painted onto his face was now very much a real one. The furrow between his brows deepened as he gazed back at the flickering flames in the fireplace.\nHe couldn’t shake off the thoughts stirred up by the leaflet. It had been a rude awakening, one that made him question everything he thought he knew about his existence and purpose.\nHe had always been content to hang from this wall and be admired by passersby. But now, he couldn’t help but wonder if they would judge him based on his creator’s reputation. The quietly shattering seedling of a realisation that Vanderbilt was not as great as the man thought he was. The quietly maddening realisation that people could be multifaceted; That Vanderbilt could paint him in one breath, paint the beautiful scenery in another and yet also have another side to him.\nThe man found himself waiting for that black woman to come again. This time when he subtly examined her staring, he would look a bit closer. He would not mistake her semblance of neutrality for admiration. Clearly she had feelings of the opposite. \nThis time when she came, he would be ready for her.\nOne last time; the man looked around at the paintings that covered the walls of Steve Crowner’s art gallery. There were portraits of wealthy families, landscapes of the picturesque countryside, and scenes depicting historical events. And then there was him – a portrait with no name.\nThe man had not known it then, but his painting had been the subject of debate locally. The Civil Rights movement had a cultural dynamic to it that was more than just legal battles. Ada B. Wells was spearheading this part of the movement. She believed it was a disgrace; if slavery was so far behind the Great Nation of the United States, then why was there still one last man kneeling?" } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Two Sides Of The Same Coin\n\nGenre: african-american\n\nWord Count: 1021\n\nPrompt:\n\nStart your story with the narrator or a character saying “I remember…”" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I remember my childhood in bits and pieces, like framed pictures of specific events that exist independently of all the other memories. There was the time I challenged my brother to a foot race down the steps of the rocky hill on the side of my grandfather’s house. My mother warned us to never run down the hill lest we injure ourselves. But that did not thwart us at all. We waited for her to go to work and proceeded with our plans. What else was there to do in the hot summer sun but run, hide, play, and take in all of the day’s light. There was also the time I climbed the mango tree in my grandfather’s backyard and got stuck. So I snacked on mangoes and hoped the house girl would find me before my grandfather came home. The Haitian sun was always more bearable in the shade of a tree and a cool breeze, and this tree was my favorite. It had the juiciest mangoes, branches that extended every which way, and was so full it shaded almost the entire courtyard. \nMy grandfather, a tall, lanky man with a balding spot at the top of his head that he regularly covered with a gray felt hat; a hat that looked like it had seen as many good and bad days as he had, hated when we climbed his mango tree. He’d complain that we’d shake the fruit right out and that they’d burst and spoil when they fell on the ground. Though he was a man of few words, he spoke with a deep voice; you could not help but stop whatever you were doing and listen. \nNow, as I watch my daughter play in the grass under the tall oak tree in our yard, I wonder how much she’ll remember. I wondered if this day of swinging in the shade, twirling in the specks of sunlight, and inspecting blades of grass for ladybugs would make it into the archives of her memories. I wondered if I would be part of this memory or if I would fade into the fuzzy details of the day. Nothing of particular significance happened to me on the day that I got stuck in my grandfather’s mango tree. Nothing I remember, at least. It was not the first time I had been stuck in a tree. Climbing was never the issue; it was always the trip down that scared me. And yet, I remember that moment, the juiciness of the mango, how sticky my fingers got, and the look on my grandfather’s face when he found me in the tree. \nBut the thing about memories is that the more you member them, the less reliable they become. My mother, who grew up in that house, does not remember a mango tree. No matter how much I described it. \n“Not my father’s house,” she would say. “We were never allowed in the courtyard. How would you have gotten to a tree?” She’d ask in wonderment and confusion. I’m sure, if she could, my mother would call me a liar. But, instead, she said, “these memories are not yours, dear,” and waved me off, as all Haitian parents do. As if my memories could somehow belong to someone else. It did not matter. If my memories did not reconcile with hers, it was as though they never were. \nI remember visiting my grandfather before he passed. I wanted so badly to believe my memories and hold on to that day as it was; I booked a flight and made the one thousand five hundred mile journey back to Haiti to ask him about the day he found me in the mango tree. \n“My child!” he exclaimed with a smile and a warm embrace. In his arms and the warmth of his body, I felt that it had been too long since our last embrace. “What has an old man done to deserve this visit?” His voice, scent, the breeze, and the faint sounds of life passing just beyond the house gates all reminded me of how much I had missed home. It brought tears to my eyes that surprised us both. \n“Do not cry,” he quipped “you are here now.” \nAnd I remembered how uncomfortable tears made him feel. I never understood how a military man with so much strength and discipline could handle bullets, bombs, and the chaos of the battlefield yet floundered at the sight of tears. It made me smile. We sat in silence for some time on the bench facing the courtyard, enjoying the afternoon breeze and the evening sun. \n“Do you remember the mango tree, grandpa?” I asked him.\n“You mean this one right there? That you fell off of after I told you not to climb it?” He responded affectionately while pointing at the tree that cast shade on us. \n“Yes,” I smiled. I had forgotten that part. Or maybe I had blocked it out of my memory entirely. “Mama said we were never allowed in the courtyard.”\n“The courtyard? My courtyard?” He interrupted. \n“Yes. She said,”— \n“No.” He interrupted again, this time more certain. “Not my daughter. She would not say such a thing,” he continued shaking his head. “She and the boys were always in the yard, climbing my trees and spoiling my mangoes,” he chuckled. “No matter how much I insisted or how many times I punished you, I could not keep you off of it.”\n“You mean mama, right?”\n“What?”\n“You mean you could not keep mama off of it.”\n“Right,” he replied, almost in a whisper, and looked at me as though it were for the first time. “That’s what I said. Maybe she is confused,” he continued. “Those memories aren’t hers.” \nI remember we sat in silence afterward. The evening became dusk, and our versions of events filled up the space between us. I wonder if there will come a day when I will dismiss my daughter’s recollection of her life. If this disconnect is a right of passage into motherhood, and if she will quietly accept it as I have." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: The Lantern of Kaamos\n\nGenre: adventure\n\nWord Count: 2985\n\nPrompt:\n\nSet your story during polar night." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The melting Arctic is a crime scene, and I am like CSI Ny-Ålesund. Trond is the anonymous perpetrator leaving evidence and clues for me to discover, like breadcrumbs leading back to him. “Jonna,” he had said, the day we first met at the research institute, “If you are going to make it up here, don’t lock your doors.” It seemed like a life philosophy, rather than a survival tip.\n\nIt is ironic. Out on Kings Bay, the coal miners came first, then the science outposts. Trond was already out here mining the Arctic when I was still just a bright-eyed undergrad, out to save nature from the ravaging capitalists.\n\nWhen we met, we both understood immediately that we were on opposite sides. I guess sleeping with the enemy isn’t out of the question when it is seventeen below. At winter’s end, we both got the tattoo “79 ° North” on our shoulders. After flask after flask of bittersweet Jägermeister Mule and a night of cross-country skiing on the fjord to observe the Northern Lights, there seemed to be a permanence in the gesture. A holiness to it. Sacramental and sacred. We weren’t big drinkers and we had used a month of drinking credits to line our shelves, to consecrate the occasion.\n\nWe had lived together in the world's northernmost settlement, located on the southern bank of Kongsfjorden, throughout the whole of the polar night. The tattoo was a memento and a reminder of that time. The promise of an unbreakable bond. Then, with the first sunrise, everything changed. As a biologist, I should know by now that what is forged in the endless night, seldom survives the spring thaw.\n\nStore Norske Mining Company was going to close the Gruve 7 mine, once and for all, and Trond would stay and find work. Plans were made. Treaties of peace were arranged. And the wartime between us seemed like a distant memory. Then the Ukraine war broke out, and the mine received a stay of execution. Trond was called back. “See you in the spring,” he had said and was gone the next day. Neither of us doubted the war would end quickly. Surely, neither side would willingly sacrifice their young for some fields of oil and a strategic port? But we were wrong. We underestimated the Soviet greed and also the resolve of a people yearning for freedom.\n\nBi-weekly video chats gave way to a weekly call. Before long it was an occasional lazy text. Finally, a message, at the end of January: “They need me to stay.” Then nothing. Soon it will be a whole year that he’s been gone.\n\nThe MS Nordstjernen cuts through the night, bound for Svalbard, and I stare out at the light of the stars. When I reach Svalbard, my Swedish colleagues, Clare, Leah, Julio, and I will document the mysteries of the polar night. Especially the variations to the krill and phytoplankton, brought on by the shedding of the light. After all this time in the Arctic Circle, I finally feel like I am off on a proper adventure.\n\nI try not to think of Trond removing his headlamp and reclining in the Gruve 7 breakroom next to the coal mining tunnels, miles below the Arctic mountains, risking his life more and more with each day underground. It would be lunchtime now in Adventdalen. Trond would have a thick coat of black dust on his forehead. Under his gloves, his hands would be doused in the dark soot, the calling card of the dark lords of the mine shafts. Trond wouldn’t bother washing up or wiping his forehead before unwrapping his sandwich. He is a true Norwegian, through and through. Savages. The lot of them.\n\nI prefer the polar night. A perpetual full moon hugs the horizon transiting in a perpetual loop like a beacon from a distant lighthouse, circling the outpost. The blue light of the afternoon fades to velvety black after midday. And on the ship, the seas sleep soundly. Kinetic energy accumulates all around us. A limitless supply of ancient sunlight, stored like grain in underground silos. Just below the concealing ice. 90 billion gallons of oil. A third of the world’s natural gas. Coal basins salt the earthen caves; pressure cookers compact the carbon in the leaves of ancient ferns. And at every level, life thrives. From the ocean bottom to the mountain peaks.\n\nBut we marine biologists are concerned with the most alluring mysteries. Krill eyeballs. Sensitive enough to see only by the light of the moon. The werewolf effect. Where all living things become more active and restless under the light of the full moon. Making sleep a scarce commodity during the whole season. Diel vertical migration. The magnetism of marine life being pulled upward by the light of the sun. Light. Like sprinkles of fish food from the hand of God, those nurturing rays call forth the phytoplankton and krill. And beneath the ice shelves, a strange world of algae, bacteria, plankton, and swarms of shrimp-like arthropods feast on the energy locked in the melting ice. Stored sunlight, and its byproducts, locked in a frozen lunch box, churned and warmed by the rolling seas. The light banquet above ceases completely during the polar night—leaving the upper levels of the ecosystem dark and void. Only the icy dance under the sea continues, unimpeded, unaware of the nocturnal slumber above.\n\nAmazingly, nature finds a way. Animals buried deep under the sea begin to emit their own light, like floating mermaids, carrying their own lanterns, searching the depths for a fresh meal, or a companion. Anything that sustains. There is also polar gigantism and marine snow. The Ice Dragonfish has anti-freeze in its blood to keep it from freezing. This too is surprising and miraculous.\n\nI imagine myself growing gigantic, my skin radiating light, my blood adjusting to the ice in my veins. At last, growing so large that I am a beacon that can even be seen from miles below the Norwegian permafrost, where Trond toils silently in the darkness of the void.\n\nThe MS Nordstjernen docks at Svalbard and we pack our bags quietly, fuel ourselves with bitter coffee and sweet cream, and prepare to go ashore.\n\n* * *\n\n“Hallå,” Clare says. “Are you ready for a hyttetur?” That means a cabin trip. We will be traveling by snowmobile, over the sea ice, out to a remote cabin in Sveagruva for some crew bonding and cross-country skiing out in the mountainous moonscape, aided by headlamps and plenty of layers, and a healthy pack full of booze.\n\nClare smiles through the biting cold and revs the motor of her snowmobile, blasting her headlamps to repel the enveloping blanket of darkness. Clare hands back a cup full of flour tortilla-wrapped sausages as if she knew how hungry I would be.\n\n“Dani, Framät,” she says to her Siberian Husky. Dani hops to his feet, from where he is lying in the snow.\n\n“Hey, ‘framät!’“ Clare repeats.\n\nDani begins racing along by the side of the snowmobile, panting happily, his breath coming out in clouds that he pierces with his gait, and which break in pieces and trail behind him like the exhaust of a locomotive. We traverse the cold ridge to Clare’s cabin for supplies, grinding through the fresh powder as a flurry of snow falls and coats our ski goggles. It is not even a mile away. Clare has the stove ready, stuffed with chords of wood. And we drink tall mugs of coffee and recline in warm blankets, in her oceanfront cabin, as the small cabin warms with fresh heat.\n\n“It is beautiful,” I say.\n\n“Wait until you see Sveagruva,” she says. “Det är bättre än himlen.”\n\n“Better than heaven.”\n\n“Vänta och se,” she says—wait and see.\n\nA few hours later, we have the trailers for our snowmobiles packed, and we are ready for our adventure.\n\nCompared with Svalbard, the coastline route to Sveagruva is terra nullius. No man’s land. We wouldn’t dare venture out in the polar night without GPS and Garmin inReach Sat Phones in tow in case of emergency. And rifles, in case of a run-in with polar bears. Glaciers border the route. Around noon, when the blue light casts the landscape in an eerie hue, we stop at cavernous ice caves carved in the glacial housing of thousand-year-old ice. If only Trond could see this.\n\n“Titta där,” Clare says, Look there, pointing at what looks like a polar bear den. It is nestled under a ridge of roots from Dwarf Birch and Mountain Sorrel, burrowing in the mossy permafrost, framing the den with walls of living iron.\n\nThe polar bear peaks her head out from her maternity den, her clipped white ears checking for sounds of movement.\n\n“Let’s call her Nadia,” I say.\n\nNadia sniffs, gimbaling her head about as she picks up a familiar scent. Nadia smells a wolverine far in the distance. Her dark black eyes scan the line of the horizon for other dangers. Finding none, she emerges, and helps herself to a snow bath, rolling about in the frozen snow of the playground outside the den. She yawns, revealing her long canine teeth, and stretches, grabbing the ground with her sharp claws and black foot pads, and slowly connecting with the earth, reclining on the snow, rolling over onto her back. Two young pups begin to crawl out and play fight, scuttling over to the mother bear and feeding from her exposed nipples.\n\n“Look at that!” I say and blurt out, “Trond would die if he could see this.”\n\n“You haven’t spoken to him, have you?” Clare asks.\n\n“Oh, no. Of course not.”\n\n“Att försvara ett fel är att fela igen,” Clare says.\n\n“Once bitten, twice shy,” I say, nodding.\n\n* * *\n\nOut here in the icy valleys of the moonlike cliffs and eerie glacial rivers, the sheer expanse of the landscape, immense, and imposing is a thing of wonder.\n\nNature’s imagination is vast. Almost as vast as the reaches of space. And her colossal moods seem big enough to swallow galaxies. Dazzling displays of light and dark are her trademark. In all her mercurial palettes. Polar night, for instance. You have to seep in the emancipating darkness long enough to appreciate being pulled out into the overbearing light.\n\nDark and cold. They go together like warm coffee and cold cream. One hides all mundane things, leaving only the magical. The other strongly warns of nature’s power and cautions against overindulging. After all, all magical things are deadly. Polar bears. Ice drifts. Plunging temperatures. Packs of wolves. The reorienting wind that blows where it wills. Loneliness. Regret. For every magical night filled with the Northern lights is an evening where the seas hurl daggers the size of Buicks at the land and send icy gusts with murderous intent after every creature that crawls, slithers, or walks.\n\nIn the darkness, though, we can see what is never visible in the light. The light of a thousand distant suns. They blink their celestial eyes like eyelids, squinting to catch a glimpse of an oasis in an unimaginably vast desert of ice.\n\nWhen polar night descends, the Nordic country blows away the sun like a dandelion blown out of a child’s hand. Then a month later, it returns. Blue twilight is a reminder that days are real. A long sunrise without a sun. Soft and pink. Painting the world in cold pastels. We shudder at the feeling that comes when the sun at last returns, anticipating its coming; knowing that it is like seeing the sun for the first time in your whole life.\n\nAfter what seems like an eternity in my own thoughts, clinging to Clare’s coat and hugging her for warmth, we arrive at the cabin, which stands enormous against the landscape.\n\nLeah and Julio have traveled ahead, and are busy dusting off the drifts of snow, filling the water tank, hauling in dry chords of wood for the furnace, and readying our sanctuary for a long weekend.\n\n* * *\n\nI look at my cell phone. The little green bubble says, “I know you are over this. I don’t know what I did or what happened. But I worry about you and hope you are well, my love. You are thought of… often.” Three weeks ago. Long enough to stop hoping for a response. But one never knows.\n\nLike the sun’s rays that seem lost forever in the long travail of the polar night, things that feel lost forever can return suddenly and unceremoniously, crying out that they were never gone at all, but always there just out of reach, only inches below your line of sight, sending out diffuse blue signals as evidence of their constancy.\n\nThe question hangs pregnant over the proceedings, and I know it is coming before she asks.\n\nClare hands me a mug of hot cocoa that Julio prepared for us, complete with floating marshmallows, as we crowd inside and unpack our bags.\n\n“Kommer du att stanna till våren?” she says. Will I be staying for the spring? That is the question. But I haven’t decided.\n\n“Do you think I should stay?”\n\n“But of course.” She smiles with her teeth glistening in the blue twilight. “You must, bebis. You are part of our Grabbarna now.” I guess I am part of the gang. Science nerds gone Ernest Shackleton.\n\nWe have found so much out about the world below the ice. Yet there is so much more to discover. How do the Krill find phytoplankton? How do those little energy packets survive in the sunless reaches throughout the polar night, with nothing to nurture them in the cold season? How does life continue in darkness? How do the winds of the jet stream re-circulate energy into the Arctic realm?\n\nThis is a true hyttetur. No plumbing, no running water, and no electricity. Leah lights candles throughout the cabin. Julio fires up the generator, which we will use sparingly for heating water. And also stores little propane tanks for the camp stoves. Leah comes outside in her down jacket with a bottle of Italian Grappa.\n\n“Skål,” Leah says, passing the bottle around. I take a long swig and the fire of the burning liquid coats my throat and warms my chest, reminding me that there is still some life within me. Leah starts blasting some EDM beats which echo off of the canyons of ice chortling through the Arctic valley.\n\nI was going through my e-mails while we played Monopoly with hand-crafted Harry Potter figures. And I was thinking of Trond. Worrying. As usual. Then I saw an e-mail from Trond. I debated for an hour whether or not to open it but ultimately gave in.\n\n“I don’t know why I’m writing you this. Why I am writing now. Kongsfjorden is different than I remember. It seems that everything has changed. Reindeer sleep by the trams, out on the graded snowbank, which is pitched so they are shielded from the wind. I never noticed before.\n\nWe gathered today in Fruene to talk about what happened to Peter. ‘We who live in the north in darkness, we know how much the light means,’ said Pastor Skaaheim at Peter’s mass. Sigurd, Jakob, and Luka were down with me in the tunnel when it happened. We met with Mayor Olsen and he represented Peter’s family in the union negotiations. He used to be our spokesman before he became Mayor, you know. At $45 a ton, it hardly makes sense anymore to mine coal. Looks like the Greta Thunberg brigade has won at last. Congratulations. We submit.\n\nThis is how it happened. We had cleared out of the mine for the day. Right in the middle of the polar night. But the glacial melt had been flooding the mineshaft. It was so bad that the conveyor belt was going on the fritz. Peter stayed back in the shaft with a pump to clear the flood water out. Just like that, in an instant, the South wall caved in. An avalanche of rock collapsed on him. We spent the night with an excavator trying to find him in the dark. We tried TNT. Wedges. Everything. We never found his body. It is now three days his body has disappeared underneath the frozen rock. We’ve re-opened the tunnel, but search and rescue is still looking for Peter’s remains. It is almost like he disappeared into thin air. I keep thinking, it could have been me. And we would have never spoken again. Anyway. I don’t know why I’m writing you. Say a prayer for Peter.”\n\n“Skål,” Leah says again, seeing the dower look on my face.\n\nAnd she passes the Grappa bottle around the table, where Dumbledore has just passed Snape to buy Park Place. I take a long gulp.\n\n“Whoa cowboy!” Leah says. But I need a moment.\n\nI walk out into the polar night, my crampons crunching the deep snow. I gaze at the belligerent moon which stands at the far end of the world, taunting me. At once so close I feel that I could reach out and touch her. And still so far away that the incalculable distance and icy traverse, are borderline infinities. Not unreachable, but damn near to. Like the past.\n\nAnd right here and now, I finally understand the polar night. I can’t return to the Kongsfjorden I’d known with Trond. And Trond can’t stop being a miner. All that has happened has irreversibly changed us, like the creatures adapting to the abiding polar night. I take out my phone and write back the only true thing I can think of. “I want to see you. I am in Sveagruva for a hyttetur. Nothing is the same without you.”\n\nAnd at that very moment, a small crown of yellow against the horizon displaces the blue twilight and the sun returns." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Cell 3.47\n\nGenre: adventure\n\nWord Count: 2356\n\nPrompt:\n\nSet your story in a type of prison cell." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Cell 3.47 was situated on the third floor of B wing in Stocken Gate prison, slap bang in the heart of London’s east end. Known as The Gate, the prison had a reputation for being a tough place to do time. The inmates behind the doors at The Gate endured long cold winters in the Victorian slammer that had been condemned many times but had always escaped closure. It was harsh, it was hard, and it was overrun by rats.\nPaula Pritchard was the sole resident of cell 3.47, but due to the rodent crisis she was rarely alone. All her schemes to see to them perish had failed miserably and she had to accept that while they might have won the ultimate war, her hatred of the vermin would ensure that her battle against them raged in perpetuity. After all, she had time.\nPaula was serving life for murdering her husband after he cut their TV wires in 1986 causing Paula to miss the Eastenders Christmas Special. She was still bitter; there was no catch-up TV back then. In fact, she had more remorse for that than she did for the murder, which wasn’t convenient when it came to trying to persuade the parole board to release her, so she had stopped bothering to try.\nInstead, Paula put all her efforts into ensuring that she was in sole control of the contraband that was bootlegged into The Gate on a daily basis. Somewhat against all the odds, she had turned out to be an exceptional entrepreneur with incredible business acumen but would never win a Women In Business award. As she got into bed now, she plotted her next scheme for fulfilling the cocaine orders that always started to pile up at this time of year. The girls in The Gate knew how to celebrate Christmas alright.\nRita watched and waited from her vantage point on the top of the bookshelf. Paula’s eyes were getting heavy, she would be out for the count soon. Rita could be patient, no problem. You learned that as a prison rat. Sometimes tactics were everything. She swung her back paws and applied a little face cream to her tail. One of the best things about living in cell 3.47 was that Paula’s customers often paid in canteen. This meant a reliable stock of snacks, beauty products, paper, and easy access to all manner of things that were dispensed from the canteen hatch. Rat heaven.\nPrison life for a rat could be easy but you had to have your wits about you. There was a constant supply of water in the steel lidless cell toilet. Pritchard had tried many times to deny Rita and her crew access to that but had never succeeded. In any event there was a small sink on the wall, and the tap constantly dripped. The sink was big enough for a family of four rats to take a bath, and Rita had even seen a water birth be facilitated in it by the alternative lifestyle rats who lived behind the skirting boards in the staff room in the segregation unit, also known as The Block.\nAs soon as Pritchard fell into her doubtless drug induced sleep, Rita tucked into a packet of Cheetos. Delicious. Pudding was a packet of Cadbury’s hot chocolate which she’d had her eye on since it had arrived this morning. But during the daytime the rats didn’t come out so much. It was at night when they got their business done. After dinner, Rita was helping to coordinate the digging of a new tunnel after the maintenance team accidently poured concrete into the main thoroughfare between B and C wing.\nShe watched as Roly gnawed his way into a pot of noodles. He glanced up and nodded to her with his mouth full, powder from the noodles coating his whiskers. She winked at him fondly. They had been together for five litters, and still they flirted liked newlyweds. Roly was a big old unit, a rat who’d eat all night if he could. He wasn’t quite as exacting as Rita when it came to menu choices, and last week had eaten a whole box of tampons which had sent Pritchard into a rage when she’d discovered the mess in the morning.\nRoly didn’t care, but it had almost killed him. He hadn’t been careful enough and a piece of plastic applicator had got lodged in his gullet. Rowena, unable to get her paws around him to perform a Heimlich manoeuvre, had jumped on his furry white chest to clear his airway. Rita had been beside herself and if it hadn’t been for her daughter’s quick-thinking Roly would have been toast. But within two hours Roly was reaching for an Oreo and telling the tale as if he was the hero to most of the rats on the third floor. They’d all laughed and patted him on the back.\nThe next day Pritchard was crashing around the cell, cursing about not being able to find any coffee sachets (Rita had swapped them for a packet of cotton wool with Riccardo from healthcare), and generally being her bad tempered, vile self. Rita knew that at times like this it was better to give Pritchard a wide berth than risk her wrath which knew no bounds especially when it came to rats. Plastic cups and cutlery fell to the floor, books were cast aside and make up thrown all over the place as the fruitless search went on. Rita, Roly, and Rowena went for a nap in their nest behind the wall, tummies full and whiskers cleaned.\nIt wasn’t until much later that they peered out and saw Pritchard behaving most strangely. She was dressed in nothing but an Avengers T shirt and a pair of woolly socks and appeared to be batting imaginary insects away with this week’s edition of Prison News. She uttered something incomprehensible about jungle fever and then proceeded to attempt some kind of Scottish jig. The rats knew that Pritchard was hallucinating, they had seen it with so many inmates’ countless times. They smoked too much Spice and simply went doolally. Sometimes it went further than that and a heart attack wasn’t that uncommon, but Pritchard didn’t seem to be that far gone despite the pantomime that was being played out before them now.\nRat word got out and several others came to watch the show. Ruby from the canteen had even brought popcorn, but it was salty, so Rita didn’t bother with it. Just before Pritchard was about to climb up to the bookshelf to launch herself into what she believed to be a luxury swimming pool but was in fact her prison issue laundry basket, something caught her eye. The rats froze. Pritchard picked up her radio and launched it full force into the spectating crowd of vermin. Rita watched in horror as the plastic transistor hurtled in slow motion towards them. There was no time to react, and with an almighty smash it landed on Roly. Within an instant two things happened. Pritchard vomited all over the floor, and blood began to seep from Roly’s head. His pink ears drooped, his breathing slowed.\nThe rats rallied round, hitching Roly’s sizeable frame onto their shoulders and scuttling into the B wing tunnel with him. By now Rita was sobbing, her tail in her paws. Rowena squeaked instructions as fast as she could, but it seemed that Roly could not be saved. His wide black eyes still gleamed as he gazed into Rita’s tear-filled ones. ‘I love you Rita Rat’ he said, and then he was gone. Rita felt like her world had fallen apart. Riley and Rose from education ushered her to their nest. She let them. She let them feed her syrup on a Q tip and then she slept a fitful sleep with Rowena at her side.\nThe next day Rita felt numb, but she went back to cell 3.47, where Pritchard’s vomit still pooled on the concrete floor, ice forming on it in the mid December chill. Even the family of rats from security hadn’t fancied that. Pritchard herself was akimbo on the bed, oblivious to it all.\nRita stopped crying and looked at Pritchard, that mean tempered woman who had ruined Rita’s life. There was only one thing Rita wanted now. Revenge. And everyone knew that revenge was a dish best served cold.\nThat night a meeting was called, chaired by Ricky from recycling. He even had a clip board. Hundreds of rats were there to hear what he had to say, while Rita sat quietly beside him with a tissue balled tightly into her fist. A plan was afoot. Pritchard was to get her comeuppance. But were the rats in? ‘Hell yes!’ they shouted, hats and snacks thrown into the like confetti. The excitement grew, and after the meeting, they divided into groups according to their wings and floors. Bigger departments like the laundry would help with logistics and coordination. If the drugs dog from rehab was to be believed and trusted, they had exactly two weeks to go before the cell spin.\nMeanwhile, prison life went on. Paula spent hours in cell 3.47 taking orders and singing along to Last Christmas which played on repeat on the radio which she had recently acquired as a replacement by breaking Kelly Gorman’s little finger during a game of pool. She could see her breath when she sang, that’s how cold it was in here. The kettle was on the boil constantly, and for once her hot chocolate and coffee supplies were not being pilfered every night. Odd, but good. If the Christmas trade was as good as anticipated, she reckoned she’d have enough cash to bribe Officer Willis into putting her in for a transfer to a modern prison where she could learn to play tennis and grow old gracefully.\nEvery night the tunnels were full of rat traffic. Never before had such an effort been orchestrated to help one of their own. Rita was beyond grateful but didn’t know if they could pull it off. But for Roly, she was prepared to try. The day of the cell spin finally arrived. The day when every cell at The Gate was searched, with absolutely no prior warning given to the prisoners who were made to stand on the landing while specialist teams went through their cells with a fine toothcomb. The one thing the rats didn’t know was the time of the spin. But Reece from The Block said not to worry. Everything was in place and Ricky was all over it like a rat rash.\nRita spent the whole day watching Pritchard. It didn’t take her long to realise that Pritchard must have been tipped off about the cell spin, because over the course of the morning all manner of drugs, mobile phones and weapons were dispatched out of her cell by officers who were on Pritchard’s pay role. No matter. The rats had a plan.\nAt two pm precisely, the alarm was sounded and an announcement over the tannoys boomed out, telling all inmates to exit their cells immediately. Rita’s whiskers twitched in anticipation as the rats behind her began to file into cell 3.47, sim cards under their arms. They dumped the sim cards and left, and a steady stream of rats continued to do the same. Rita had no idea how many sim cards were now piled up under Pritchard’s bed. Hundreds maybe? Collected from every mattress, nook and hiding place imaginable that the inmates at The Gate could dream up, over two weeks the rat teams had found them, stored them in the tunnels and brought them here today.\nPritchard’s face when the officer swept the sim cards out from under the bed was an absolute picture. She went from aghast to betrayed, shocked to furious in less than half a second. But ultimately, she was confused. And angry. Very angry. Two officers took her by the arms and hauled her down to The Block while she screamed her innocence and how she was being stitched up. Rita couldn’t have hoped for more. How the kingpin had fallen.\nThat night cell 3.47 was theirs alone, and everyone wanted to come to the party. There were rats in the bed, rats on the TV tuning into channels, rats in the drawers of Pritchard’s clothes, and rats hanging from the shelves and bars on the window. Rachel from kitchens had even managed to get four whole boxes of cornflakes up from the basement. They ate and partied until the early hours. Rita had cried as she made a thank you speech, and her heart felt like it might burst. In the morning it was Christmas Day, and this time there was no need to hide at daybreak. Pritchard would be cellular confinement with no windows three floors down and would not be returning any time soon.\nSomeone turned the volume back up on the TV. ‘Look!’ cried Rowena. ‘It’s a rerun of the 1986 Eastenders Christmas Special!’ The rats were quiet. None of them had been alive on the day that over 30 million viewers had tuned in to watch Den handing Angie her divorce papers, but they had heard Pritchard ranting about it their whole lives. What a shame, thought Rita, that Pritchard was going to miss this episode yet again. That temper of hers really had cost her dearly.\n\nPrison News\nKeeping you behind bars, but not in the dark\nHMP Stocken Gate is to undergo a full security review after an inmate, who will remain nameless for legal reasons, was found with 347 sim cards in her cell. The CPS say that the occupier of cell 3.47 was taunting the authorities by collecting this precise number of sim cards and making no attempt to conceal them. She is accused of running the biggest bootlegging operation ever seen in British prison history and faces a 61-count indictment. She has been transferred to the maximum-security facility in Market Deeping where she will remain in solitary confinement until her trial." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Divine Bloodline\n\nGenre: african-american\n\nWord Count: 1270\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story that weaves together multiple lives through their connection to a particular tree." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Divine Bloodline\n“How can you tell the Tree is a girl, Gran?” The shea butter applied to my scalp in neat little rows slid onto my forehead and mixed with beads of sweat as I sat on the front porch between my grandmother’s knees. Every Sunday, we took my braids down and washed my hair. Then Gran braided it right back up again, greasing my scalp as she went. I can’t imagine a Sunday that we didn’t spend together, managing the mane that fell past my waist. It took all day, but the best part was sittin’ on that porch, listening to her tell stories about our family and the land that provided for us over a hundred years. The oldest member of our family is The Tree, who we simply referred to as She or Her. It’s fitting because She isn’t limited to being called one thing, She is everything.\nHer roots reached up from the ground and looped back beneath the soil at odd angles that tripped you up if you tried to escape – even from over thirty feet away. If you didn’t know her and dared to venture towards her massive trunk you might not make it out alive. Gran told me She’s been here since the beginning of time, always adding a new fact that she deemed age appropriate for me to obsess over for weeks until I appeared ready for a new story.\n“Simple, baby girl,” she replied as she slid a rattail comb across my scalp. I closed my eyes and relished the minty tingle that the occasional wind brought to us while she told me, again, about the family history Mama should be telling me had she not ran away. I wasn’t old enough for that story yet, but that never stopped me from asking on Mother’s Day or my birthday. Or any day.\n“You can tell she is a WOMAN because she’s lived longer than anything and anyone who’s stepped foot near her. This tree been watching us our whole family’s lifetime- over our great-great-great grandmothers when they were your age and getting strong enough to help when needed. She’s seen a lotta life, and even more death. She comforts the heavy hearts and bears the weight of our sins; sins no man can handle on his own.” She snorted to herself and for the first time I became aware that I didn’t know any living male relatives.\nShe pauses to take a sip from her iced tea and a drag from a cigarette she rolled herself. “There will never be a time anything of male blood could bear the weight of a woman, which is why they seek to destroy. You see She wears chips from man’s axe, but she still stands. Fire couldn’t bring her to her knees. One, one hundred plus men have hung from her branches and none have yet to string her or any woman living among her roots.”\nSometimes I think she can read my mind. Gran, not the She. But She probably can too.\n“And that’s why we never have to leave, because she provides as far she can reach.” I recited this with Gran after the end of each tree story. I left home for school and the occasional outing, but that was about it. I didn’t make many friends because the town knew about our strange female coven and most kept their distance. Everything else I gleaned from the world came from the screen of my iPhone gifted to me for my birthday. \nOur home was its own bustling community where people came to us and everything we could ever want was, just like Gran said, the Tree provides as far as she could reach. Deliveries were left at the gate separating our Paradise from the rest of the peasants around us. Living on land that shared its ever-changing mysteries never made me long for the world outside until now. I rode horses and took care of farm animals all day, we lived on land owned by our ancestors, it’s a rare miracle that despite the Oklahoma Land Run and Trail of Tears, our family managed to defend our Tree and everything around her.\nWeeks after my thirteenth birthday while watching makeup tutorials I felt an unfamiliar feeling that I’d been preparing for since I turned eleven. I rushed to the bathroom and nearly screamed when I saw what I’d hoped for- my first period. I’m officially a woman.\nI called to Gran with the good news, and she nodded solemnly. I saw on tiktok that people had period parties and assumed she needed time to plan so I went back to my cat eye videos, hoping she chose Black Forest, the canned cherries made more sense than a boring red velvet.\n“Come on, girl, we goin' on a walk.” Gran opened my bedroom door and motioned for me to get up. Her light grey dress grazed the floor and her waist-length braids swung behind her, making her appear more Celestial than usual. I jumped up and joined her, leaving my phone behind.\nShe didn’t have to tell me where we were going; She’d been calling all morning.\nI caught up to Gran and she handed me a bag of candles. I guess the cake was already there, but I also worried that she might not know about how they celebrate the beginning of becoming a woman in this century. I don’t think people her age even gets periods anymore.\n“Don’t worry ‘bout what I do and don’t get.” She pushed me forward and I tripped over a root that I’d never noticed before. Gran giggled to herself and took a drag from her cigarette.\nThe walk took nearly ten minutes to reach Her, but the land spread around her almost like a red carpet; allowing a view that felt and looked more beautiful as you inched closer. Warm wind lifted the hair on my arms and thin silvery clouds parted to brandish a full, pink moon.\n“Strawberry Moon,” Gran’s eyes twinkled as she lifted the sleeve to her dress, revealing a large tattoo on her arm that looked almost identical to the moon in the sky. Got this when I was 37. It means something different for me every year. It felt like seeing her for the first time. A tattoo sleeve from the top of her shoulder to her wrist boasted that I’d failed to notice in my fourteen years of life. Was my Grandmother, with her dreadlocked hair and tattoos exciting before she became a grandmother? I couldn’t imagine her existing before me.\nWhen we finally approached the base of Her massive trunk Gran lit a bundle of sage while I placed the candles around a small space facing the moon- it would have taken hundreds to completely circle Her and the thirteen candles to signify my age made Her look enormous but still somehow, incredibly feminine. The glow almost seemed to dress Her in shadows that would have scared me had I not become a woman today; it excited me. \nWe sat beneath Her outstretched branches and the moonlight played a soundless rhythm that danced with the nighttime sounds. The creek full of fish that I jumped into fearlessly all summer long rushed in the distance, the leaves rippled like tiny flags in different octaves and the animals sang in tune.\nAt that moment I realized that whatever I felt coursing through my veins skipped a generation. If Mama held an ounce of what I felt from this divine bloodline we inherited, she never would have left us." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: The Interior Life of Ruck\n\nGenre: adventure\n\nWord Count: 2788\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story from the point of view of a non-human character." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I backpack.\nNamed Ruck. Store person put me on shelf. She say I “handsum”. I not know what it mean, but she make happy face when she say, so must be nice thing. \nNothing to do while I sit here but lots to look at. After I see sun come up from outside window two times, I feel little bored. I feel little empty, like I hungry.\nBut I not wait long. Young man come, he look at me. He lift me from shelf, take me to store lady, who ask him if he want me “in a bag”, which make them both laugh. We go outside, he sling me on back. What a feeling! I move so free! I then rest on his back. I still empty, but it feel nice to use my straps. We go forward, away from store. \nI miss nice store lady but I like outside more. I like being on back.\n—\nOwner name Kafka, I hear him say. I learn Kafka a “uhcountant”. He work with numbers. He use heavy machine to help make sentences from numbers. At end of each sentence, he take short break, then start next sentence. He write lots of number sentences on machine. I think one day he write book (book is like many papers, put together with gloo), like ones I carry, or ones I see at his home.\nWe spend lot of time together. Every time we go out, it new “uhdventure” (fun work, but makes no money) for me. Kafka not tell me where we go, I find out right before we leave home. It fun game for me to guess where we go from the things he give me to carry. When he bring his uhcountant things, I know we go to office. When I carry snacks, water, spray for “bears” (animals that hike but not carry backpacks), I know we go hiking. When I empty, I know we go get food from store (different store than where I from) to keep at home. I not eat store food. I not hungry when I carry things.\nHiking my favorite.\n—\nWhile Kafka at work, I read the things left inside me. Sometimes these are small things I can read, like receipts and snack labels, but they interesting because they important enough for me to carry, so I read them to learn why so important to Kafka that I work hard to carry and keep for him. I not upset, I just wonder, because I have lots of time to think while we at his “office”.\nMostly I read his books that I carry. But because he an accountant, his books are more numbers than words. So I think I slow to learn words. I like words, because they give me way to understand Kafka and to think better. Numbers not help me very much yet.\nBooks heavy, but are my favorite thing to carry. I read them and read them again.\n—\nAt work today I read a very different kind of book. This one didn’t have many numbers in it. And it was very different than the accounting books I normally read. It was more of a fun story, but I don’t know yet if the story is true or not. It was about a wizard boy named Harry, and if it is true, then I wonder if Kafka has any friends from the school of magic. How fun and curious it would be to meet someone who has a bag that can store as many things as it want. I’d like to meet that bag, what a fun trick! Sometimes when I’m so full that I can’t fit anymore, I feel a bit bad because I know Kafka needs me to carry more. He gently squashes all his other stuff down to make room for more stuff, and I feel guilty. I would like to learn how to make more room. Unlimited room! I have much to learn. \nIf not a true story, then I wonder why someone would write it?\n—\nWhen we don’t go to Kafka’s work, I carry stuff that feels different. Like today we went on a picnic and we brought along “homey” things (things that are softer, things that feel like they are from home, borrowed from home, and when you have them with you, you feel like home is with you).\nI carried a soft blanket, a “journal” (a book that Kafka sometimes writes his stories in, but ones with no numbers), a pencil, sunglasses, a little bottle of lotion, a salad with separate dressing (it took a lot of effort to keep the “dressing” upright!), some napkins, and an empty bag. Not a bag like me, but a smaller one, a plastic one that seemed disinterested in whether it was carrying books or garbage, whether it was empty, or wrinkled to death with folds.\nWhile we were lying on the blanket at the park — I feeling a blissful stillness in a sunbeam, feeling alive from the earthy tree air that travelled across us slowly — Kafka made a new friend who was also laying in the park, a blanket and a patch of grass away from us.\n“I’m Kafka”, Kafka said, flashing a smile.\n“I’m Jeannie”, she smiled back.\nI wonder a little if Kafka knows my name. It was a nice day, lots of work and lots of play.\n—\nSundays are crisp and best enjoyed when they begin in Kafka’s “Dodge” (a type of car that is used for going to and from the city), and are followed by a day-long hike. \nCar rides are as fine as paper towel, but truth be told, I am still not used to facing forward while also moving forward. It’s a strange sensation, perhaps like a human walking backwards while facing forwards. But knowing that we’re about to spend the day hiking is enough to distract me from the strangeness.\nThis morning though, I was in a bad mood.\nUsually seated in the first-mate seat of Kafka’s Dodge, keeping him company, I was demoted this morning to an afterthought in the backseat on account of new company. Not even in the middle backseat, where at least the three of us would form an equilateral triangle, reassuring by virtue of its equity and impartiality, but rather in the seat behind Jeannie, furthest from Kafka, where I’m forced to stare at the back of the chair that used to be mine.\nSitting there, behind the open window instead of next to it, the gush of air tumbling into the back seat, crushing me with the force of its weight, made me want to “vomit” (when you hurl the contents out of your body because you don’t feel well). \nI tried to look mad by squishing my face the way I sometimes see Kafka do, but my attempt at shapeshifting was futile, because I’m too much on the outside who I am on the inside, which is rumpled stuff. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway, because the sanguine rockmelons upfront were preoccupied laughing at unfunny jokes.\nWhen we got there, wherever there was, Kafka heaved me out from the backseat. Determined to not willingly become part of a scalene love triangle, I made myself as heavy as possible and Kafka grunted.\nBut it’s an odd thing. Despite my resolve to weigh down the buoying levity of their romance, to bring it back to earth, something got the better of me when we began hiking. My work began, the work of keeping their possessions safe and present, and my bitterness dissolved into the solvent air of the forest. I am a sentimental creature, easily overcome by the poetry of sticks, twigs, trees, and earthy air. \nI felt bashful of the jealousy I felt earlier, but I also felt reinvigorated, filled as much with purpose as I was with pasta salad, the two counting on me. I am the difference between well-prepared loving adventurers, and once-lovers torn apart by nothing other than the mundane rational problems of unpreparedness.\nLater, all of us tired, we plopped down on a jagged rock whose redeeming quality was that it was large enough to seat us all in a forest that had no other chairs. We needed a break from the sun and the walking, and from the bugs too, but enamoured by our company, the bugs insisted on taking a break with us. \nLike a magician with their trusty hat, Kafka pulled out whatever it was that they needed; snacks, hydration, and afterwards, we all laughed at things that are only funny when you feel an overwhelming lightness.\n—\nWe hiked everywhere. For a whole year, here, there, everywhere, even across the ocean, where people spoke languages I’ve never read (though often the numbers looked the same there as they did back home).\nI could tell you of forests and cities; of ships, planes, trains, and bikes; of heat, of wind, of sand; of bugs and of birds. But there was one moment in particular while we were hiking off the Ligurian coast that was revelatory for me, when a truth about my kind gobsmacked me over the hood.\nAs with most prophetic moments, it happened simply, without ceremony, and only in retrospect do you realize that it was something you’ve been waiting to know. And often that realization is an answer to why you are the way you are, and why you sometimes inexplicably feel alone in the company of others. (Or so I’ve gathered from the books Kafka and I have read, I don’t have many revelations of my own to draw from, but it seems to be a sort of universal phenomena that makes us all ironically alike.)\nAnyways, during one of these hikes, in the silence of the morning, Kafka and I passed by another backpack and their human, who nodded at us as we crossed paths, the strangers going onward into our past while we went onwards into theirs, the other backpack and I continuing to face one another for longer than most humans would feel comfortable holding a gaze with one another. This stranger backpack was well worn, one of the eldest I ever encountered. It had aged gracefully without becoming fragile, a marbled patina having formed on its leather surfaces, adventure imbued into its fabric.\nIt was then that it dawned on me; that backpacks live looking backwards. You’d think it would be obvious, “back” is even in the name of my kind, but it took me living a dozen Fodor’s for this to really sink in.\nWhen humans walk, they walk towards something. Objects ahead of them become bigger and bigger, at their largest before suddenly they disappear forever. Being able to march forwards towards the unseen, unencumbered by what they leave behind, makes them ideal explorers.\nBut when we as backpacks travel, it’s the opposite. Things start out at a scale hyper quixotic to a little backpack, become smaller and smaller, until eventually — they don’t disappear — they just become infinitesimally small. What’s more is that I always know how much longer I have to appreciate something before it fades away, the correlation between time and visibility made predictable, like a sunset. \nWhat does that make a backpack, whose motion is forward but is always looking back? What do you call someone or something that savours the past, bidding everything it passes a long and reverent goodbye?\nA poet, a journalist, a cartographer, perhaps? Whose role it is to chronicle their loved ones’ life and adventures? Not on maps or on paper, but within the memory of our materials. We remember whatever is worth remembering before it fades away - like the smell of pine, the salt of creek water, the sap and dew of the trees we rest on - and imbue it in our fabric. We absorb and reflect the experiences of our humans, forming a tapestry of their lives.\n—\nWe’ve been back home for a while, and so there’s been less hiking and no travelling, and more time spent at Kafka’s office. Fewer stories about Harry Potter (which I’ve since learned are “fiction”), and more stories about numbers (which I’ve since learned, I’m not the only one who doesn’t enjoy reading such stories). \nI’m not complaining. I know I speak often of how much I love my work while we hike and travel, but I can appreciate a break. I wouldn’t mind trying out one of these “spas” I keep reading about (a place where they spot clean your fabric with cucumbers), but for now it’s nice to have predictability in the possessions I carry, and to simply lay motionless in a climate-controlled environment for hours, or even days at a time.\n—\nI’ve noticed some peculiarities this past week, some of them as contradictory as salt and pepper. \nI’ll start with the exciting news. I’ve been carrying around fewer accounting books this week, and have instead been entrusted with Yosemite Falls travel books checked out from the library, which Kafka has been devouring at lunch time. The anticipation of another trip, our first in a while, sends a chill of excitement up my padded spine. For all my talk about rest and relaxation, it turns out I’m just a fisherman who misses the sea.\nAnd while the fibres of my fabric, once clean and crisp, have softened, gently sanded down by the tide of adventure, I feel as durable and capable as ever.\nThere is a contradiction that has left me confused, however. I’ve noticed a few anomalies at home, traits inconsistent with how Kafka has usually behaved before a big trip. Ordinarily, we would both sit in the living room, and see what all we were capable of carrying. And though I’ve tried to signal to Kafka and Jeannie that I was ready, if not eager for this ritual, I’ve been left to idle while they plan.\nBut I chalk it up to experience; we have more confidence in what to pack, how to fit and carry it all, and being able to improvise with the unknown since you can never pack everything. That’s what aging is really all about; you no longer carry around the weight of the permutations of everything that will go wrong.\n—\nI should have seen the signs.\nAt first they were subtle. For example, Kafka used to gently and carefully clean my fabric, dabbing at me gently with Dawn dish soap and warm water; always warm, never cold, never hot. Warm with a precision that he seldom demonstrated for anything except numbers. Then recently, he became ambivalent about the temperature of the water, then he stopped caring about the soap, before finally he stopped caring about cleaning me altogether.\nAnd in the past couple weeks, the clues became so obvious that I now feel stupid for not recognizing them sooner. Kafka and Jeannie began talking of me “wearing out”, which at the time, I assumed to mean they were getting ready to wear me “out”, as in outside of work, outside of the normal routine, outside of the comfortable but now lethargic sanctum we had all cocooned ourselves in. Now I see that “wearing out” is a human idiom, as in I’m being “worn away”, fading into the distance, like the trees and sticks that I used to enjoy watching become infinitesimally small until they only existed in my memory. \nSo I am a “horcrux” now, a slice of Kafka’s soul, living outside of him. At a store, to be precise, filled with things. Not new things like where I grew up, but old things. Old things that would ordinarily be beautiful, like the backpack I saw on our hike off the Ligurian coast. But now, placed outside of their work environment, compacted in between other old things, sitting empty on a shelf, trying to catch a stray sun beam but having to pathetically settle for fluorescent lights, we all looked decrepit and humiliated.\nI feel like vomiting, but can’t because I am empty. I am hungry, have nothing to read, and my arms are stiff from not moving.\nThe store keepers here are unsympathetic, as are the patrons, and we all move about as though we are discarded by our Kafkas. \n—\nAdam, a red-headed boy of six or seven, walks into the store. He picks me up, and - now that I know more of accounting than he - pays for me at a depreciated value. \nWe walk outside into a bright white world, and he slings me over his shoulder. Little Adam walks onwards, and I, on his back (and just as big), begin chronicling his life." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Souls in the Sky\n\nGenre: adventure\n\nWord Count: 2880\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about someone looking for a sign in a dark sky." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Zack Kaudjak was crossing the open snow laced fields of the Yukon River with his fourteen dog Iditarod sled team as the sun began to set below the birch tree line at three in the afternoon. The days were short during the first week of March which meant the temperature would be dropping nearly forty degrees below zero. He was prodding the team hoping to make it to the Galena rest stop by dinner time. Wrapped in a thermal body wrap, seal skin gloves, mukluks, his extremities still felt the impact of the cruel wind as his sled dipped and dodged his way along the frozen trail. \nBorn in the small Inuit village of White Mountain on the Seward Peninsula, Zack was a citizen of two worlds, that of his mother’s side of the Inuit and that of his fur trapping father from a Scandinavian heritage. When Zack was just seven years old, his father Bjork fled the village for greener pastures leaving him alone with her mother Ahnah in the small isolated village. While still attending mission school, Zack began raising malamutes and Siberian Huskies. \nBurt Zymuski, his history teacher with a thick Russian accent told Zack, “Do not waste your time with them Huskies. They are strong, but they do not have the temperament for Iditarod.”\n“I do not agree.” He told his teacher even though Bert had run the great race eight times before settling in White Mountain. \n“Hmmph.” He nodded at the veracity of his young student. “Prove me wrong, malchik.”\n“I have a team with six Husky pups.” His brazen bravado impressed the older man.\n“Oh I see.” He put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Do you want some help?”\n“Sure.” He smiled up at Burt.\n“I will get them ready.” He winked as Zack walked out of his classroom. \nTrue to his word, Burt Zymuski knocked at Zack’s cabin door on an early Saturday morning as the summer slipped away to the equinox and the Fireweed began to go to seed. The wind from the Bering Sea blew the seeds into the air, covering the land like the snow that would follow in a few weeks. \nAhnah answered the door when he knocked, smiling, she replied, “You must be Mr. Zymuski.”\n“I am and your Russian is well polished.” He bowed his head.\n“He is waiting for you. So excited.” She ushered him inside as the wind already had a harsh bite to it. \nZack took his teacher to his kennel behind the small cabin he and his mother lived in. The dogs were already baying and yelping when they saw both of them enter the crudely built shelter.\n“They do appear to be well-cared for.” He squatted down to pet an affectionate malamute pup. \nWhen his runner hit some ice, it broke away from the sled. Applying the brake, he called out to his team, “Whoa. We have to take a break.” \nHe knew that none of them wanted to stop. The wind was beyond frigid. He pulled his sled into a wide culvert that would shield them from the harshness of the deadly Arctic wind. Retrieving his missing runner, he found it where it had broken off, but he would have to remove his gloves so he could reattach it. Two of the dogs surrounded him so he could do this task without feeling the bite of frostbite which was with them at every bend in the trail. He knew as he reattached his runner that three sled teams were already just hours away from Nome, the red lantern and prize money. Most likely he would not finish the race in the money, but his goal was just to finish. He could brag that a twenty year old was capable of enduring the thousand mile marathon. \nHe managed to run his naked hand across Amak, his lead dog’s mane. “We may have to spend the night here, girl.” \nHe would remove the netting from his sled where he had packed his tarp and sleeping bag. As the temperature dropped to forty below, he would make sure his team and he were sheltered enough to survive the blistering cold wind. \n“Gonna be a really cold one gang.” He began to put up his tarp. “You guys better dig into the snow.”\nMost of his team of a dozen dogs had already dug into the ice to shelter them from the night wind. Without his head lantern, the wilderness would be so dark, he would not be able to see his gloved hand in front of his face. In Galena, which was still about thirty miles due west beyond the mountain pass slowly disappearing in the darkness, he would have a warm place to spend the night and a hot meal and some chow for his team. \nIt did not take long for Zack to fall into a deep sleep.\nHe was sitting in a kayak close to the shore. His head slowly moved to his right. Alka was sitting in his kayak. He had the stock of his Springfield rifle resting on his shoulder with his finger on the trigger. When his grandfather aimed his army issued rifle, he never missed. \nHis grandfather told him that he was issued the rifle when the United States Army was afraid the Japanese were planning to invade Alaska. As it turned out the Japanese did invade Attu and took a whole village prisoners of war before the army sent troops that included some Inuit volunteers like Alta to repel them from Attu in June 1942. The Imperial Japanese Army would never return. \nA few yards ahead was his target, a full grown male seal bobbing in the icy water. \n“Two.” Alta whispered as he took aim. The seal submerged into the brackish slushy water. Zack sat as still as a statue as he had been taught to do by his grandfather.\n“Three.” He said as the seal reappeared. The rifle sounded. There was a splash of water. The seal had been shot right between his black eyes, a quick instant death. “Tulok, get the seal.” \nUsing his Inuit name that means god of the warriors, he pointed to the carcass of the seal now floating in the waves. Always quick to obey his grandfather’s instructions, Zack grabbed the lifeless animal behind the flippers, wrapping his hands around the seal’s corpulent chest and pulled him into his kayak. His Alta removed his knife from his belt and sliced down the center of the seal’s body. White blubber flowed from the opening.\n“Good, plenty of good meat.” He smiled, running his fingers through the warm blubber. “You always count to three before pulling the trigger, because his lungs are full of air. I waited and now we have plenty to eat.” \nHis eyes fluttered open. He had to relieve himself as the wind continued to blow whistling through the dwarf birch trees. The snow had piled up on his tarp making it difficult for him to exit his warm shelter. Three of his dogs had curled up nearby while the rest of them had tunneled in the snow. It was well below zero Zack calculated as he emerged to relieve himself. Cold did not seem adequate enough to describe the biting Arctic wind. \nIt took him about an hour to get his sled packed, but the granola bar did not seem to fill his growling stomach. He scanned the faces of his dog team. “Guys, we will be in Galena in about an hour. They will have breakfast for you.” \nAhead was the mountain pass. The trail through the pass was well known as the difficult part of the trail. But he knew once they got through it, Zack knew the trail would be a lot smoother for the rest of the way even though Nome was still a couple of days away. \nKnown as the Heartbreak Pass, Zack noticed Lusa, one of the team, was struggling to catch her breath. He slowed the team to a stop. Lusa lay immobile in the snow. \n“What’s the matter, girl?” He asked as if she could answer him. He gently ran his hand over her panting chest. Slowly he undid her harness and lifted the female Husky from the snow. Placing her comfortably into the sled would slow them down even more, but at this point it did not matter to him. Tears filled Zack’s eyes. His tears froze to the skin on his cheeks. Lusa panted as he started the team once again. The sled jerked to a start as they began a slow steady climb up Heartbreak Pass. \nHis team was hungry, but Galena was still over an hour away as they climbed the steep pass. \n“If you wish to run your team in The Last Great Race, you must be ready to have your heart broken many times.” Alta told his grandson after Zack told him of his intentions to enter the race. \n“Yes grandfather, I want to enter the race next month.” He answered. \nZack had no idea that his grandfather would pass away just two weeks later. In his grief and mourning for his grandfather, Zack decided to wait a year before entering the Iditarod. Deeply affected by his loss, Zack got out his sled and took Alta to his village according to Inuit tradition. While he was staying with his aunt, the Aurora Borealis appeared above the village. As he watched the emerald green wave overhead, Zack knew that his grandfather had made it to the next world. His aunt affirmed his observation. Even with her gentle assurances, Zack still felt the empty space in his heart his grandfather had left him with. \nShadows were already long when he got to the end of Heartbreak Pass. Stunted birch and pine trees greeted him when they appeared through the mountain pass. Lusa was still struggling. Zack cursed himself for not making it to Galena where he could get care for his young Husky pup. As the darkness began to swallow the scenery, Lusa breathed her last. Zack could not shed any tears at her passing since his tears would freeze to his face. The rest of the team sensed the loss as Amak started to howl. The rest of the surviving team joined in howling, mourning their fallen teammate. \n The wind picked up as its icy grip covered the land. Bursting across the sky, the Northern Lights illuminated the sky. Soon the souls of the dead would dance across the sky like his grandfather used to tell him when he was a boy. \n“Tulok.” He heard someone call him. The voice was familiar to him as he rolled from his sleeping bag, “Tulok!” \n“Grandfather.” Zack’s voice was thick with sleep.\n“I am here.” \n“I need you.” Zack sat up.\n“I am with you always.” \n“I need you. I lost one of my dogs.” Zack felt his eyes gloss over with tears. \n“Do not cry, Tulok. These things happen.” \n“I miss you.” Zack could not stop the flow of tears.\n“Step outside. You will see me.” \n“Alright.” Zack found his way out of his encasement. When he looked to the sky, he saw the familiar emerald wave swirling in the night sky. “Grandfather, are you there?”\n“I am.” \n“I need your help.” He bowed his head.\n“I will guide you.” \n“To Nome?”\n“Is that where you really wish to go? You can end it at Galena. Your team is hungry and exhausted. You too, are in need of some rest.” \n“I did not come here to quit.” He said defiantly.\n“You are not quitting, you are doing what’s best for you and your team. A good leader knows when that time has come to pass.” \n“I want to get to Nome.” Zack stamped his foot into the ice as he used to do as a child.\n“At what cost? You will have other chances to prove yourself.” His voice began to fade with the wind rushing through the canopy of trees. The sky turned emerald green. \nAt what cost? Lusa was one of his favorite pups. He had fed her from the bottle when she still had her eyes closed. She would run through their small house and his mother would tell him to take her outside.\n“It’s too cold.” He would whine.\n“And let you two ruin what little we have here.” She would shake her head.\n“So how is your pups?” Mr. Zymuski asked Zack after class.\n“They are great.” He nodded. Mr.Zymuski helped him acquire some of the pups in his team including Lusa. \n“I knew you’d be a good pack leader.” The teacher clasped Zack on his wide shoulders. “One day you will make me proud.” \nMr. Zymuski was the closest Zack had to a real father and so when the “Mad Russian” as he was known among the rest of the mission school passed away a few months later, Zack vowed to complete the race. \n“I am a failure.” He thought to himself as he got ready for the final leg of the trail to Galena. He sighed deeply since he knew Galena was roughly the halfway point of the Iditarod, but it was apparent that he would not make it to the finish line. As the town of Galena came into view, Zack could not fight this overwhelming feeling of failure. He had let his grandfather down. He had let Mr. Zymuski down as well. \n“Hey kid, I hate to tell you, but three teams have already crossed the finish line.” One of the men from the checkpoint greeted him, “I’m Mr. Tanner from the checkpoint. What is your name?” \n“I’m Zack Kaudjak.” He answered.\n“Got it.” He checked it off on his clipboard. “Well, are you going to continue?”\n“No sir. I lost one of my dog team in the pass.” He shook his head.\n“Happens.” Mr. Tanner put his clipboard down on the table next to him. The small cabin was warm and comfortable, “Does your team need some grub?” \n“Yessir.” Zack nodded.\n“Coming right up.” Mr. Tanner walked into the kitchen area where they stored the dog chow. \n“So you lost one of your dogs, eh?” A woman dressed like one of the men in overalls and flannel shirt, “My name is Marge. I scratched this morning for the same reason.” \n“Sorry.” Zack bowed his head.\n“It’s nothing to be ashamed about, kid.” She sat in one of the chairs at a table. Zack noted she was just about his mother’s age, “Join me.” \nHe sat down in the chair next to hers.\n“What did you learn out there?” She smiled as she sipped her coffee.\n“That it’s harder than I thought it’d be.” He confessed.\n“There are mushers a lot more experienced than you, who still find this one of the most difficult things they’ve ever done.” She laughed. “Including me. I’ve never quit anything. First time for everything.” \n“I’ve let everyone down.” He frowned. \n“No such a thing.” She shook her head, “When you’re out on the trail it’s just you, your team and God. No one else.”\nShe was right. Zack knew it for a fact. When he was burying Lusa in the frozen solid ground in the pass, he said several prayers as he interred her in the earth. He felt a hand on each shoulder. When he looked up he saw his grandfather. “Tulok, I am so very proud of you.” He turned his head and saw Mr. Cyzewski smiling down at him, “You done good, da.” \n“Well, I have to get ready for a flight home to Wyoming.” She sighed. “I’ll give it a shot next year. Whadda about you?” \n“We’ll be here.” He smiled. He couldn’t help it. She made him feel much better about not making it to Nome. “I’ve had a rough time on the trail. I’ll be wiser next time.”\n“Me too.” She stood up, “Gotta go.” \nMr. Tanner said so long to Marge as she walked out and then approached Zack, “Hey kid, we got a transport leaving to White Mountain in the morning.”\n“Sounds great.” He nodded.\n“Good, I’ll put you down for it.” He checked his clipboard as he walked away.\n“Zack, you’re home.” His mother greeted him when he walked in the door, “Did you see that Aurora Borealis last night?”\n“Yes, I did.” He put his bag down.\n“I prayed for you every night.” She hugged him. \n“I know.” He choked back some tears as he felt the warmth, “I lost Lusa.” \n“I heard.” She held him out at arm’s length.\n“I felt horrible about scratching.” He confessed.\n“No one will blame you for what you did out there, no matter what.” She had tears in her eyes. “We are so proud of you. So proud.” \n“”I love you mama.” He kissed her on the cheek, “I have to get my dogs settled in.” \n“You do what you have to, Zack.” She watched him as he walked out the door. \n“Be back in a shake.” He waved as she closed the door. It was really cold out there. \nHe skipped to the kennel in the back of his house. He was greeted warmly by his team with tongues and tails wagging." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Across the Karman Line\n\nGenre: african-american\n\nWord Count: 1136\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about a character who risks their life to take a photo." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Aiysha could feel her heart rate quickening as she climbed higher into the atmosphere, her pulse echoing in her ears like a distant drumbeat. The sensation of weightlessness began to envelop her as the altitude increased, a subtle but undeniable reminder of the immense power of the world around her. She momentarily shut her eyes, instinctively seeking solace in the darkness behind her eyelids, a momentary respite from the overwhelming rush of adrenaline coursing through her veins. Inhaling deeply through her facemask, she tasted the stale air, the familiar metallic tang mingling with the faint scent of recycled oxygen. She held it in for a moment, allowing herself a brief pause to collect her thoughts.\nWhen she opened her eyes, she instinctively pulled the HOTAS control back, executing a high alpha maneuver with practiced precision. The craft responded eagerly to her commands, its sleek form slicing through the thin veil of the upper atmosphere like a knife through silk. With a surge of exhilaration, she felt the familiar G-forces pressing against her body, her muscles tensing reflexively in response to the dizzying ascent. Despite the reassurance of her G-suit, she couldn't shake the nagging doubt that lingered at the edge of her consciousness, the fear of losing control in the face of the unknown.\nThis wasn't her first trip beyond Earth's atmosphere, not by a long shot. Technically, she was an astronaut, trained and certified for missions beyond the confines of the planet's atmosphere. But that was a detail she couldn't freely discuss, not with anyone outside the tightly-knit circle of engineers and scientists who comprised the secretive world of skunkworks research and development. As a test pilot for one of the world's most advanced aerospace companies, her flights were strictly confidential, especially those that crossed the Karman Line, that invisible boundary that marked the edge of space.\nIt struck her as somewhat amusing, in a darkly ironic sort of way, how there was no discernible difference between being above or below the line – no booming sounds, no dazzling lights or shimmering trails to mark the transition from one realm to the next. It was just an arbitrary line drawn in the sand, significant only for its implications in the realm of legal and regulatory frameworks, a dividing line between the jurisdiction of aircraft and spacecraft. International law had yet to definitively define the edge of space or the limits of national airspace, leaving such matters to be determined on a case-by-case basis by the powers that be.\nTo the bureaucrats back at base, she was just another test pilot on another routine flight, gathering data and pushing the boundaries of aerospace technology in the name of progress. But secretly, she knew that her mission was something far more significant, far more profound. She was testing a new scramjet design, a revolutionary propulsion system that promised to revolutionize manned spaceflight, enabling her craft to breach the atmosphere and endure the harsh conditions of space for a minimum of 90 minutes, perhaps even longer if all went according to plan.\n\"Test pilot my well-rounded behind,\" she muttered under her breath, a wry smile tugging at the corners of her lips as she spoke. \"Astronaut, that's me.\"\n\"Sparrowhawk 11, we didn't catch that, can you repeat?\" came the voice of the mission controller crackling over the comms.\n\"Affirmative, ACS,\" she replied, her tone professional and composed despite the surge of frustration that bubbled beneath the surface. \"Sparrowhawk 11, bearing 142 and ascending. Mission parameters confirmed.\"\n\"Copy that, Sparrowhawk 11,\" came the response. \"Mission is a go. Godspeed.\"\nShe felt a surge of pride swell within her chest at the acknowledgment, a small but significant reminder of the importance of her mission, of the sacrifices she had made and the risks she had taken in the pursuit of knowledge and discovery. And yet, there was a part of her that couldn't help but feel a twinge of regret at the secrecy that shrouded her profession, at the countless girls back in the Bronx who could benefit from knowing that someone like them was soaring through the stars.\nBut there were undeniable perks to her covert profession, she reminded herself. The thrill of witnessing the swift transition from the boundless blue of Earth's sky to the star-speckled blackness of space in a matter of seconds was a privilege shared by few, a demonstration of the ingenuity and determination of the human spirit. And with practiced skill, she reached for the camera that she had stashed in her flight suit, ensuring that no classified materials or instruments would be captured in the clandestine snapshots that she would take.\nThese photographs, she knew, would one day serve as her retirement package, a tangible reminder of her years spent in service to her country and her species. They would be hailed as a tribute to the indomitable spirit of exploration and discovery that drove humanity ever onward, ever upward, toward the stars.\nAlone in her cockpit, she couldn't help but marvel at the beauty and vulnerability of the planet below, a fragile oasis suspended in the vast expanse of space. The curvature of the Earth stretched out before her like a work of art, its intricate patterns and delicate hues a stark contrast to the harsh emptiness of the void beyond. Each click of the camera felt like a silent declaration of her presence, a testament to her bravery and determination to capture the unseen, to explore the unexplored, to push the boundaries of what was thought possible.\nAs she continued her ascent, her mind wandered to the implications of her secret missions, to the discoveries that lay concealed behind the cloak of secrecy. What marvels awaited humanity beyond the confines of Earth's atmosphere? What wonders lay waiting to be uncovered in the vastness of space? These questions fueled her resolve.\nMinutes slipped by in a blur of excitement and contemplation, each passing moment a demonstration of the boundless potential of the human spirit. And though her journey was shrouded in secrecy, she knew that her contributions would one day be acknowledged, her photographs standing as a lasting tribute to humanity's quest for knowledge and understanding.\nFinally, as she began her descent back to Earth, a smile crept across her face at the thought of the reactions her photographs would provoke when they were unveiled to the world. For now, they remained a secret shared only between her and the vast expanse of space, a reminder of the infinite possibilities that awaited those bold enough to venture into the unknown. And as she guided her craft back towards the welcoming embrace of the Earth below, she knew that her journey was far from over, that the stars still held countless secrets waiting to be discovered, waiting to be shared with the world." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: The Last Man Kneeling\n\nGenre: african-american\n\nWord Count: 2025\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about a gallery whose paintings come alive at night." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "(*warning; Implied racism and mentions of slavery. *)\nTHE LAST MAN KNEELING\nThe man in the painting was nameless, but he knew three things for certain:\n1. He was depicted kneeling on a plush red carpet, his face locked in a stern expression as he gazed into the flickering flames of a grand fireplace.\n2. The artist who had brought him to life and placed him on display was known as Asher Vanderbilt, his elegant signature adorning the bottom of the canvas in golden letters.\n3. And most importantly - at night, the nameless man would come alive.\nIt was a strange transition from being a mere observer, to being an active participant of this thing called life. To go from frigid to soft. During these times, he was able to feel the soft fur of the carpet, he felt it gain weight as it seemed to push back against him. \nHe didn't know if it was a curse or not, but he found himself looking forward to those moments when he could see beyond his confined surroundings and observe the other paintings in the gallery. He noticed that while there were many vibrant and colourful paintings, he was the only figure with dark skin. \nBut this fact didn't bother him too much. He wondered if it was supposed to.\nLately, the gallery had been busier than usual. He could sense it in the increase of shadows passing by during the day and the rise in noise levels. The man noticed that he saw more black members of the public. And they were particularly interested in him. The man did not know why. Trapped in his painting, the social bonds of race- the meaning of race - had not been implanted into his brain.\nThere was one particular woman with curly black hair and bright red lipstick who would visit him daily. She would pass by all of the other more colourful paintings and make her way straight to him. She would stand with her arms crossed and her lips pursed as she studied him. Sometimes, she would even bring a notebook and jot things down before leaving. The man couldn't help but wonder what it was about him that fascinated her so much. Perhaps she was just a big fan of Asher Vanderbilt's work and admired his creation.\nAs the clock struck midnight once again, the man's mind began to wonder. In moments when he felt more human and present rather than cold and empty, he often thought about his creator, Asher Vanderbilt. He couldn't help but admire the artist for drawing him into existence with such care and detail, dressed in a comfortable dark green attire against a scenic backdrop. Did the other paintings in the gallery also think about their creators? Did they long with a faint eagerness to meet them? \nThe man, trapped in the painting from his very existence, had neither learnt of the concept of death which his owner had succumbed to. \nThat night, the man felt an adventurous streak take over. He wanted to test the limits of this newfound \"life\". Could he even step out of his painting? The thought excited him. Slowly and carefully, he climbed out of his frame and onto the wooden floor. It was strange walking on solid ground rather than the familiar red carpet in his painting. As he explored the gallery at a slower pace to avoid dizziness, some of his fellow paintings looked over in curiosity. They weren't feeling as daring today, but that just meant more space for him.\nAll the paintings shared a similar style and taste in clothing thanks to their creators. Each one showcased figures dressed in similar attire, with lavish fabrics and intricate details. The colours were mostly muted, with deep jewel tones and dark shadows.\nA sculpture stood tall and statuesque in the centre of the room, its elegant curves and sharp edges catching the faint light in all the right places. Its surface was smooth and pristine, with no visible imperfections. It didn't seem alive, fortunately. Its imposing presence made the man slightly uneasy.\nHe continued his self-guided tour of the gallery, venturing further than he ever had before. As he observed every corner of the room, one fact became clear - he was the only dark face in the whole gallery. He wondered again if he should perhaps feel something about this and paused. Well…he should feel unique. Yes. Asher Vanderbilt had uniquely created him in this overwhelming sea of pale faces. His creator had wanted him to stand out. No wonder, he captured attention from visitors. \nSpeaking of Asher Vanderbilt – his creator had quite a few pieces around the place including one titled \"The Golden Girl\". It featured a blonde woman sitting in a cosy home with a tray of tea and biscuits in front of her. The man found himself smiling at this. His creator was clearly very talented. In the back of his mind, he wondered faintly why he himself had been painted with a frown, rather than a smile like this woman. It would be more comfortable for his face if he didn’t have to frown all the time. But never mind that – at least he could smile now. \nHe was about to move on to the next painting when he spotted it; a name. The name of the woman in the picture; Gilda Mason.\nSo, people in paintings could have names. \nIt may not have seemed quite the ground-breaking realisation. But the man had just assumed that nobody really had names. That only the artists themselves had names. And as he walked and looked more closely, he noted that it wasn’t just Gilda that had a name. Everyone else had a name too. Annabelle. Fitzpatrick. Lisa. Benedict. Name after name, an overload of them. \nOnly in that moment, did the man come to realise how important a name could be. And this was when he decided to rush back to re-examine his own painting. He must have missed it all those times before. Asher Vanderbilt seemed a very talented and respected artist – he must have given him a name. The man just needed to look harder. Yes. That is exactly what he would do. \nHe walked as fast as he could without getting dizzy; he rounded the corner and found himself in the familiar room gallery he had become accustomed to. His painting looked strange without him in it; a space on the red carpet right where he should be kneeling.H\nHe peered at the bottom of the frame and saw Asher Vanderbilt's name followed by a description: \"A slave playing dress up, 1748.\"\nThe man read this sentence over and over, as if trying to decode some hidden meaning; some hidden name between the vague description of ‘a slave.’ Had Asher Vanderbilt really forgotten his name? Or maybe the word ‘slave’ was enough. The man frowned a little. He had really wanted a name. And he wasn’t too sure what a slave was. \nAnd playing dress up? He glanced down at the satin material of his clothes. Did they not belong to him? Was he borrowing it from someone? And if so, when was he going to give them back?\nLost in thought, he remembered seeing security guards handing out leaflets near the entrance of the gallery. He grabbed one and hoped it would provide some useful information about himself and his circumstances.\nWelcome to the main art gallery of West Virginia! We're thrilled that you've decided to visit.\nThe words oozed with excitement as the man skimmed through the brochure. He flipped through a few pages showcasing various paintings and sculptures before coming across something more intriguing. It was a picture of that same black woman, someone he had seen frequently at the gallery in the past month. However, in this particular photo, her expression seemed harsher, almost menacing. It was not the most flattering image to choose.\nThe writing on that particular page - page 5 - was titled ‘’The Issue of The Civil Rights Movement and how it pertains to this art gallery.’’ \nAn article by Steve Crowner, dated 18th June 1963.\nIt caught the man’s eye and he began to read;\n‘You've seen it on the news. And if you haven't, then you've surely witnessed it on the streets. When I first opened this gallery, I never imagined it would become a platform for political debates. But somehow, politics has found its way here. Ada Wells, pictured below, has made sure of that. I welcome everyone into my gallery - I don't believe in segregation. So I allowed Ada, a journalist, to come to me seeking entry out of pure kindness. Little did I know she would use her visit as an opportunity to defame my name in the local newspapers because of one painting displayed here. The piece by Asher Vanderbilt from 1748 was one of his last works. His personal beliefs about race are not my concern. This is the danger with certain movements; they seek to destroy everything that came before them. This gallery stands with Vanderbilt and that's final’\nSteve Crowner's words left the man feeling overwhelmed and confused. He may not have fully understood every word, but there was definitely a heated debate about Vanderbilt's character happening beneath the surface. And that confusion itself was perplexing to him. After all, Vanderbilt was the creator of this man. He must have been a good person, right?\nThe man felt a sudden urge to learn more, but the rest of the brochure seemed quite plain in comparison. \nAlthough the biblical reference would go over his head, the man had taken a small bite from the tree of knowledge; and now there was a small crack in his worldview.\nAs he climbed back into his painting, he felt a little less proud, a little more muddled. He had climbed back in the same way as he had left it; nameless, but with a few more questions. The clothes on his skin did not sit as they once had; they lingered instead. And God knew there was a difference. If they could, they would make his skin itch. And that frown which had been painted onto his face was now very much a real one. The furrow between his brows deepened as he gazed back at the flickering flames in the fireplace.\nHe couldn’t shake off the thoughts stirred up by the leaflet. It had been a rude awakening, one that made him question everything he thought he knew about his existence and purpose.\nHe had always been content to hang from this wall and be admired by passersby. But now, he couldn’t help but wonder if they would judge him based on his creator’s reputation. The quietly shattering seedling of a realisation that Vanderbilt was not as great as the man thought he was. The quietly maddening realisation that people could be multifaceted; That Vanderbilt could paint him in one breath, paint the beautiful scenery in another and yet also have another side to him.\nThe man found himself waiting for that black woman to come again. This time when he subtly examined her staring, he would look a bit closer. He would not mistake her semblance of neutrality for admiration. Clearly she had feelings of the opposite. \nThis time when she came, he would be ready for her.\nOne last time; the man looked around at the paintings that covered the walls of Steve Crowner’s art gallery. There were portraits of wealthy families, landscapes of the picturesque countryside, and scenes depicting historical events. And then there was him – a portrait with no name.\nThe man had not known it then, but his painting had been the subject of debate locally. The Civil Rights movement had a cultural dynamic to it that was more than just legal battles. Ada B. Wells was spearheading this part of the movement. She believed it was a disgrace; if slavery was so far behind the Great Nation of the United States, then why was there still one last man kneeling?" } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Not Your Perfect Heist\n\nGenre: african-american\n\nWord Count: 1583\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about an art thief who is struggling to commit the perfect heist." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I don’t know if perfect heist is the best way to frame what I finally accomplished last Thursday.\nMy name is Beans and that’s what I prefer to be called; don’t put a mister or doctor or reverend or any other term of endearment in front of it. Just Beans.\nQuick history since I know you are wondering. People who read are always nosy as all get up. So, here’s the scoop. Since I was little my daddy used to tell me and everybody who met me that I would never amount to no more than a hill of beans. Then he’d make me wear white starched shirts with stiff collars and told me a man has to dress for success.\nI’d say, “but Daddy you tell everybody I won’t amount to no more than a hill of beans. Why do I got to dress up?”\nHe’d say “It’s up to you what that hill of beans is worth, Son. Don’t never let anybody tell you what you worth. You be the beans that everybody wants to be around because you got it going on. Your great great granddaddy was a third cousin to a brother named George Washington Carver way back in the day. Carver didn’t have squat…no mama, no daddy, nothing or nobody to brag about. He just quietly went about doing what he was put here to do. He worried every plant, seed or leaf he could get a hold of until he figured out what they were here for and before long folks was calling him the plant doctor. Pretty soon he had folks using peanuts for over 300 different things and using soybeans to manufacture paint.”\nMy daddy told me a version of that story so many times that I wouldn’t wear sweats or cutoffs or such anywhere but around the house. That story also perked my interest about paint and it didn’t take long for me to see what I could cook up with some paint and a homemade canvas. We had a storage shed behind our little house in Hillsborough, California USA and I turned that little place into my own little art studio. I didn’t know much of anything going in but I made it my business to dib and dabble until my creations even made me take a second look.\nThe day I graduated from middle school, my Daddy said, “Beans, you got to bring home some bacon too. Get you a job.”\nI don’t know if you know anything about this town of Hillsborough in northern California but it wasn’t like it was a place where a brown skinned 14- year old like me could just walk into a store and say You hiring. Shoot, the whole time I was at Crocker Middle School I didn’t see anybody anywhere that looked anything like me ever.\nBefore you go to the internet I’ll tell you myself. Hillsborough is one of the richest towns in America and the reason we had a little house there was because my daddy inherited it from the folks he worked for. Mama worked for the Willford family while she was going to Cal Berkeley and Daddy said they cried like babies when she left to take a teaching job at Menlo College. She might still be here if she had stayed at the Willford’s but that’s another story. Don’t even ask.\nDaddy and Mr. Willford loved restoring classic cars and when Daddy would pick up Mama from work he just kept coming to the Willford’s house earlier and earlier so he could talk shop with Mr. Wilford. Mr. Willford must have had ten or more cars at the house and Daddy said even more in storage. When Mama left the Willford’s they hired Daddy to help around the property but mostly with the cars. The Willfords were way up in age and my Daddy drove them around and took care of them until they left here. They never had kids and they left the property down the hill and a couple cars to Daddy. Daddy said the Willfords died up to their necks in debt but he was grateful for the unexpected blessing.\nIn my mind I had my whole summer planned out after graduation. I was going to sleep late, grab a bite and head to the shed to turn out masterpieces. Getting a job was not anywhere on my mind. I know one thing though. I knew better than to protest. Nope. I hopped on my bicycle dressed in my white starched shirt that Monday after graduation and headed downtown. I figured Safeway or 31 flavors might just give me a chance to shine and neither of them gave me the time of day. They both said ‘Ccome back when you’re 16.’\nI thought to myself, they don’t know my Daddy. I cannot go home without a job. I biked up that hill to Crocker sweating like a smokehouse to see if they had something for me. Ms. Kavorski, the guidance counselor, made me wait for an hour but then let me come in her office so I could watch her look on her computer for job openings. I was hoping they would let me tutor some 6th graders or something but she just shook her head and said “Sorry but you have to be 16 to work in the school district”.\nThen she put on her counseling hat and asked me what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I said, “Well I’ve been painting for two years and I have a shed full of masterpieces. The last two should be in that San Francisco Airport Museum but they probably have an age limit too.”\nThen I said, “Ms. Kavorski could you please tell me what is so special about 16?\nShe looked at me and said “Do you have a lawn mower, dear?”\nI thought to myself, If I am really a descendant of George Washington Carver then I ought to be able get my paintings into the airport museum and earn enough to shut Daddy’s mouth for a couple of summers.\nOut loud I said, “Ms. Kavorski, this is Hillsborough. Folks here hire professional landscapers to push the mowers. I can’t compete with them.”\nShe said, “Mr. Davon, I appreciate your gift of gab and your desire to be productive but I have a plane to catch so you’re going to need to scoot so I can get out of here.”\nI was too through and said, “Please, please remember to call me Beans, Okay. My name is Beans and thank you for your time. I’m headed down town to the Coffee Shop and I am going to tell them all the reasons they should hire a kid named Beans to do all their grinding.”\nI did get that job and worked a bunch of summers and even some school breaks for years and years. Daddy was thrilled to have his son earning his keep. I also kept painting and knew that it was just a matter time before my art masterpieces were displayed in museums not just here but all over the planet.\nYup, that was my dream and every time I looked up and saw a plane I’d say oh yeah my time is coming.\nFast forward to last Thursday night. After I dropped Daddy off at the airport I couldn’t just pull off. The policeman kept waving me on but I just sat there thinking there is no better time than the present to make a dream come true. I popped open the trunk, grabbed my latest masterpiece entitled “Mule Dung Rides Again” and my tool box and sprinted into the airport like I was late for a flight. I didn’t care about Daddy’s 1966 Mustang or the policeman. I just headed on foot in the direction of the airport museum on a mission.\nI was all the way out of breath when I got to what looked life an office or information station for the museum. I didn’t have any questions and I didn’t need any information. I just looked about for the best spot for my masterpiece, grabbed the right tools from my kit, broke a little glass that stood between me and my dream and very carefully removed the present display and made room for my “Mule Dung Rides Again”. I very meticulously set my work on the easel previously occupied by a work whose time was up and my work looked magnificent. It was at that moment that I understood beyond measure what my Daddy meant when he said a man should dress for success. I looked at my masterpiece and just stood there with my right hand pointing to my painting. Art by Beans right here, right now.\n I didn’t even see the broken glass nor did I hear the footsteps of security or police or anybody. In my mind I had arrived and those footsteps running toward me were adoring fans coming to see Beans’ greatest work ever.\nIt was a moment in time and I didn’t mind the handcuffs nor the brutal way they hauled me away. In my mind I now stood in the shoes of Picasso or Carver or any of the greats. What would come would simply come.\nAn epic moment I’ll call it and as I said earlier probably not a moment one would call a perfect heist, but certainly a moment worth sharing, don’t you think?" } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: The Lady of the Last Star\n\nGenre: adventure\n\nWord Count: 2939\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story in which a character navigates using the stars." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "It was considered a fact, that there are more stars in the universe, than human souls that ever lived in it. This statement is no longer true. Most of them died, or rather, were killed, leaving entire galaxies in darkness. But some said, „some” meaning the very last of humanity before even they met their end, that some stars still spark like diamonds in dessert sands. Across uninhabited planets and carcases of nebuli, their light guides a certain, troubled soul. And the darkness, right on its tail.\n Through the cosmic void, she was dashing hastely, the nimble comet that she was. Dodging her way out of an asteroid field, she was the only source of light there. Her name was Kori. And she was running away. From something that wanted to snuff that light out.\n The girl held on to her glider, aiming its beak between gaps, barely tight enough to squeeze through.\n The darkness that pursued her didn’t bother with avoiding obstacles. It would burst and consume them in its endless form. Grasping with its glassy claws and jaws that ate black holes.\n Kori threw her hand out, gattering stardust, charging her exo-suit and glider, stretching her fuel thinner and thinner. She was going faster, emitting ice clouds from the glider’s engine. She needed a boost. Altough, the source of that boost was nowhere to be found.\n She was slowly running out of light. The girl felt as her suit stretched and deformed from the pressure of the beasts’ breath.\n Beep. Close, but not close enough. Asleep, turned off, hidden.\n Whichever way she tried to ride in, the creature flowed in that direction like a raging canal of water. Pushing amidst the field, Kori grabbed a Luxdux from her belt.\n Beep, beep. The stardust flowed through her gauntlets into her fingers, charging the machine and emitting great whiteness that bounced all over the asteroid field.\n Beepbeepbeep!\n There it was. A fallen star. Awakened! But...\n She didn’t get to blink, before the light got smothered by the colossal jaws of the beast.\n Right in the glistening body of the creature, formed by husks of planets, glued together by darkness, she was drowning. Grasping against matter that was both liquid and form, digested cosmos that was swallowing her.\n She couldn’t breathe, didn’t know if she was even capable of, like in a dream. With the last of her senses intact, she found the star, cold and asleep. So, the girl made a decision. She pumped the star with fuel to its limits, feeling its shake tear the ebony skin of the creature. She put it in a pocket inside her chest. A flash appeared, her glider jumped into gear and with enough power, she punched through the belly of beast.\n She was gone. Gone, but not safe. Not for long.\n Drifting amongst dead celestial bodies, wondering how she herself was even alive. Laying down on her glider.\n Awaken.\n Her back jumped from the metal board, just as her hands jumped across her exo-suit. Like a skeleton outside of her flesh, it cracked in a couple of spots. Her mask, googles, gauntlets, valves and small pipes running with gas and helium. The girls’ heart pumped with euphoria. For a second, she was glad to be alive in this cosmos. Then realisation struck her.\n She was still alone.\n Wait, she murmered in her head. The reason why she found that star in the first place. Kori grabbed two things from her back. A canister, filled up to half with stardust and a small, metal block, shaped like an hourglass. Grains of dust were slowly pouring off of it.\n She wondered. Whether preserve the spare stardust or use it to boot up the machine. After rolling her eyes, she exhaled deeply and turned on her gauntlets.\n Such a small thing. It better be worth it.\n The block of metal turned on. With a simple, holographic face sticking out of the miniscule screen.\n The stardust in the canister depleted immensely, and she still needed to load up her glider. After detaching the run-down star from her chest, she connected it to the container to atleast make up for the loss in fuel.\n The small machine bopped its head intensely, barely hovering over the board in any form of balance.\n ­„INTERSTELLAR ROBOTIC INFORMATICAL SYSTEM activated” the robot spoke as smoothly as the nano-metal he was made of.\n It spoke. And she heard it. How? They were in the void. No way for them to understand each other, nor for her to gasp with shock.\n Kori widened her mouth as the robot saw only her mask that looked like a jellyfish. Words wanted to escape from her mouth but… she seemed to be unable to even squeal.\n „Please, accept my apology, as I automatically connected myself to your communication device, as well as your neural scan”. His voice was gentle and eloquent, yet still boyish, like a well-mannered child.\n „Uuhuh”, she mindlessly spilled, not able to accept a different voice in her head.\n „If you prefer, I can communicate with you through your neural scan, without the need for vocal cords”.\n „I-uh… I remember how to… How to speak!” she outraged, almost pushing the bot off the glider.\n „I beg your pardon then, miss Kori” he bowed, putting his right hand behind his back and the left one to the side, fingers curled with just the pointing finger upwards.\n „How do you know my name?!” her gauntlet started sparkling, as her fingers formed a glowing fist.\n „Your name is in my programming” he turned his bubbly head, unaware of the girls’ gesture. „Also, I am connected to your mind”.\n „Right. I’m not really… cool with that.” she shrank in posture.\n „Fair enough” she immediately heard him again through the comm in her mask.\n „I guess, it’s only fair for me to know… your name as well, don’t ya think?”\n „Again, fair enough” the robot nodded.\n „What’s your name then?”\n „INTERSTELLAR ROBOTI-\n „I ain’t rememberin’ all that, you small moon” Kori snapped her fingers against his head. „How about… IRIS?”\n „I… like it. If you want to call me that, then so be it” IRIS accepted his name with grace.\n „Great! Now, IRIS. Find me a star” the girl grabbed him by his hands and turned him around to face the void.\n „I was just looking at one, madam” his head turned back to her and his body right after it.\n „I mean a real star\" she laughed. \"You know, the one to use for space travel.”\n The thought occured to her. She laughed. It came so naturally to her, she didn’t even notice. She laughed again, giggling like a child, trying to squeeze words through her teeth.\n IRIS smiled, once more not understanding the girls’ behaviour.\n „I know what a star is”.\n „Congratulations, small moon. Now find one. There aren’t all that many left out there and you were made to sniff’em out like a Sirius”.\n „Why?” IRIS shrugged.\n „What why?” Kori did the same gesture.\n „Why are you looking for a star?”\n „I… have a mission. That’s all I know. Don’t really care ‘bout it, but.. someone’s gotta do it.” she swept her legs along the board and left them dangling.\n „Restarting the universe”. His holographic eyes widened.\n „Yup.”\n „You don’t seem happy about it”.\n „Why would I?” She turned her head away from his destructively child-like stare.\n „The universe is a beauuuutiful thing” IRIS spinned around in awe.\n „Was. Maybe. For a bit. Don’t really know”.\n „It still is”.\n „Listen, I don’t know what kinda world you remember but this ain’t it no more. It’s just a big corpse with a parasite in it” she hugged herself.\n „Orsus” IRIS stated. „That’s how my creators named him”. He added after noticing the girls’ confused stare.\n „Your masters… Can you lead me to them?”\n „Gladly!” IRIS jumped, lifting himself off of the glider. Fortunately, Kori catched him and put him back on the board. „Thank you kindly” he bowed again.\n „Lead the way then, little moon” she loaded the glider with some dust. Still enough for a jump or two.\n „Can’t wait to see humans again!” IRIS tried to jump, but immediately pulled himself back to Kori’s arm. Instead of flying away, he set up the coordinates for his creators’ location, as well as for a star in the same area.\n Kori remained silent with the void. She bumped the leftover star in order to power up her board, took a quick glance at her helper. Fully aware of the stardust inside of him gradually fading.\n „Keep your eyes open, IRIS, you’re gonna love that sight!” she attached the bot to her belt.\n „But I don’t need to bl-\n As a whistle across a forest, as white paint splashed with onto a black canvas. Like dipping your head in perfectly cold water. And right when you lift it up from the depths, you’re somewhere completely else.\n „Where are we?” Kori gasped in wild confussion. But also with… enamourment.\n This area of space had light. Different from stars. Deeply blue, with a bit of green. Waves upon waves of light, devouring each other.\n „We’re at the…” IRIS already prepared himself to be interrupted again.\n She leaned further, almost on the verge of the board. But that sight was worth it. „This is the edge of the universe!”\n A veil of purple nebuli, one of the eyes of the cosmos, tearing itself apart and regrowing, feeding the waves. And yet, no new stars were being born. In this place, the infite became finite.\n „Still no new stars at this eye” she sighed. „But the one we’re looking for should be close enough”.\n „From my scans, the star you mentioned should be… there” he pointed to a drifting wreck at the end of existence, holding itself together by its metal veins.\n Getting aboard the shuttle wasn’t a problem. It still had a functioning entrance. The metal door shivered, letting them inside Moses, as it was written on the scraped walls. The darkness seemed almost bright to the one outside. The only glow went off from Kori’s exo-suit. No other sound reached their ears except the howl of the glider, on which Kori was still riding.\n „Why won’t you step off from the machine? IRIS asked, tiptoing next to her.\n „My legs are tired” she growled.\n „From what?”\n „From not using them”.\n IRIS went silent and stopped in his steps.\n Kori sighed and turned around.\n „Let me help you” his arm was reaching her from the ground, just below her knee.\n She gave him a cold stare, but then… quickly changed it. Not for something much different, no. She lowered herself and grabbed him carefully, putting him on the board. Then, she put one foot on the ground, pushing herself with it further and further.\n „What’s the last thing you remember from your times?” the girl asked the robot.\n „Humanity conquering the stars. Enslaving them, until they started running out of them. Discovery after a discovery, not a single rock in the cosmos left unturned. That’s why I was created. To find the unfindable. And so, here I am, walking across the halls that birthed me, instead of venturing beyond the edge of the universe, like a proper machine should. Ironic, isn’t it?”\n „Mhm” she nodded, confused but weirdly enchanted by his words. „Poetic”.\n „In a different life, I would be a poet. Describe every, beautiful sight that the universe holds” he smiled. „What about you?”\n „I remember… this uniform. This mask. My mission. Not much beyond that.” she answered, losing her tempo for a step.\n „Did you ever take it off? If I may ask…” he forgot himself a little.\n „I don’t think so, no. I can barely remember my face. Not too keen on seeing it again”.\n They stopped in front of a ripped open door. Burned metal and flesh, smells so pungent that even a robot could feel their bloody aroma. IRIS’s radar started beeping, the stars’ signature should’ve been here. But the only things they found were a broken cage and a group of skeletons, laying on the floor. The cadavers, long dead, crystalized in their form, almost chrome. The last sign of their existence being dried up bloodstains.\n Kori jumped off from her glider to look upon the chamber in which the star should be held. She tried lifting the shards from the ground, putting them back, but to no avail. She punched the cell with all her might, not feeling a scratch.\n She heard a buzzing noise and so she found the source of it. A holo-reader, still working. With one, last message from beyond their cold graves. Kori had no mercy for the „play” button, but fortunately, she didn’t destroy the apparatus. A tall and skinny silhouette appeared in front of her, wearing long, brown hair and a metal, left arm.\n „I record this, truly hoping that this will not be our end. Nor yours” the figure stated grimly. „My name is Adam Henry DuBois.” he bowed, putting his right hand behind his back and the left one to the side, fingers curled with just the pointing finger upwards. „I am a scientist. And truth be told, an optimist. Enough to hope that our actions may finally bring something good to the world. I don’t have much time. You must find IRIS, and with him – the Forge. Beware of the Primordium – the beast that took away Earth’s light. Stay strong, Kori. And...”\n The message ended.\n Kori stood there, staring into the wall. It didn’t seem real. Nothing did. Just a mess without a solution. Her knees were crumbling, hands shaking, almost losing the grip within her gauntlets. For the first time, she felt the weight of her suit. The burden of it.\n „They’re beautiful” IRIS’s voice finally broke her, as he climbed on a desktop, near one of the chrome skeletons.\n „Beautiful? How can you say something like that now?” she felt the need to cry, but not a single drop on her cheek.\n „Even in death, they found something to strive towards. We are alive. What will we do now?”\n „Pff, yeah, you alive”. She leaned on the table heavily.\n „I beg your pardon?” his head raised as if he was raising an eyebrow.\n „Nothing. Just tired.” She waved him off.\n „Then why are you doing it?”\n „Because someone has to”. Kori scratched the table harshly.\n „That is not a logical argument. What reason do you have for it?”\n„None!” she snapped at him. „There is no reason! And if there’s no reason for it, then there’s no reason for me to even be alive! What other choice do I have? I don’t care what the world will look like if I succeed. I don’t care if I'll succeed. As long as I have something to do. Nothing more to it.” Her voice broke.\nKori lost IRIS from her seight. But then, she felt his small arms around her leg.\n „You seemed like you needed a hug” he said calmly.\n „Let’s…find this forge” she smiled.\n Already outside of the spaceship, prepared for another jump, they noticed clear, dark signs across their field of view. The darkness was coming back.\n „One more jump, IRIS, get ready.”\n „Rea-\n Fwoosh!\n They reached their final destination. The Starforge. Older than the universe itself – Methuselah.\nPrimordium got to them faster than Kori expected, they had to hurry.\n The greatest of the stars was not asleep, but dead. And it needed to be brought back to life. So it could bring the universe back.\n Flying through the ribcage of the celestial body, they found its core. The anvil that needed power. Kori ran to the stone-like battery, in need of filling up.\n „Kori” IRIS whispered, hearing a thunderous crack. The planet being slowly devoured.\n The girl loaded the canister with stardust to the battery. All that she gathered. Not even half of what was required.\n „Damnit!” she shouted, breaking the stars and adding them to the source.\n Ground beneath them started shaking. She knew there was no running away from it. She took the engine from her glider, also sucking the stardust out of it.\n Kori screamed. Only IRIS could hear her. And it was enough.\n The bot stumbled near and put his hand onto the battery. Slowly giving away the dust that fueled him.\n „IRIS, stop!” she tried to rip him from it, but he wouldn’t budge.\n „It’s okay” he said, as the last grains of dust left his body.\n Kori held onto him, pressing him to her chest.\n „Be with me until every star goes dark” IRIS said to her ear. „And so, when the universe ends up black and hollow… I will still atleast hear your voice… And feel your hand in mine.”\n His metal body clang near the core. An empty husk of a friend.\n Orsus had her. Shattering down walls around them, it cornered her like a wolf trapping a sheep. The crystal teeth being the last light that she was meant to see. She stood up proudly before it. She was no sheep. But a phoenix.\n Kori found her purpose. Putting all her strength, she loaded the battery to the maximum. Her suit started breaking, while the shadow, for the first time, cowered in fear. Now, she was her true self. A living star.\n Methuselah was born anew. The light that emanated from Kori destroyed Orsus. The battery overloaded, two stars mended into one and finally… they burned all that was left of the previous universe.\n On that day, a new star was born. And many more after it." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: The Shot Caller\n\nGenre: african-american\n\nWord Count: 2498\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about someone who is convinced they’re going to be betrayed." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Every morning when I open my eyes one question looms on my mind, who’s going to try to kill me today. That is the question that every prison Shot Caller faces. My name is Benny Hughes, and I’m serving life in prison. You see I caught my wife in bed with my best friend. I know I could’ve let it go. But fuck that. No way I was going to live in a world where those two were going to stab me in the back and live happily ever after. This was the last time somebody was going to betray me and get away with it. So I tricked those tricks who were trying to trick me. I acted like I knew nothing and I followed them to their rendezvous at the nearby motel. I waited until they got naked and into it. Then I kicked in the door. I wanted to see the look on their faces when I caught them in the act. I wanted to feel their fear. I wanted to hear them explain why they did what they did. I wanted them on their knees, begging for my forgiveness. But I wasn’t in a forgiving mood. After all the crying and pleading, I put a bullet in the head of both of them. Now here I am, prisoner 409187. \n Two things I did the moment I got to prison. First, I immediately linked up with a gang. I had no choice. Loners don’t survive in a maximum security prison. Second, all personal feelings and emotions, I buried them deep. Because there’s no friends behind bars, only alliances. I’m surrounded by liars, killers, thieves, rapist, and sociopaths. If these motherfuckers sense any weakness, they’ll use it against me. So the number one rule of prison, trust no one.\nWith that being said, my head was on a swivel. Something my processor didn’t do. It got out that he was dry snitching to the guards. So one day another prisoner lured him into a conversation on cell block A. That’s on the first floor, just under the catwalk. What he didn’t know was two guys had a floor buffer on that catwalk above him. And they dropped it on his head. Snapping his spine. Till this day, I look up every time I leave my cell.\nAfter ten years, and a lot of dead bodies, I became the prison Shot Caller. The warden and guards are the gate keepers, but I run this prison. Like the other day, I woke up late and I was hungry. So I waived to the guard to open my cell. He did. Then I went to the end of my cell block and nodded at the guard. He opened the door. Then I walked down the corridor to the next guard station and nodded again. The next guard opened that door. Then I got to the kitchen and I walked passed some white guy in a fancy suit with a bad comb over. I shouted to the cook to fix me a cheese burger. The guy in the suit had a confused look on his face as he walked over and asked, “Who are you? And who said you could get a cheese burger?”\nNow when you first look at me, I can be unassuming. I only weigh about a hundred and sixty pounds. I’m about five ten, average height. I got smooth brown skin. My departed wife said I had beautiful eyes. So I’m under estimated. But that has worked toward my advantage. Whoever said don’t judge a book by its cover is goddamn right. Anyway, I smiled and answered his question, “My name is Benny Hughes, and I’m the regulator of this prison. Who are you?”\n“I’m the new assistant warden, Jonathan Franklin. And what’s a regulator?” he asked standing tall and blocking my path toward the kitchen.\n“Well, Mr. Franklin, regulator means I run everything in this prison. You see there’s 1700 inmates in this prison. All under my control. And there’s only about a hundred guards and staff. And none of you are allowed to have guns inside the prison walls. So while the staff controls the gate, we control the cellblock. So as the regulator, I choose out of those hundred guards and staff who gets to leave here alive every day,” I said, then I stepped closer and looked deep into his eyes, “And if you would like to leave here alive, you’ll make sure I get my burger.”\nThe air went out of Mr. Franklin’s chest as his shoulders slumped. This cowboy stepped out of my way and yelled to the cook, “Get this man his burger.”\nIt’s funny that I was a nobody on the streets. A regular guy working a shit job. Being fucked over by everyone in my life, including my wife and family. Always craving respect and loyalty. And I had to come to prison to get it.\nI ain’t going to lie, I enjoy the perks of being a Shot Caller. I get what I want when I want it. I have the ultimate respect. I’m treated like a king or a Caesar behind these walls. But just like a king or Caesar, there’s a harsh reality a boss has to face. There is always someone who wants to take your throne. So I got really good at reading people. I could look at someone and tell what’s their agenda, their limits, their mindset. If their lying to me. I have to be able to see what’s coming at all times. \nWhich brings me to my current situation. I’ve had this eerie feeling that something ain’t right. A bunch of strange looks from motherfuckers in the unit. A slight change in mannerisms. And like I said before, I’ve become an expert at reading people. Prison is routine. When people’s routine start changing, I notice.\nLike me for example. Normally, I get up at 6am, get dressed, and stand in front my cell for morning count. I keep a small shank in my Keister. My bad, that’s slang for I keep a blade in my ass to all of you on the outside. Only time I don’t, is during visitation because that’s the only time we get stripped search. Next, I eat breakfast with my crew at the same table, fourth to the right of the entrance. I usually don’t eat that slop, but I still go to show my face. Then, I take a shower. I usually have two guys watching my back. A necessary evil. The shower room is where you’re most vulnerable. There and taking a shit. That’s why I always take a shit with my boots on, and my shank tucked inside. Just in case something pops off. After that, I go out to the yard and hold court. Prison has more politics than the White House. It could be as simple as somebody ate at the wrong table, changed the TV without asking, or a Mexican used a black toilet. And unlike democrats and republicans arguing, if these things go left, people die. So maintaining the balance and keeping order ain’t easy. I listen to people’s beefs, and rule appropriately. Then I exercise for a little. Finally, I go to the TV room and kick back and relax.\nWith things being a little off lately, I decided to flip the script. I started eating while they were showering, watching TV while they were in the yard. And know I kept my shank in my hand. I don’t give a damn if the guards find it and throw me in the hole. I’m not taking no chances.\n I’ve been looking at everyone closer. And the one that’s most on my radar was, Devin. Devin was my second in command. And he was one of those two guys that dropped the floor buffer on my predecessor’s head. Devin was darker than a closet with the lights cut off. Which oddly enough, allowed his mouth full of gold teeth to really stand out in a sinister way. He’s tough as a nails, a body like that wrestler, the Rock, and a stone cold killer. He’s got two hot ones on his record, that’s why he’s here for life like me.\nHe finds me in the library and walks my way. His steps are heavy and emphatic; like he’s trying to step on a cockroach. I felt a lot of cold stares from him lately, like the one he has now. Walking up beside me, he talks in a very low tone.\n “Benny, I need a word,” he said picking up a book and pretending to read.\n “What’s up?”\n “Those Aryan bastards have been pushing blow up on C-block again. A clear violation. We need you to settle this.”\n I look at him, mulling over his words. Then he adds, “I know you’ve been avoiding the yard lately. If you want I could have the meeting in the kitchen, after dinner. You know I got your back, homie.”\n “Cool. Make it happen,” I respond with a nod.\nDevin raised an eyebrow and asked, “You good homie?”\n“Yeah, I’m straight.”\n“You sure? You seem a little distracted lately. Anything wrong? You can always tell your boy. You know we go back like wave caps and hair grease,” he joked.\nI forced out a smile and gave Devin some dap, “I’m good. Just got somethings on my mind.”\nDevin nodded his head with a big grin flashing those gold teeth again. While slowly backing up, he said, “Alright. But I know what you need. A good drink. You in luck. D-Mack hooked me up with some orange peels the other day. I’m gonna whip up a brand new batch of pruno tonight. Meet me at my cell later. It’ll be just like drinking a bottle of Thunderbird on the block. We gonna get fucked up tonight homie.”\n“Cool,” I said as I laughed along with him. \n And there it is. Henry Hill was right. Your murderers come to you as friends with a smile. If I go to that meeting, I’ll end up with a knife in the back. I knew it was coming. I just didn’t think it would be Devin holding the blade. Doesn’t surprise though. Like I said, number one rule in prison, don’t trust anyone.\n I went back to my cell to find my cellmate, Tory, on his bunk reading a magazine. Tory was a country boy. Quiet and soft spoken. I remember the night he arrived. He was scared to death. I could hear him crying in his bunk. Curled up in a ball, not coming out of his bed for days. A naive kid caught up with drug dealers and taking the fall. I took him under my wing because he was the perfect cellie. Weak and none threatening. I could get a good night’s sleep without worrying that he’ll try something. He also made the perfect messenger boy.\n “Tory!” I said walking into the cell after looking in every direction first.\n “What’s up Benny?” he replied dropping his magazine and hopping to his feet. \n “Do you know about a beef with the Aryans selling blow on C-block?”\n He shook his head, “Everything cool as far as I know.”\n “That’s what I thought. Get word to D-Mack. Devin is going to be in the kitchen after dinner. I want him taken out.” \n “Wow. Okay,” Tory said walking out the cell to relay my message.\n I breathe easy. I get to live another day. I grabbed Tory’s magazine and kicked back on my bunk. A couple of hours passed and Tory comes back in. Looking like he just saw a ghost. There was a long silence before the words spelled out of his mouth, “It’s done.”\n I stood up and patted Tory on the shoulder, “You did good. You’ve been a good soldier. I appreciate that.”\n “Thanks,” Tory replied with his head down.\n “You need anything? Anything at all.”\n Tory just shook his head. “Not at the moment.”\n “You’re a good kid. You keep your head down. You do as your told. Keep it up. One day you might walk out this place.”\n “Yes sir,” he replied with a sappy smile. As he walked away, he turned back and said, “Say, you’ve been posted up in here all week. Why don’t you go with me to the day room? Watch a little TV. Your favorite show is coming on.”\n “Yeah, Family Feud does come on tonight. C’mon,” I said leading the way.\n We walked down the hallway. It was cold and dreary like normal. The sound of my boots on the concrete floors bounced off the walls, which was a little weird. This hallway was always busy and full of chatter. Then I noticed on my left, a white boy moping the floors. The only person in the hallway. To the right we were about to pass the broom closet. I looked at the guy, then I looked down at the floors and they were still dry. By the time I put two and two together, the door to the closet swung opened, and I was snatched in before I could blink. One guy grabbed my left arm, one guy grabbed my right arm. I felt another arm go around my neck from behind. I couldn’t move. I could barely breathe. The guy pretending to mop the floor pulled out a shank and stood next to Tory.\n “What the fuck is going on!” I yelled.\n Tory’s sappy smile turned into a sinister grin. His normally soft spoken voice became magnanimous as he explained, “Earlier you asked me if I wanted something. I wasn’t entirely truthful. I did want something. Your crown.”\n “No way your ass will get away with making a move like this! My boys will cut you to pieces,” I snapped trying to break free.\n “I don’t think so. The only person that was still on your side was Devin. And you just had him killed. With you out the picture, I’m the logical person to take over. I’ve already been your mouthpiece for years. They’re use to taking orders from me,” Tory stated with a wink and a smile.\n Then the white boy next to him plunged his shank into my abdomen again and again and again. So many times that I lost count. Then they threw me down like a wet rag and ran out the room. Lying in a pool of my own blood, facing certain death, my whole life flashed before my eyes. All I think about is that I don’t want to die. I can’t believe how big a fool I’ve been. I threw my life away because I couldn’t let things go and move on. I killed somebody for nothing. And somebody killed me for nothing. I pushed everyone away. And know I’m dying alone. I guess you get what you give in this life.\n The End" } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: The Great Hunter\n\nGenre: adventure\n\nWord Count: 1829\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story in which a character navigates using the stars." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The great hunter, Orion rose in the Southern sky as night fell; Winter was coming. The mountain peaks tipped with snow earlier than usual; wind-chilled nights chased away the warmth of the day in camp. Falling amber leaves drifted to the ground and the berry crop had ended. It was time to move to the Great Plains in the warmer South away from the winter shadows cast by the mountains.\n\nAs night fell the tribe gathered around the roaring fire to prepare for the migration ahead. The last of the food had been dried and packed away. Smells of roasted trout told everyone dinner was ready. This would be their last dinner together for a few nights as Hoa and the other five hunters would stay behind to find deer for the trip ahead. \n\nElder Tia would lead the tribe out at dawn heading up the mountain trail for their new home. They would stop to gather food and resources along the way. It was unknown when they would meet up with the hunters again. With everything ready to go the tribe nestled down under the furs by the flickering coals for the night.\n\nThe first light had the camp moving. Hoa reached out wrapping his arms around his wife Lai with a warm hug, touching foreheads as they muttered their safe travel blesses to each other. His heart was heavy as she joined the tribe. Her long brown hair tied back with plats and wood beads hung down over her fur shawl. He tossed his pouch of arrows over his shoulder as he watched the tribe slowly disappear into the trees. Lingering on, he hated seeing her leave, he stood there staring into the forest. His thoughts were broken when his brother called out. Spinning around the hunters had already left. Grabbing his deer skin kit bag he jogged over to join them on the side trail. \n\nWhile they were all heading for the same destination, the six hunters had to deviate to the grasslands to find deer. They silently dashed along the forest trail their eye was drawn to any that looked like food or wildlife wanting them for food. They stuck to the familiar tracks as the dense woodland was dark and damp.\n\nIt took a few hours to reach the bluff where they would spend their first night; dropping off most of their supplies made running on the hunt easier. Hoa sat on a rocky outcrop overlooking the plain, scanning the horizon trying to work out their next move. “They have left early.” The midday sun lit up the dry grasslands randomly dotted with wildlife but the big herds of deer had moved on. “Should we keep moving?”\n\n“It will be getting dark soon,” replied his brother Lu.\n\nHoa nodded, “We still need something for dinner.”\n\n“Well, sitting there won’t catch us anything.”\n\n“If we don’t get anything today, we will move on toward the Pass tomorrow and catch the deer migration there,” Hoa said as he straightened his knife belt and grabbed his longbow.\n\nQuietly, they made their way down the slope, sticking to the shades while ensuring they stayed downwind of the grassland. Hoa stopped to tighten his leather ankle straps as the loose rocks slid out from under his feet. Grabbing nearby saplings gave him the confidence to move quickly on the uneven slope. He was the eldest of the hunters; his legs ached trying to keep up with his younger brothers.\n\nDown on the edge of the grassland, hiding out in the shadows next to an old tree, they panned the area for prey. A rabbit would bob up and down occasionally in the long grass. Lu fired off an arrow at a moving bundle of leaves and heard nothing. He waded out to see what he had achieved, “Bugger,” he replied as he held up a clean arrow.\n\nHoa got to his feet, “Stuff this, let’s move closer to the river.”\n\nThe sound of the water running over the rocks drowned out a lot of animal calls. As they crept along the tree line Lu said, “Hey, over there.” \n\nA small half-grown deer had been left behind. Hoa stopped as he turned to the two hunters on his right, silently he waved his hand giving them directions.\n\nSuccess; Hoa looked down as they showed thanks and prepared the animal. “That won’t feed many.”\n\n“It will do us for the trip,” Lu said.\n\nThe shadows were getting long as the sun sunk behind the hill, the heat of the day was dwindling. “Better get back to camp before dark,” Hoa said as he tied the deer legs to a long stick for carrying.\n\nClimbing up a slippery slope carrying even a small animal was difficult. They arrived back at the bluff as the last of the light waned. It didn’t take long to get the fire lit and dinner cooking. A temporary shelter of branches and hides would keep them dry for the night. Hoa made his way out onto the outcrop as he scanned the mountains to the south in the wild hope of seeing any sign of a campfire from the tribe. He whispered the safe travel blessing again. The hills sat heavy in the darkness; distant howls of wolves would break up the silence now and then. He pulled his fur over his head as the icy wind rolled down the valley. Every year the tribe did the same venture but watching his family walk away never got any easier. The sky was crystal clear, the Milky Way drifted overhead surrounded by millions of stars each one guiding them on their quest.\n\n***\n\nThe birds started chirping a first light. Hoa gave his sleeping brother a shove, “Come on we have a big day ahead of us.”\n\nLooking up the rocky slope, the peak was so far away. I doubt we will make it before dark. Hour after hour of trudging uphill over slippery loose rocks. Each step required his body to power down through each leg. Now and then, he would have to stop to catch his breath and look out over the valley to see how far they had travelled. Leaning on his spear he breathed heavily, he looked back along the ridge; dark clouds rolled over the crest followed by distant sounds of thunder. As he stood there the clouds grew closer, “We won’t get to the ridge before that storm hits.”\n\nLu who was further up the slope said, “There is a cave up a bit to our left.”\n\nAdrenaline pushed the fatigue aside as everyone rushed to get away from the approaching storm. Looking further up the slope the craggy overhang was in sight. Large drops of cold rain started to fall as the thunder shook the hills around them. Hoa’s heart was already racing and the claps of nearby thunder made it skip a beat. With one last scramble, they burst into the cave, dropping everything on the floor. Collapsing back against the rock wall, they gasped for air. The darkness slowly crept across the entrance as the storm came over the hill. \n\nRain pelted down outside the cave as lightning flashes lit up the entrance. The wind howled past the opening. While the rock cave offered some insulation from the cold, it was dark. Hoa glanced down at the stick he was holding, “We don’t have a lot of firewood.”\n\nThey sorted through their small carry bag of kindling and the branches they were using to climb the slope. It was enough for a small fire suitable for light and some cooking. The storm lasted for a few hours. Sometime during the night, the last of the wood was burnt out. Lying in the darkness, Hoa couldn’t sleep, they had such a long way to travel and they hadn’t caught any food for the tribe. He made his way outside; the storm clouds had given way to a starry sky. Orion the great hunter stared down at him, calling him back to the hunt. Dawn was hours away but Hoa had a new energy, an urge to get underway.\n\nIt didn’t take much to motivate the other hunters as they couldn’t sleep either. Heading off into the darkness Lu asked, “Which way?”\n\n“Up, the Pass is under the Great Hunter,” Hoa replied as he pointed towards the constellation Orion.\n\nThey reached the ridge in time to see the golden rays of the sun break over the crest. The Pass sprawled out below them, rocky slopes gave way to forests, a river and grasslands nestled between two mountain ranges. Finally reaching the flat ground, relieved that the trip down the mountain was easier than the climb up they decided to set up camp near the river not far from a large herd of deer.\n\nAfter a quick refreshing jump into the icy river, Hoa filled up his water carrier ready for a day of hunting. Scanning the hills he looked for any sign the tribe had made it to the pass. At least the next ridge is not as high as the last.\n\nAs the late afternoon shadows crept in, Hoa blessed their catch of the afternoon. Two good-sized deer were being cleaned up and prepared for transport by the other hunters. “This should last until we are set up on the Great Plains.”\n\nHe stood there thinking about the tribe on the plains for Summer. When smells of smoke and roasting meat drifted past him. He took another sniff and it was gone. Must be my stomach imagining dinner.\n\n“What is cooking?” Lu asked.\n\n“Nothing, we haven’t lit the fire yet,” Hoa replied. I didn’t imagine it. His face lit up as he ran out into the clearing. Smoke wafted up through the trees further up the river. “They're here!” He yelled out across the plain.\n\nFinding his reserve energy, he sprinted up the river with two brothers not far behind. As he made his way through the trees his smile was beaming. The tribe was busy setting up shelters and preparing dinner. He quickly scanned the camp, “Lai,” he called out. She looked up; the arm full of firewood she had gathered hit the ground as she ran towards him.\n\nWith the tribe back together after four days, they decided to grab a couple more deer. It would be easier to carry them with more bodies doing the lifting. The tribe spent the following night at the pass before heading off the following morning. After several hours of climbing, they reached the crest. Hoa sighed with relief as mountain shadows opened up to the golden grasslands of the Great Plain. A large wandering river flanked by woodland and savanna filled with wildlife. Orion had safely led the tribe to their homeland for the Winter. And when Orion sinks below the horizon again, they will follow the deer back to the north as their ancestors had done for generations.\n\nThe End" } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: The Shootaround\n\nGenre: african-american\n\nWord Count: 1100\n\nPrompt:\n\nBegin your story with the sensation of a breeze brushing against a character's skin." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The fire sun overhead warmed the intermittent breeze, which brushed against Jimmy’s cheek in a sultry way that sparked mortal desire, and in turn, his need to be desired.\n There she was, at the free throw line, knees slightly bent, the basketball balanced perfectly in her right palm.\n Her shooting form was…eloquent.\n Better than his, if Jimmy was admitting the truth, now or back in the day, in college. Whispering the truth to yourself can be tough, but revelatory.\n The ball rolled off her fingers, creating the right amount of revolutions that propelled it over the cracked lane of the playground court and through the iron hoop and chain-link net.\n “Yee-haw!” Kay-Kay crowed, drawing the momentary attention of toddlers and their moms at the nearby playground equipment as her long braids trailed behind her head. “Now that, my man, is how you take a free throw.”\n “You know, the one thing I like about you is your modesty,” Jimmy deadpanned.\n She smiled. And not just the kind of, “I’m being friendly” smile.\n There seemed to be more to it. Something that made him consider the possibility that her feelings about him mirrored his own of hers.\n Maybe it was the way her cheeks were raised, causing deep dimples of her chocolate skin to form under them and on either side of her mouth.\n Or the way her deep coffee eyes flashed like the beam of a lighthouse, and somehow accentuated the swirl of her hips.\n It had been awhile for Jimmy.\n There had been women over the years, sure, alluring, enticing creatures with clear skin and riotous hair that had overridden his necessity to put basketball first.\n But never had one replaced basketball.\n None had ever come close to that.\n Except Kay-Kay, and not because she was a basketball coach herself, the head of the girls’ program at Chicago’s tony Barton School, and Jimmy’s boys’ program counterpart.\n She was his voice of reason, his confidante. Had been for years, around since the time they both started in their roles at the Barton School in the late 2010s.\n He stole looks at her. When she bent over to pick up a basketball, for example, though it was never crude; simple admiration. Or when the sun created shadows on her cheeks, like it was right now. Her long fingers, almost like a pianist’s. Her voice.\n “You awake over there?”\n Her voice.\n “Yeah, I’m awake,” Jimmy replied, now wondering if he was blushing. He adjusted his Ray-Bans and tugged at the collar of his Golden State Warriors t-shirt, the deep sweat stains producing a modicum of self-consciousness.\n She wore a gray Property of Barton School t-shirt with red lettering, red shorts that said Barons Coach Staff on the right leg, and white Nikes with a crimson swoosh. Her shapely nails were florid, painted a similar shade of red.\n And at that moment, Jimmy tried to hide the fact that he had never seen anyone more beautiful.\n He had to hide this, because of the implications.\n School—and specifically, the athletic director, Thomas Peck, of whom they both referred to pejoratively as Pecker—wouldn’t consent to a staff romance, even if they were both at the literal top of their games. In March 2021, in the first Illinois state basketball tournament since the onset of the pandemic, Jimmy led his team to the boys Class 4A state semifinals.\n Kay-Kay had one-upped him, taking her team all the way to the girls Class 4A finals, before losing a tough title game in overtime.\n So their combined on-court success was celebrated in the administrative offices and staff rooms of the Barton School, not because it stood on its own, but because it translated to increased enrollment. Which translated to tuition and fees. Which translated to new and better facilities, like a state-of-the-art weight room that had been installed after the 2021 season. \n And the cycle went on.\n Always enrollment. Always the dollars.\n But a staff romance? Strictly forbidden, according to the Barton School employee handbook and Peck’s by-the-book reputation. \n “Shoot from right where you’re standing, white boy,” Kay-Kay said, smiling. “Betcha can’t make it.”\n Jimmy stood at the cusp of the three-point line on the far-left corner.\n The ball bounded toward him on one bounce from Kay-Kay. He caught it and made a show of palming the ball in his right hand toward the basket. The ball created a sort of eclipse of the sun that was traveling downward in the late afternoon on the opposite side of the Logan Square court.\n “I’mma make you cry,” he said to her. She laughed instead.\n Without touching the ball with his left hand, he lifted the ball and let it sail toward the goal.\n Nothing but the bottom of the chain-link net.\n The ball bounced once, twice, before coming to a complete stop right under the backboard.\n He looked at her, she at him.\n They both bolted for the ball and arrived at the same time.\n “Mine!” she screeched as she grabbed the ball with both hands, which again brought the attention of the moms at the playground equipment.\n “Nope, nope, nope,” Jimmy said, getting his hands on the ball, brushing hers, and turning the dispute for the ball into a near tug-of-war.\n Now Jimmy was sure he was blushing.\n He also noted for the first time a tiny tattoo under Kay-Kay’s left ear, of a Christian cross and the numbers 2-24-18.\n “Who do you think you are?” she said, now standing and laughing, but still holding the ball tight to her chest.\n The moment, then, devolved. It slipped under the waves of normalcy, of the normal life that Jimmy had always figured was his lot, involving acquaintances and basketball, but nothing more. Certainly, he would be alone, but he’d have his game, and his reputation, and his forthcoming championships, which would lead to a college gig and ultimately the NBA.\n But maybe not. \n He longed for this woman.\n He longed for this moment, that it might never end, that he could climb into it and cocoon himself.\n She made it worth living.\n “You all right?”\n Her. Beautiful, magnificent her.\n A Nubian queen.\n “I’m fine,” Jimmy said, not letting go of the ball but drawing it closer to himself, and in turn drawing her closer to him.\n Their eyes found each other, and he felt another warm summer breeze kiss her cheek.\n “Okay, it’s yours,” she said, turning away and chuckling as she ran back to the free throw line. “Let’s play horse.”\n The moment had passed, but there would be others.\n He sensed it, and found solace in it." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: All the Signs\n\nGenre: adventure\n\nWord Count: 2942\n\nPrompt:\n\nSet your story in a world where astrology and the movements of celestial bodies deeply impact the lives of inhabitants." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Detective Arthur Winson crouched over the dead body with a weary sigh. As a Capricorn, he could go days without sleep, but he didn’t feel good doing it. A short, round, dead man lay before him with no visible wounds. The only signs of distress were the black veins that ran up the man’s neck and onto his right cheek, a textbook Scorpio poisoning.\nThe air in the apartment was hot and stale. Under his suit coat, Arthur’s broad back was wet with sweat. His temporary partner, a Gemini named Derek Tomasso, stood in the corner of the room. With a shake that always reminded Arthur of a wet dog, Derek split himself into two people. The two Dereks began walking around the crime scene in opposite directions.\nBehind him, a lab tech took samples of blood spatter on the wall. It was likely the killer’s blood, as Scorpio poisoning was bloodless. One of the Dereks inspected a gun on the floor next to the dead man’s hand.\n“It looks like he got a piece of the killer,” Derek said. “It’s hard to surprise an Aquarius.”\n“The victim probably saw the killer coming and thought he could stop him,” Arthur agreed. “But seeing something and doing it are two different things.”\n“This is the third Aquarius murder in two weeks,” the other Derek said from across the room. “They should make a public announcement.”\n“We won’t get authorization,” Arthur said. “People are murdered every day, and these murders have no connection. What do a love psychic, a homeless guy, and a financial advisor have in common?”\n“What was the homeless guy’s specialty?” Derek asked.\n“He didn’t have one. He was mentally ill and an addict,” Arthur shrugged. “That happens sometimes with powerful Aquarius psychics.” It was why most parents were careful not to give birth to an Aquarius, despite the apparent advantages of a child who could predict the future.\n“So, the killer makes it past the security downstairs,” Derek said. “He enters the apartment where the victim is waiting with a gun. The victim shoots but only grazes the attacker, who knocks the gun out of his hand, poisons him, and flees before security arrives.”\n“The killer is a Scorpio, so they may have the power of invisibility,” Arthur agreed. “I’m surprised the victim didn’t have more security.”\n“Some people want to live simply,” Derek shrugged. Derek’s family had a house on Boxer Island. He’d invited Arthur, but Arthur declined, not wanting to force his overgrown orphan self on his partner’s family.\n“The chief wants to talk to us,” the other Derek said, holding his cell phone. So that was the original. Gemini couldn’t duplicate technology.\n“I’m sure he does,” Arthur stood. “These murders have a connection, and the killer is working their way up the social ladder.” He glanced away as Derek merged with himself. They left, dodging the uniformed officers and the lab techs in the hallway. Down in the car, Arthur buckled his seatbelt as his partner started the engine.\n“So, what do a love guru, a financial advisor, and a homeless guy have in common?” Derek asked as he drove. “That sounds like the start of a dirty joke. But seriously, it’s nothing.”\n“They probably share a killer,” Arthur pointed out as he closed his eyes. “Though there are plenty of Scorpio assassins, so maybe not.”\n“The victims are also all psychic,” Derek agreed.\n“Which means they all probably knew something they shouldn’t,” Arthur agreed. “But is it the same something or different somethings?”\n“What do you have so far?” the Chief asked, leaning a thick fist on his desk. As an Aries, he was leadership material, but his style was aggressive on a good day. Arthur sat beside Derek in the chairs on the other side of the desk. The Chief’s office was old and worn, much like the man himself. It was painted in shades of brown, most of which had faded to tan.\n“The financial advisor was managing seventy-three accounts,” Arthur reported. “Including the investment portfolio of a restaurant group, endowments for two universities, and a hospital expansion fund.”\n“Restaurants?” the Chief perked up. “Any mafia ties?”\n“It’s likely,” Derek agreed. “I don’t know a restaurant in this city that isn’t tied to the mafia.”\n“And the homeless man?”\n“He was admitted to the hospital the day before his death,” Arthur reported. “The attending physician said he was brought in for an overdose, but when they got him conscious, he made a commotion and took off. He was murdered in an alley a day later.”\n“Who was his dealer?” the chief asked. “Any connections to the restaurant group?”\n“He lives on the East Side,” Derek said. “That’s Lazlo Family territory. I’m not sure if they’re connected to the restaurant group.”\n“Forensic accounting will check,” the Chief said.\n“What about the love psychic?”\n“Nothing so far,” Arthur admitted. “But we were only halfway through the interviews when we caught this case.”\n“Split up and get them done. Use that new Virgo woman,” the Chief ordered.\n“Interrogator Messi. She can come with me,” Arthur said to his partner, who nodded good-naturedly. The Chief dismissed them, and they returned to their desks, where they reviewed the financial planner’s documents and emails.\nBy eight, Derek had left, but Arthur kept working. He was never sure if it was because he was a Capricorn or if he loved his job. Several hours later, the sun had risen, and Arthur was no closer to a solution. He rubbed his tired eyes and then jumped. Standing next to his desk was Interrogator Messi. She wore a brown striped suit and a surprised expression.\n“Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you,” she said as she tucked thick brown curls behind dainty ears. “I’m a bit early.”\n“No, I’m glad you’re here,” Arthur stood and grabbed his coat. “There are a couple of people I’d like to get to before they go to work.”\n“Oh, I’m sure you have time to change your shirt,” Messi said, glancing down at a stain on Arthur’s chest. He blushed and went to the locker room, where he showered and brushed his teeth. He was back in less than ten minutes. Messi was sitting on his desk next to two coffees. She was paging through the love psychic’s pink planner.\n“These three people were supposed to meet with Ms. Rollings the day of her death, and these three had meetings booked for the next day,” she held up a slip of paper with names on it.\n“We’re still working through the last people she saw,” Arthur said as he took a coffee.\n“But why murder someone for something already said,” Messi protested. “The cat’s out of the bag.”\n“You have a point.”\n“Really?” she asked in surprise. “I mean, it’s just a thought.” She tucked her hair behind her ear again.\n“It’s a good thought,” Arthur said. “Let’s do it.”\nThe first address was a swanky building in the Synastry neighborhood. Arthur and Messi beat rush hour traffic and arrived quickly at the fancy address. The woman was a well-manicured mother of two who had wanted to ask the psychic about her teenage daughter’s first boyfriend. When Messi apologized for interrupting their morning routine, the woman shrugged a cashmere-clad shoulder. \n“The nanny has it covered,” she said. “I don’t know what to tell you. I wanted to consult Rollings about Jessica’s new boyfriend. I want to make sure it’s a healthy relationship for her first love.” Arthur thought letting her daughter live her life would be healthier but said nothing. He showed the woman the pictures of the homeless man and the financial advisor, but she didn’t recognize them.\n“How did you hear about Ms. Rollings?” Messi asked.\n“I heard about her from Tracy Rochester,” the woman answered. “She just got engaged and was supposed to consult with the psychic about her fiancé. I don’t know why, though. He’s a doctor.”\n“Oh yes! She’s on our list of people to chat with,” Messi said. Arthur frowned at the breach in protocol.\n“If you go now, you’ll catch her leaving yoga. It’s right around the corner,” the woman said, giving them the studio's name. She then drifted off to check on her children. The detectives let themselves out.\n“She’s telling the truth,” Messi told him in the elevator. “She has no idea who did it.”\nArthur and Messi walked to the address and waited at a cafe next door as sweaty white women filed out of the studio.\n“There she is,” Messi pointed to a tall, thin woman in a green sports bra. Arthur wasn’t sure how she could tell them apart.\n“Tracy Rochester?” Messi asked with a friendly smile.\n“That’s me!” the woman smiled. Her smile faded as she glanced up at Arthur’s lurking form. Messi introduced them and ushered the woman to a table at the café before Arthur could speak. He was beginning to see the benefits of having an interrogator on the team.\n“We’re just chatting with everyone about their appointments with Ms. Rollings,” Messi said.\n“Yeah, of course,” Tracy said, sipping from an expensive water bottle. “It’s no secret. I just got engaged, and I wanted to do a consult. Everyone does it.” By everyone, she meant the wealthy elite who could afford the five-figure fee. Arthur tried to keep a neutral face.\n“Congratulations!” Messi said. “So, you were going to consult Ms. Rollings about your fiancé?”\n“Yeah, he’s a resident at Saint Anne’s,” Tracy smiled. “Dr. Mike Maddix. He’s in the ER. He literally saves people’s lives.”\n“Saint Anne’s?” Arthur spoke up. “How long has he been working there?”\n“Like four years,” Tracy replied. “He’s on the fundraising committee. It’s how we met. Last year, we raised over 3 million dollars.”\n“That’s impressive,” Arthur pulled out the financial advisor’s picture. “Do you know this man?”\n“Sure, that’s Edward Bouchard,” Tracy said. “He just started managing the hospital expansion fund.”\n“Are you aware that Edward Bouchard was murdered last night?” Arthur asked. The woman’s eyes widened.\n“You’re kidding?” Tracy gasped. “Does Mike know? He just started working with him.”\n“We haven’t spoken to Mike,” Messi said. “Do you know when he started working with Edward Bouchard?”\n“It was only a couple of weeks ago,” Tracy frowned. “I know because he complained that they brought in a new guy. I don’t know why because the old guy was like a million years old and absolutely useless.”\n“We have Dr. Rachel Ableton as the contact for the account,” Arthur said, looking at his phone.\n“Oh yeah, Dr. Ableton’s name is on it, but she doesn’t do anything. She puts her name on stuff while everyone else does the work.”\n“Before we head out, we noticed that you made an appointment the week before Ms. Rollings died. It was canceled last minute, and then you rescheduled for the day she died,” Messi said.\n“Yeah, I had to cancel because Mike had an accident that day!” Tracy said. “It was so weird because he never drives. He crashed his car into a lamppost in a parking lot. Some kid ran out in front of him.”\n“Thank you so much for your help,” Arthur said. “We should probably chat with your finance. He’ll be at the hospital this time of day?”\n“Oh, always,” Tracy smiled. “Let me know if I can help in any way. I’m sure Mike will want to help, too.”\nArthur and Messi said goodbye to the woman and hurried to their car.\n“She’ll be texting him now,” Messi said as Arthur started the car. “She was telling the truth.”\n“He won’t run,” Arthur said. “Smart guy like that will think he can fool us.”\n“Once he realizes I’m a Virgo, he’ll know he can’t,” Messi grabbed a handle as they turned a corner. Her small shoulder bumped against Arthur’s large elbow. He blushed and moved away. His cell phone vibrated in his pocket. Arthur took out the phone and handed it to Messi.\n“Answer it,” he ordered.\n“It’s Derek,” Messi said. She pressed the speaker button.\n“Arthur!” Derek said. “We got the killer. We contacted the Lazlo family, and they gave up the assassin. They didn’t want the heat. We interviewed him, and sure enough, he killed all three victims.”\n“Who hired the assassin?” Arthur asked.\n“We don’t know,” Derek admitted. “It was set up through the dark web.”\n“We have a lead. We’re heading to Saint Anne’s,” Arthur said. “We’re looking for Dr. Mike Maddix. Send backup.”\n“On it,” Derek said. “I’ll head over now.”\n“Have them wait in the parking lot,” Arthur said. “We don’t want to spook him.” The car pulled into the hospital parking lot, and Arthur parked in the loading zone.\nAt the front desk, Arthur and Messi asked for Dr. Maddix and were directed to the break room. They walked through the ER, a bustling place full of hospital beds and patients, nurses and doctors rushing between.\nIn the breakroom, they found two female nurses and a man in a white lab coat.\n“Dr. Maddix?” Arthur approached the man.\n“That’s me,” the doctor said. “I hear you’re asking some questions about Edward Bouchard.” Arthur shook the man’s hand. Messi smiled and nodded. The nurses glanced at them, packed up their lunches, and left.\n“We just met your fiancé, Tracy,” Messi said. “She’s fantastic!”\n“Tracy’s great,” Maddix agreed. “She mentioned you stopped by.”\n“She was supposed to have an appointment with Ms. Rollings,” Arthur said. “Were you aware of it?”\n“Yes, I knew,” Maddix frowned. “I’m sure she mentioned that I think it’s weird, but she insisted.”\n“I understand why you’d be annoyed,” Arthur agreed. “It’s not very trusting.”\n“I wasn’t annoyed,” Maddix said. “Just confused. The people I grew up with don’t do things like that.”\n“It must be hard to keep up with Tracy’s crowd,” Messi said. “It’s a different world. All of those galas and fundraisers. How long have you been managing the expansion fund?”\n“I don’t manage that. I just help out from time to time,” the doctor crossed his arms. “Dr. Abelson manages the account.” Arthur glanced at Messi, who subtly shook her head.\n“Dr. Maddix, did you hire someone to kill Edward Bouchard?” Arthur asked.\n“Why would I have to hire a killer?” Maddix laughed. “I’m a Cancer. I could block an artery with my power and make it look like a heart attack.”\n“But you wouldn’t have an alibi,” Arthur pointed out. “Cancers have to be in the same room as their targets. Most have to touch them.”\n“I don’t have to touch anyone,” Maddix said. “I’m a top-level Cancer.”\n“Dr. Maddix, why aren’t you answering the question?” Arthur asked.\n“You’re a Virgo, aren’t you?” Maddix turned to Messi. “I don’t have to answer any questions without my lawyer present.”\n“You aren’t being arrested,” Arthur said. “We are just having a conversation. Don’t you want to help?”\n“Of course,” Maddix said. Messi looked at Arthur and shook her head.\n“Look, I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” Maddix stood. “I’m not saying anything else without a lawyer.”\n“Then you’ll have to come to the station with us. You have the right to remain silent,” Arthur said and stood. He pulled his handcuffs out of his pocket. “You have the right to legal counsel…” Arthur stopped = as pain ripped through his left shoulder. He fell to his knees. The doctor extended his arms. Messi also fell, grabbing her arm.\n“I’m not going anywhere,” Maddix cried. “I’m a good person. I save lives. I deserve a decent life.” The Doctor pinched his fingers, and the pain in Arthur’s chest worsened. He fell to his side. Messi struggled up and raised her right hand. A blinding white light emanated from her palm. Arthur closed his eyes, and it was the last thing he saw.\nHe awakened in a hospital bed to the worried face of a nurse checking his pulse. Derek stood in the corner of the room.\n“Messi?” Arthur asked Derek.\n“She’s fine,” Derek said. “She got your guy. Blinded him. They’re down the hall.” Arthur gently pushed the nurse away and stood. They went down the hall, where the other Derek stood beside a uniformed officer in front of a door. Arthur opened the door and went in.\nMessi sat in a chair, looking tired. The doctor lay in the bed, hands cuffed to the rails, steel mittens over his hands. White bandages covered his eyes, and his face was burned like he had spent a week on a beach without sunscreen. He was unconscious, but Arthur gave him a wide berth.\n“I got the recording,” Messi whispered. She led him out the door, and the uniformed officer took her place.\n“Are you ok?” Arthur asked.\n“I’m fine,” she said. Before they could say anything else, the Chief appeared from around a corner, three subordinates following.\n“There you are!” the Chief called. “Excellent job. The district attorney is confident this will be a slam dunk!” He clapped Arthur on the shoulder, and Arthur winced.\n“It was all Messi,” Arthur told his boss.\n“Oh, I know,” the Chief smiled at her. “You’re looking at a promotion for this young lady.” This time, Messi winced.\n“It’s always been my goal to make detective,” she admitted.\n“We’d be proud to have you!” the Chief said. “I think I know a man who could use a partner.” He smiled at Arthur as a nurse came around the corner.\n“Both of you should be in bed!” the nurse said, pointing at the detectives. The Chief shooed them away, and they followed the woman to their rooms." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: \"Unfolding Destiny\" : A Journey of Resilience and Empowerment\n\nGenre: african-american\n\nWord Count: 1037\n\nPrompt:\n\nA crumpled piece of paper holding an unexpected message is carried by the wind. Where did it come from, and where is it going?" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Adanna's journey began in the vibrant tapestry of an African setting, in a rural Community called 'Nwokenwe' meaning 'Males Own'. The name implies that males own properties, Lands,including the Women whom they married.It was a Community where unfortunately, societal expectations wove a restrictive narrative for women. Raised in an environment where prevailing beliefs dictated that a woman's destiny and certificates inevitably led to the confines of the kitchen, Adanna faced the headwinds of stereotypes from a young age of 19.\nGrowing up, her dreams faced resistance from a society entrenched in gender roles. However, even as the winds of traditions of Nwokenwe Community threatened to stifle her aspirations, Adanna carried within her, the seeds of defiance. In the face of societal norms, she yearned to challenge the status quo and redefined the narrative for herself.\nAs Adanna matured, the crumpled piece of paper, representing her dreams, became a silent rebellion against the limitations imposed upon her. The winds of change whispered the need to break free from stereotypes, promoting gender equality, and providing opportunities for every woman, regardless of marital status, to become what they aspired to be.\nAdanna's journey took a decisive turn when she started planning to pursue her Masters in Gender,Media and Culture at the University of West Minister, United Kingdom.\n Despite societal pressure to conform to traditional roles, she embarked on a path less traveled, fueled by the winds of her own aspirations. It was a bold move that echoed the winds of change sweeping through her life.\nHowever, destiny had its own plans, and in the midst of pursuing her dreams, Adanna found herself entwined in the threads of marriage.The winds of life, now carrying the weight of responsibilities, compelled her to put her aspirations on hold. Yet, Adanna's spirit remained unbroken. Like a resilient tree bending but not breaking in the storm, she adapted to the changing winds.\nMarriage brought its' own set of challenges, especially when intertwined with a narcissistic partner. The winds of adversity howled, but Adanna stood firm, using her experiences to mold her character and strengthen her resolve. In the crucible of challenges, she discovered the power within her to withstand the tempests of life.\nThe unexpected message carried by the wind, represented by a CRUMPLED NOTE, became a turning point. It was a reminder that dreams, though momentarily set aside, could be revisited. Adanna's narrative, interwoven with the winds of resilience, bore witness to the transformative journey of self-discovery and purpose.\n A chapter then suddenly appeared, starring through her stressed face, marked by the sudden removal of her children from school, a tempest that threatened to plunge Adanna into the depths of despair. However, from the storm emerged a phoenix of determination. Creating a makeshift classroom in her sitting room, Adanna utilized the winds of creativity to provide her children with an education that surpassed the confines of traditional learning.\n The winds of destiny, once carrying doubts, now propelled Adanna's children to emerge as the Overall Best in academics and character upon their return to school, and also her two Kids' winning of Silver and Gold Medals Certificates at the Queen's Annual Commonwealth Prize Competition in 2021,2022 and 2023 respectively. This triumph over adversity became a testament to Adanna's resilience and her ability to turn challenges into stepping stones.\n Her journey continued as the crumpled piece of paper, now laden with the echoes of success, revealed its' origin in a low-income neighborhood where societal expectations dared not dream. Adanna's pursuit of her dreams, despite the skepticism surrounding her, became a beacon of hope for others in similar circumstances.\nAs she stepped into the realm of fulfillment, Adanna became an advocate for breaking free from stereotypes, promoting gender equality, and ensuring that every woman, irrespective of her marital status, had the opportunity to chart her own destiny. Her story, an intricate tapestry woven by the winds of change, echoed not only her personal triumphs but also a call for a paradigm shift in societal perspectives.\n In the grand symphony of Adanna's life, the crumpled piece of paper, once carried by the winds of trials, now soared triumphantly. It became a symbol of the power that resides within a destined woman, determined to overcome every challenge on her path to success. Adanna's narrative wasn't just a story; it was a manifesto, a testament to the resilience, determination, and unwavering spirit of a woman who dared to dream against the prevailing winds of tradition.\n In the twilight of her journey, Adanna found herself in the last lap of achieving her dreams, navigating the final stretch with a determination forged in the crucible of challenges. The winds of change, once tempestuous, now gently whispered tales of triumph as she approached the finish line.\n Adanna's story, like a well-worn but resilient piece of paper, carried the imprints of her unwavering will and determination. Her metamorphosis from a woman whose dreams were momentarily set aside to one on the brink of realizing them echoed through the corridors of Nwokenwe Community and resonated with countless others facing similar struggles worldwide.\n The crumpled piece of paper, once a silent messenger, borne by the winds of life, now held a message crafted not only by destiny but also by Adanna's relentless spirit. As she neared the culmination of her journey, the message she bore was one of inspiration, empowerment, and the indomitable strength of the human will.\n In the tapestry of Nwokenwe Community and beyond, Adanna's story became a beacon, illuminating the path for those navigating their own turbulent winds. Through her experiences, she delivered a powerful message—a testament to the extraordinary possibilities that unfold when one dares to unfold the crumpled dreams, determined to reshape destiny.\n In the end, the crumpled piece of paper, once carried by the winds of trials, soared triumphantly, leaving behind a legacy etched in the hearts of those who dared to dream against the prevailing winds of tradition. Adanna, on the verge of realizing her dreams, like the WONDERS OF WIND, powerfully stood as a living testament to the unstoppable force that emerges when a woman's Will and determination unfurl their wings, destined to deliver hope to communities like Nwokenwe and beyond.\nOriginal True Life Story.\nBy Kelechi Duru." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: The Painted Candle\n\nGenre: adventure\n\nWord Count: 2171\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story in which a character navigates using the stars." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "In the far reaches of the universe, a place of mystery and beauty that few dare to explore, a small spaceship carrying two adventurers soared by at hyper speed. Captain Finnian, the courageous space photographer, and his trusty assistant Quixly were back out in the galaxies once again. After coming home to glory and fame from their first photo expedition, they soon felt the gnawing hunger for travel that all adventurers know too well, so they said goodbye to their friends and families and took off once again in search of places rarely seen and (thus far) never photographed.\n\nIn the command deck of the spaceship, Captain Finnian looked up from his navigation screen. “According to this we’re only three days away from the bright, colorful mass of energy we first saw in the telescopes.” He said to Quixly. “I can’t wait to get close enough to see what it is and take some detailed pictures of it.”\n\nQuixly looked over from the mess of charts he had been studying and smiled excitedly. “Only three days out from the Painted Candle!? Wowza! Time sure flies by when you’re having fun!”\n\n“Quixly, you’ve been memorizing maps of the stars for the last two weeks. Is that really fun for you?” Captain Finnian could never quite wrap his head around his quirky alien assistant. He would have gone crazy if all he did for two weeks straight was study star maps.\n\n“Yes, it’s quite enjoyable.” Quixly responded, looking back down at his maps.\n\n“Also, what did you call the mysterious lights that we’re traveling towards?” Captain Finnian asked.\n\n“The Painted Candle! It’s a good name, don’t ya think? That’s exactly what it looked like in the telescope.”\n\n“Hmm, that actually is a pretty good name.” Captain Finnian said, impressed. “Much better than your first idea of calling it Fleeborg Vomit.”\n\nQuixly smiled sheepishly. “Yeah, I can see now how that might struggle to catch on amongst the academics. But, in my defense, it was quite accurate! Anyone who’s seen a fleeborg throw up would agree.”\n\nCaptain Finnian was about to continue the conversation on the details of fleeborg regurgitation when a warning symbol started flashing on his screen, along with a worrisome beeping.\n\n“What’s that?” Quixly said, some anxiety in his voice.\n\n“I’m not sure,” Captain Finnian responded, looking closer to interpret the warning. “It looks like…. OH CRAP!”\n\nAt that exact moment there was a large crashing sound at the bottom of the ship, and all the lights and screens went dark.\n\nAfter a few moments of stunned silence, Quixly was the first to speak. “Are we going to die?”\n\nCaptain Finnian paused. “I don’t think so,” he eventually said. “If that was going to kill us, I think we’d already be dead. It sounded like it came from the maintenance room. I’ll go check it out.”\n\nQuixly nodded, although it was impossible to see in the dark room. “Good idea, Captain. And I’ll stay up here where it’s nice and safe. I mean, to keep our things up here safe!”\n\n“That sounds like a plan.” Captain Finnian responded. “Now help me find our emergency lanterns.”\n\nThey both felt around the room, trying to find their emergency light sources. Quixly, able to search quicker because of his four arms, soon found a couple battery powered lanterns and turned them on.\n\n“Here you go, Captain!” He said, handing one over to Captain Finnian. “Good luck in the maintenance room!”\n\nCaptain Finnian took the lantern, nodded his thanks, and then left the room to figure out the source of the problems. From the brief warning before the crash, he guessed that they somehow ran into something small. There usually wasn’t much to run into in space, and their ship was designed with safety measures anyway. The hardened hull was strong enough to withstand the space dust and micro particles they inevitably flew through at hyper speed. And the sensors would catch anything big enough to cause damage, leading the auto drive to adjust their course to keep them safe. However, there were very rarely some tiny pieces of rock or ice in space that were big enough to cause damage at hyper speed and small enough to avoid the sensors until too late. Captain Finnian guessed that’s what they hit. He made a mental note to buy the newest upgrade for his ship’s sensors if they made it out of this situation alive.\n\nIn the maintenance room it looked like there had been an earthquake. He found a small bump near the bottom of the hard metal wall at the front end of the ship and assumed that’s where they got hit. Luckily it didn’t penetrate, or they would have been toast.\n\nMost of the computers and equipment had been knocked around, but not seriously damaged. He easily propped computers and machines back up where they belonged and started to plug everything back in. He got the electricity back on first, and then most of their important systems, such as the steering mechanisms and hyper drive. Unfortunately, their navigation system was another problem.\n\nThe computer that powered their navigation was completely destroyed. It was impossible to know where they were located or what direction they were heading. The nearest solar system that had the technology to repair it was at least a week away at hyper speed, but he had no idea how they’d find their way there.\n\nThey also couldn’t call for help because the navigation system was the same system that tracked their location. Even with their best guess they couldn’t tell someone exactly where they were. It would be like asking them to look for a Kloboxian needle in a mountain of Pryblun wheat. A Kloboxian needle that was hurtling through the Pryblun wheat at an unknown speed in an unknown direction, to be more precise. He had no idea how much that collision impacted their trajectory.\n\nAfter spending a few minutes alone in the maintenance room, Captain Finnian went back to the command deck to tell Quixly about their predicament.\n\nQuixly cheered when Captain Finnian walked back into the room. “Yeehaw! Ya did it, Captain! Ya got the power back on! Well done! Now we can resume our course towards the Painted Candle!” He did a little happy dance, shrugging all four of his shoulders up and down while wiggling his antennae.\n\n“Not so fast, Quixly.” The captain responded. “Everything is back online except for navigation. We’re lost, and I don’t know how to get to the painted candle from here, much less to an intergalactic market where we could get what we need to repair everything.”\n\n“Oh.” Quixly replied, abruptly ending his happy dance. They both stood in silence for a minute while contemplating the gravity of their situation (ironic, with them being in outer space). Looking out the window, Quixly suddenly had an idea.\n\n“We can navigate with the stars!” he said excitedly. “I’ve been studying them in depth for weeks! I can get us to the Painted Candle, and then to safety!” The happy dance continued.\n\n“I had the same thought earlier,” Captain Finnian said, “but that’s so imprecise. It would take a miracle to head in the right direction, not to mention stopping the ship before crashing into something or soaring far past our destination.”\n\nQuixly rolled his eyes, which was especially effective with three eyes. “Captain sir, this is what I’m good at! I can be precise! Give me a shot at it, I’m sure I’ll find the way!”\n\nCaptain Finnian knew quite well that Quixly was very intelligent, although goofy at times. He also wasn’t the most confident alien, so the fact that he stood up for himself and argued that he could do it accurately was really saying something. Captain Finnian decided to give him a chance.\n\n“Alright Quixly, I trust you. Do your thing, and let me know how I can help.”\n\n“Yahooie!” Quixly yelled, then rushed to grab his maps and some measuring tools. “If you could slow down the ship to zero velocity that would be grand. And then just sit back and watch, Captain. This is what I’ve been training for!”\n\nCaptain Finnian did what was asked, and then sat back to watch. He was more than impressed. Quixly held up his maps to the window, took notes, held up measuring tools, logged information into his screen, turned the ship around to get the full picture, and did several other things that Captain Finnian didn’t quite understand.\n\nQuixly wasn’t talking to Captain Finnian, but he was muttering his thoughts loud enough for the captain to hear most of it. “Ok, we know the Painted Candle is at coordinates 2870.0113x, 45301.9174y, 80139.351z. The nearest solar system is H39-Q73-KLP6, which was at an 83.749203 degree angle from the Painted Candle on our original course. It’s now looking closer to…” he held up a measuring tool to the window, “83.748891 degrees. Let me compare how that measures to the neighboring stars…”\n\nCaptain Finnian had always known that his assistant had a head for numbers, but this was beyond amazing. He didn’t realize that Quixly had memorized so much information from their initial course, which was helping them get back to it. It was also impressive to see how well he knew all the different star formations and galaxies, including their distance and angle relationships to each other. Captain Finnian could see hundreds of thousands of stars out the window at any time. And that was just in one direction, they were sitting in the middle of a nearly infinite three-dimensional map. While he could name some of the major star formations, most of it was just a pretty sight for him, not little lights of directional information.\n\nIt took Quixly about two hours to do all his calculations and to double check it all, but once he was finished, he was confident in his work. “Alrighty, Captain! It’s done! I’ve plotted our course from here to the Painted Candle in the auto drive, and then from there to the nearest star system where we can get our navigation stuff up and running again. Although I don’t know if I really want to fix it, because this was fun!”\n\n“Quixly, that was incredible” Captain Finnian replied. “Thank you so much. You literally just saved our lives.” After pausing for a moment to let that fact sink in for both of them, he continued. “Well! Should we go check out the Painted Candle?”\n\n“Yes sir!” Quixly said with a smile. “Hi-dee ho let’s go!” With that Captain Finnian put the ship into hyper drive, and off they went.\n\nThree days later their ship stopped next to one of the most amazing space formations they had ever seen. It looked like a dying star that was only dying on one side. That side lifted up similar to a candle flame. The fire and energies and gasses coming from it all radiated with different colors, giving the scene a spectacular look. They stayed there for two days taking it all in and taking many pictures too.\n\nAt the end of the second day, Captain Finnian turned towards his green assistant. “What do you say, Quixly, should we head over to that nearby star system and get our ship fixed?”\n\n“Yes sir!” Quixly responded enthusiastically. “The coordinates are already logged into the auto drive. I’m ready when you are!”\n\nCaptain Finnian nodded. “Thank you, Quixly. However, before we depart, there’s something I need to tell you. After this trip, I no longer want you to be my assistant.”\n\nQuixly’s face dropped. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Wasn’t Captain Finnian grateful for the work he did? Maybe he had accidentally messed something up and the captain was mad? Or maybe the captain blamed him for the original collision three days ago? All those thoughts and several others passed through his head in an instant, but before he could voice any of them, Captain Finnian continued.\n\n“You are far too smart and far too important to be my assistant anymore. And quite truthfully, you’re far too good of a friend as well. Quixly, I want to promote you to be my partner. From now on, I want us to share command of this ship, as an equal team. What do you say?”\n\nQuixly’s worries immediately turned to surprise, and then to gratitude. “Wowza, sir! Wowza! Do you mean it?”\n\n“Yes, I do.” Captain Finnian said. “My only regret is not doing it sooner. So, do you accept?”\n\n“Absolutely! Wowza! Me, a co-captain of a ship! Thank you, Captain! Thank you!”\n\n“You’re welcome, Captain Quixly. Now, let’s get to that star system! Not only do we need to repair our ship, but I hear they have some delicious Chulaplugg stew, perfect for a celebration.”\n\nWith his eyes watering from gratitude and his mouth watering from the mention of Chulaplugg stew, Quixly took his first action as co-captain and put the ship into hyper drive. “Hi-dee ho let’s go!”" } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: In Your Comfortable Bed\n\nGenre: adventure\n\nWord Count: 1006\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story in which a character navigates using the stars." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The stars filled up the sky as the blazing sun went down. My eyes scanned the heavens for any sort of air attack that might take away my life. So far, none has appeared.\nThe ground was moist and soft, the soil watered with cloud tears. The air around me was damp, like a just-unloaded washing machine. The sound of crickets was heavy in the air, making up a natural choir.\nThe weight of my make-shift bag was ponderous against my back, my legs aching so much it felt like lead. Even so, I forced a step after the other, trying to balance my breath.\nMy mind was clouded with fears, my vision blurry. It was getting dark, and I spotted, just in time, a huge rock sticking out of the earth's outer layer.\nMy stomach rumbled with numb hunger, and suddenly, a wave of hopelessness drenched me whole, drowning me in a whirlpool of fears and despair.\nI sat down on the rock, its rough surface a pain in the ass, pun intended. I slid the straps off my shoulders, leaving a dent in the multiple layers of my clothing.\nHeaving a shallow breath, I let the heavy bag leave my grasp and it landed with a soft thump on the muggy ground. The bag itself was much soiled from my trip, so I didn't really care about the dirt know stuck onto the bottom of it.\nMy fingers nimbly pulled the zipper up and around, the cold metal pressing against my calloused skin. The putrid odour of scent which name's unknown wafted out.\nThe trees around me whistled a innate tune, the soft breeze calming my thoughts just enough for me to start knocking up some food.\nAs I cooked and cut, the stars above me aligned, showing me a way through the wilderness of the forests of Amazon. The winding paths has led me here, a strange place with even stranger creatures.\nA sound resembling a shotgun reverberated through the area, causing my very bones to tremble. A flash of fear shot through my veins as my mind started to wonder what it was.\nI continued to devour the scarce sustenance packed in my rucksack. While munching, I observed the skies and the stars, noting how the moon shone brightly tonight.\nI stole a glance at my watch, and it said what I had expected. I mumbled the date under my breath, nodding to myself. If ever a squirrel, a lizard or a hedgehog were to spot me just then, they would shale their heads and say, \"What a psycho..'' in their languages, I'm sure.\nThe sound of rushing water was heard close by, and so I left my bag near the consequential rock, and brought my utensils towards the sound of the stream.\nAgain, I followed the sound and the stars, and was put on full alert when:\nI lost my footing and my shoes were drenched in freezing liquid, or mountain water, as I like to call it. I exclaimed loudly, a shriek topping out of my lips.\nI looked up at the stars and cursed them. Then I turned my attention to a more vital thing at hand. I bent down, and started to rinse the remains of edibles off the crudely shaped aluminium plate.\nI shivered, as the air decided to blast a harshly cold cat's paw at me. Gasping, I proceeded to fill my Hydro Flask bottle with raw water. After that, I stumbled back towards my temporary camp.\nJust as I spotted the jutting rock again, I heard a horrible yelp, unlike a human's voice, and my heart skipped a beat. I gripped my eating utensils and bottle tight, my knuckles turning white.\nI looked around, my face flushed pale, and I looked up. The stars were glowing, but not the normal light that offered beauty; It was more of a harsh red, like a fireman's car when a fire erupted somewhere.\nI tottered over hastily towards the protruding boulder, and quickly started to pack, my fingers trembling, my heart seeming to pump in, out, in, out of my chest.\nWith another glance at the stars, I begged for mercy to Him and heaved the burden of travel back on my back, the straps almost immediately cutting into my shoulder.\nI left the clearing, which, I knew very well, might be the last I'll see in this hideously exciting trip. \"What the hell was that?\" I swore, as I tripped over a pebble, lost my footing, and almost toppled over an impending cliff.\nI shook my head to rid of the dizziness that was felt as I almost lost my life over a stupid pebble. I craned my neck upwards, forcibly wrenching my head up, too.\nThe stars were blinking innocently down at me, aligned in a certain pattern which I found rather useful. I frowned, for they were an evil red just a few minutes ago.\n\"How the heck..?\" I muttered again, as I proceeded to put another foot forward, again and again, ignoring the painful aching in both of my legs.\nThe smell of daisies, and pine-cones wafted into my nose, reminding me of my home far away. Will I ever managed to get out of this labyrinth of euterpe trees and navigate my way back home?\nA sense of nostalgia grew into a small knot in my stomach; a knot that consisted of longing, fear and an overwhelming want of warm food, complete with a glass cup, a ceramic plate and silver utensils.\nThoughts journeyed my mind, and I wonder, how far I'll go?\nI continued my journey, forwards, for that was the only way to go, following the whisper of the stars, the slithers of unseen dangers, and the tuneful hum of the wind and the trees.\nHedgehogs were my best friends in these strange woods, though, I'm not sure if I'll be seeing them again. Goodbye, for now, and sleep well in your comfortable bed, with fluffy pillows and a chunky blanket." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Sailor\n\nGenre: african-american\n\nWord Count: 2661\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story where your character is travelling a road that has no end." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I anchored Magic in a little cove that was bordered by coco palms and fern over a black sand beach. It was one of those perfect beach scenes that I dreamt about as a child and now I was here. I got the dinghy in the water faster than ever with the thought that maybe the cove might disappear. I had my rum and a sandwich in my backpack to celebrate a small delight at finding this place. Before I touched the sand I had a sense of being in that dream; that I wasn’t really alive yet but still comfortably in my cot under our tree in our backyard. But, I knew I was here. The sand between my toes. The warm water over my feet. I tied off the dinghy to a palm next to a tiny trail that lead into the bush.\nIt is truly amazing to step into a place you’ve never been before, and yet not only know that you’ve been there before but strangely, though not startling, that I recognised people along this path and that they recognised me showing welcoming nods. The trail led to a small village and the people seemed to stroll in a cadenced grace of motion. They were in a mix of complexions, all dressed in loose whites going about their business with a general expression of alertness that I interpreted as something about to happen. I noted again that the clothing they wore was in various stages of cleanliness or age. But they all wore white without anything contrasting. White shorts, long pants, skirts, sarongs, dresses, all white. Even the children wore white, though mostly stained from games and play. There was a laughter about the place, even in direction giving or conversation that made me smile.\nMy first thoughts were that this was a religious community of some sort. My next thoughts were shocked by my name being repeated in greeting.\n‘Afernoon, Cop’n Piktorne’, a little girl, bowing from the head in passing, said merrily.\n‘Good Afternoon, Capitan Pickthorne’, an older man said raising an open palm and bowing slightly. A string of small fish were dangling from his other hand as he passed along.\nA group of children ran across my path giggling at some pursuit in which they were engaged. The cobbler making sandals, the woman selling vegetables, the people sitting under the shade of a round twig thatched roof talking all reminded me of people I thought, no, I was sure with whom I was familiar. My head heated. The sun was relentless. I went over to the shade where a group sat talking under a thatched roof.\n‘Hablan Ingles, Señores?’ I asked standing in the sun in front of their smiling faces.\n‘Why yes,’ a white-whiskered man responded, nodding to me and giving me his full attention with a curious stare and parted lips, ‘we do, Capitan Pickthorne.’\n‘Do I know you, sir?’ I asked directly.\n‘Why yes, you do, Capitan,’ he smiled quizzically, ‘you know all of us, maybe you... have forgotten us, but... but time eventually chafes the untruths.’\nHe invited me into the shade and introduced me, or it seemed he was reintroducing me to the group who were seated on stiff straight back thatch chairs in a loose semi-circle. One man out of the group of seven arrested my attention with his smiling eyes. He was introduced as Capitan Alejandro Grande. I was informed that Capitan Alejandro was captain/owner of a trading sloop and a great dancer.\nThe others, all men at least in their fifties and the soft mix of skin colours, turned out to also be great dancers with a couple being introduced as both great musicians as well as great dancers.\n‘Capitan Pickthorne,’ Capitan Alejandro spoke, ‘why do you not see the village... then please return to this shady spot... we still have refreshments awaiting your return.’\nThey all smiled in a warm excited manner at me and in agreement with the captain. I dug in my pack and handed Captain Alejandro my rum bottle. They all beamed at the gesture and some grunted laughs as older men sometimes do.\nThe village passageway softly curled as a snail’s shell, the apex being the older men’s shaded spot. I walked along the homes, each raised a few feet from the earth on mahogany trunks. They were well constructed huts or palapas of thatch roofed, most contained a single rooms with divisions and were white washed thatch and daub rounded structures. A smaller model was also raised above the ground for food storage. Each property was spaced at least 12 meters apart. Vegetables greened the borders of the buildings to the mixing with a neighbour’s growth. Orderly rows of greens, spinach, chilis, tomatoes, yams, zucchini, various beans, berries, ranging trees of mango, papaya, tamarind, sweet and sour sop, and banana palms waved to the slight of breezes, dwarf coconut trees formed the actual property lines. The properties were neat, a rubbish fire here and there.\nMany of the people seemed to be waiting for me. They stood in family poses in front of their homes, each welcoming into their property and their homes. I went into the first three more out of courtesy than curiosity. They were very simple inside, with one wall dividing a comfortable cooking and eating area with sleeping spaces. The thatched twig sidings, painted white, provided shade from the sun, and allowed a breeze to pass through the gaps in the mud daubed thatch work. Being elevated provided a coolness to the floors where they had laid grass mats which seemed to direct air upward to my feet.\nTheir choices of mattresses or thick cotton mats, chairs of fat pillows, curtains or shutters were the only distinctions I could detect. Generally each home was an external duplicate of the others. This was a very organised community.\nMy slightly developed curiosity waned after the third one and I only token glanced into others that had a different entrance design or windows... something that would draw my immediate attention. By the end of the passage I was drenched in sweat, the birds screamed too loudly, the children were too impulsive, the sky was too white, the smiles somehow too loud.\nMy shirt was taken off gently. I was sponge washed, towel dried. A white shirt was slipped over my head and extended arms.. A simple shirt with a slit in the top for my head and of a soft cotton fabric for my comfort.\nMy shorts and underpants were taken off and I was sponged again and dried. Loose white cotton trousers were pulled on me and belted firmly in place by a thick leather belt with a large silver rectangular buckle. A wide brimmed hat was placed on my head, its swooping brim sheltered my shoulders and head from the sun. I adjusted the fit, feeling refreshed. A drink of clear liquid was handed me in a half coconut shell and I gulped it down.\nAll of this bathing and clothing was accomplished with happy chatter, even jokes and laughter. I did not feel I was in any way being ridiculed. It felt as though the people were simply at work making light of what happened to them on the way there.\nI thanked those who had washed and clothed me and walked over to the village border of rice fields. The smell of the tall grasses overwhelmed me. I was in a complete state of smiling. Probably if I were on a city street I would have been labelled a fool grinning for no apparent reason. There, I simply joined my hosts who were mostly smiling at something or leading up to a smile or just coming off one. And it was not the kind of smile that you show at a cocktail party or because of listening to a comedian, or a good poet... it was just some kind of happiness inside that created the feeling and set the features.\nStrange one, I thought, you look for reasons to smile to be happy and you never find a consistent one... you find yourself happy and you feel you have to explain it.\nPoof, I said to myself, I can’t think of the whys or the feeling will go poof... this is it is all.\nThe drumming started and became stronger, the melody more defined, a doo dee doo bop doo dee doo bop.\nI half stumbled, half trotted around back through the passage way, looking probably like a Tarot Fool and just like one not caring through an innocence in feelings that lightened my chest and straightened my back and pulled me toward the low sky. I felt that the clouds sent invisible fingers that pulled or pushed me. I was there but not. I was a passenger in my own body.\nAt the shaded hut of the older men my meandering stopped. I did not see them. I could not anything until I entered and the darkness dissolved to show a room not unlike my family’s room with a rounded couch, with a small cocktail table in front and an opened book lay on the table. But, there was an elevated open fire pit that sent a stream of smoke upward with a sweet smell on one side of a centre pole that supported the roof. Mats and pillows lay strewn upon a light cotton rug. Kitchen utensils were hung neatly along a wall. A long iron bar stood upright, implanted in a hole in the rug near the pit. Books lined a curving four shelved bookcase. A scorpion ran across my path. The scorpion was awash in a ray of sunlight, crouched openly near the pole as if hiding.\nMy feet were dusted from the walk and my ankles had sweat streaks marked brown in the dust on my dried skin. I looked at the palms of my hands as though they were new to me. Soiled dark in their sharply defined creases. Small and large mounds adding emphasis to the muscle underneath. Ready for any work, chore or pleasure that needed the contact for the touch I wanted to give. Around the palm and the light hued flesh of my fingertips there was a glow of golden richness that was tanned deeply. I looked around me at the smiling and grinning faces of the older men and others and a growing rumble of a chant.\nI looked at tall rice stalks waving through the window, gold-headed, green-bladed, the sun at it’s last rays laid on the bristles encasing the rice heads.\nTurning back again a great woman stood before me in the darkness of the poled hut. I started to understand some myriad of associations affecting me. But, it was as though other knowledges were passing me by. The great woman stood in front of me and sprayed me with liquid air. I inhaled as much as I could.\n‘We are the clowns,’ she said to me and to white swaying figures around me, ‘the true buffoons of the Almighty Lords. They play with us and if we are aware of the game it is then possible to piece together some of the rules. The Lords might want you to play consciously, and then they will make the rules available... only the rules will be in their language and you will have to make a game of translating or absorbing their language. But you know their language is not to be interpreted, only absorbed.’\nMy heart was pounding rapidly, drowning out the drum-sea waving rhythms. Grains of light were rising speckled along the pole’s path into the darkness of the tent. I floated higher, feeling presences brushing through and about my body.\n‘The cowardliness’, a voice within me softly spoke, ‘in us is not a false one. One that says we should find that spot before we get too old and settle upon that spot until we die a natural death, that is after living a natural life in that one spot.’\nThe darkness lightened into browns and golds that separated each fibre of the thatched roof. I was again with my feet on the earth, the ground pulsated the rhythm of my heart.\n‘We are cowardly’, the voice resumed as I defined each golden hued palm braiding, ‘in that march toward the depth in our real being. Many other levels come our way and reached, only then can we absorb enough to be on our way to the grand threshold.’\nI was smoking a black pipe, a top hat nudged, unbalanced on my head. I had a long black skirt on. It had big white dots. I had a tuxedo tailed jacket over my bare chest. My cane, which I swirled eloquently overhead, was the colour of my skin tipped with glowing silver.\nI wanted money that the people gave me in bills and coins which I stuffed greedily into my pockets.\nI wanted a bottle which appeared in my hand, I swallowed and sprayed air on the smoke pit and into adjoining mouths. People became clear. I could identify facial features, individual gestures, rings, bracelets then they became a swirling mass once more... except for one. The great woman danced for me. Her eyes were closed and she was lovely. Her body undulated pulling at my loins. I twirled my stick above us and circled her bringing her urgent body to mine, slipping past her, pulling her to me, slipping past. People threw coins and bills in the air and at my feet. She was racked with sensual spasms that lifted her off one foot, almost falling she would stomp down that foot to gain the other foot and again tilt to falling, then the other way she would go. My cane was pointing first this way, then that and she would follow to the wild beat of my heart. I stopped her, willed her still, willed her back bent head just above the ground. I lifted the skirt of her dress and the soft layers of her petticoats. Her lushness was thrust toward me. I opened my loose fly and placed my hardness upon her clitoris, pulling backward and forward., rubbing it with my urgency. She shook. I inserted slowly to the full and moved into an exploding darkness of dull luminescence. Instead of feeling spent, emptying , I felt as though I was pulling out her juices with me filling.\nShe was on the ground asleep. I was twirling my cane, comets trailed the tips. I was happy, like a child who was an adult.\nThe great woman again danced in front of me. \nThe great woman was now dressed in billowy white blouse and trousers and had jumped up to then down from the ceiling. She danced before me with a concerned expression on her smooth face. A primary blue sash cut into her blouse and pants joining them to a narrow waist. Her long raven hair was matted, streaming black seaweed. She pointed to my crotch and my protruding organ. I quickly tucked it back in and closed my fly, my passions suddenly sapped. I was tired, barely able to keep my eyes open.\nMy cane was gone and I was again dressed in loose whites. I felt ashamed of the wild nastiness I had enacted. I was ashamed in front of all these people as witness. But, the drums still paced and my heart again throbbed replacing the drumbeat with my own cadence.\nI smelled the sea but could not see it, knowing that I was well inland. I looked into the great woman’s eyes, unable to speak but willing my concern about being landlocked to her. She smiled.\n‘Trouble is a voyage by land’, I heard a woman’s from behind me. I turned and saw nobody, turned back and the great woman was gone. I was alone on my cot under our tree." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: The Great Engagement\n\nGenre: african-american\n\nWord Count: 2959\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about a successful marriage proposal, or one that goes horribly wrong." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The date was officially January 1st, 2008. Right after the people on television yelled “Happy New Year!”, my boyfriend Stephen glanced at me. He looked into the open Bible and read the scripture about a man leaving his parents to become one with his wife. Truly oblivious to what was happening, my response was a simple amen.\nAs he bent down, while pulling out a diamond ring, I went running from the kitchen to the bathroom. We had only started dating about eight months ago, so this couldn’t possibly be real. When I got back from my venture, the poor guy was still on the living room floor, in the same stance, waiting for a response to his proposal. After apologizing, laughing, and crying happy tears, my answer was yes.\nStephen filled me in on the details of the days leading up to this event. One of them included him picking up a second job, and the news was a relief. I had been asking him for the past few weeks why he was getting back to his place at such a late hour. We lived in the same complex, so keeping this a secret was no easy task. It also did not help that my heart wouldn’t allow me to sleep until I saw his white Cadillac Fleetwood enter the parking lot and knew he was safe.\nAfter we laughed and gasped about the several episodes he had to sustain during the month, I called my parents. He rang his family as well. Their reactions were dramatically different. My mom’s exact words were” Well, Naesed, this isn’t the first time someone has asked you to marry them, and why didn’t he ask your dad?”. \nDuring the previous year, my father was offered a higher-paying role if he relocated to the Lonestar state. The proposition was accepted. He came back to get my mother and I the following week. After spending an entire summer in the sweltering Texas heat, my 21-year-old mind would not allow me to stay under their guardianship. My Father and I have always been close because he understood me more and this situation was no different. It was my mother who unsuccessfully tried to discourage my emancipation.\nMom’s reply to my engagement was evidence that she was still struggling. Her only child had become a woman. I had then asked to speak to my father, who was half asleep, but still alert enough to express a genuine congratulations. In Autumn, he was able to spend a little bit of time with Stephen and gave me a huge smile of approval upon returning from their outing. My Dad is not a man who talks much. Nevertheless, what was said to me meant that he thought this was a great choice for a lifetime partner. Notwithstanding I was an adult and didn’t feel like a blessing was necessary, but it still felt good to have it. At the end of the conversation, Mom’s phony best wishes were sent to us both. We concluded with our usual exchanges of love, but something was different. It was the night I started getting to know the woman who had given me birth for the person she truly was.\nWhile not having siblings in the home during childhood certainly had its disadvantages, this lifestyle also came with some benefits. Self-reliance had been a blessing and a curse. I did not depend on others for happiness or contentment. Hence, the autonomy permitted quick recovery from offenses. I looked over at my new fiancé, who was still grinning like a Chester cat. His mother had been waiting to speak with me. She proclaimed a happy, warm, and loud welcome to the family. I thanked her and after some small talk, handed Stephen back the phone. He quickly hung up and we started our journey as an officially engaged couple. Joy filled the atmosphere, so it didn’t feel necessary to discuss my mother’s antics at this time.\n\n\n\n\nMy future in-laws invited us to brunch later in the afternoon. It would be the first gathering as a bride-to-be. The mid-day news broadcast was airing while I got ready for my prospective groom to pick me up. Although the weather forecasted a high of only 30 degrees, the sun looked beautiful as it shined against the pure white snow, creating a glitter-like effect. The meteorologist made several announcements about how cold it would be outside. Being a lifelong native of Columbus, Ohio made way for the warnings to become pure background noise.\nBy the time Stephen drove around the corner to pick me up, it was around 1 pm. He was wearing a nice blue button-down shirt and I unexpectedly matched him. We constantly found ourselves in sync with one another. During the 20-minute ride, both of us shared the feelings this upcoming visit had created; they ranged from excited to anxious.\nStephen’s only siblings Kim and Jade were helping their mother set the table when we arrived.\nThey all greeted us with applause that appeared to have been practiced, but still sincere.\nJade was a pretty light brown girl with naturally curly hair. Kim was equally as beautiful but darker complected. Had it not been for the six-year age difference between these sisters, one could easily mistake them for twins. They had strong maternal genetics to thank. It appeared as though being the firstborn allowed Stephen to develop the perfect mix of his mother’s beach sand-colored skin with his Father’s Mahogany tone to create a cinnamon complexion.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe matriarch of the family, Ms. Tina, gave a tight embrace and a kiss that left a pink lipstick mark in the middle of my right cheek. She presented me with all the love that her only son felt he was too old for. Although Stephen playfully winced at the motherly attempts of affection, I knew that deep down, he genuinely appreciated them.\nAfter we settled in and coats were put away, the feast was ready. It consisted of baked spaghetti, tuna noodle casserole, garlic bread, and a simple salad. The dessert was going to be my favorite, strawberry cheesecake. I didn’t care too much for anything with tomato sauce, so opted for the seafood dish. Possible wedding venues and dates were being discussed as plates filled with culinary masterpieces.\n Conversational subjects tend to change when there are more than two people together. Subsequently, the discourse made its way from Kim’s upcoming birthday plans to the hope that summer would come sooner than expected. Right as we were determining the best restaurants to celebrate turning one year older, Kim’s husband Byron called. She said something inaudible and excitedly laughed an ok as they were hanging up. It was a joy to see them still in love after being married for close to four years. Byron knocked twice, then entered. Kim had unlocked the door just moments ago foreknowing his ingress. He was smiling wide and holding something in his leather jacket pocket. When Byron stepped inside, an adorable tiny poodle pup was exposed. She was as white as the flurries coming from the sky, and extremely timid when placed on the welcome mat that lay in the entryway. We couldn’t help but express how adorable this newest addition to the family was. The pup’s name was Snowflake, but affectionately called Flaky. The pooch had the attention of everyone and began to loosen up. At least an hour had been spent playing with Flakey before Ms. Tina announced there was still a last course waiting to be consumed. No one gave any indication of being in a bad mood all day, but somehow the playfulness filled the air with a cheerful ambiance.\nHands were washed and pre-made strawberry-topped treats awaited us in the refrigerator.\nThankfully, for energy’s sake, Flakey was so exhausted and fell asleep on the bed that her human parents constructed from their outerwear. Jade poked fun that we older people can’t use up too much energy as she handed us our plates and forks. Right as Ms. Tina was complimenting on the beauty of my ring, Kim interjected “I thought you would be more excited to see the dog!”. The comment wiped the smile off Ms. Tina’s face and said she was happy about the k9 but there was room for all three of her children’s endeavors. Jade was the youngest, yet more mature and reserved. Kim was outspoken, but never blatantly rude to me. She was nice and I enjoyed being around her, so the remark was astonishing. Whether on the phone with her brother or a pop-in, Kim had repeatedly expressed that being the middle child made her feel left out since childhood. According to her, Stephen was adored by their mother and Jade was a daddy’s girl.\nThe glee that had previously filled the space was now absent. No one said a word for about five minutes, but it felt like the silence lasted an eternity.\nIt was as if time stood still. The Wonder Years DVD that played on the 40-inch screen never caught anyone’s attention until now. Breaking the quiescence, Byron called his wife’s name in a way that questioned and scolded her simultaneously. He always reminded me of my Father, so it was extremely unusual to hear him speak in this manner. It was rare to see such a meek person take authority. No matter whose presence she was in, Kim recurrently spoke to her spouse in any tone that was deemed necessary for the moment. Granting embarrassment or disrespect never seemed to be a threat. It was easy to see that she was the boss of that marriage with full command. Correspondingly, Kim’s mid-back length hair bounced as her face met Byron’s with a look of sheer disgrace. “What, I did nothing wrong, I’m just keeping it real,” she defended with shrugged shoulders. By this time, Ms. Tina was in silent tears. Jade and Stephen were providing consolation while asking Kim if her actions were necessary. Expectably, there was no remorse in the response but questioning that consisted of why they were ganging up on her (again and always). Ms. Tina was like a lioness to her cubs, assuring them that everything was fine.\nAfter all the chaos created, Kim decided she was going to leave. Ms. Tina agreed that would be best. Kim huffed, puffed, said indistinct things under her breath while scooping up Flakey and collecting their belongings. “Come on Byron!”, she yammered. He shook his head apologetically, told everyone good night, and congratulated us again. Kim told him she’d be out soon and closed the door. She was still slowly getting dog toys, keys, and shoes. It was evident that this act was her putting on a show to provoke all the more. Her mother’s tears didn’t provide enough villainous satisfaction. Whatever subtle discussion Kim was having with herself, Ms. Tina couldn’t take it anymore because she started yelling get out multiple times. “What are you going to do Mom if I don’t leave, hit me?!” Now, had that been my mother, I would have been getting up from the ground the following day. Ms. Tina didn’t believe in physical discipline, so her children didn’t hold the same fears as me. Contrastingly, what was lacking in corporal punishment was given in the form of unpleasant pronouncements. In an effort to say something that returned as much hurt as given, Ms. Tina told Kim that since she was so much like her father, and always gave his family the benefit of the doubt, to be sure that was indeed her Dad first. Kim’s face went emotionless as she asked what that was supposed to mean. “Exactly how it sounds, what do you think!?” said Ms. Tina. Kim bewailed, but not before giving the front door a nice, hard slam.\nMs. Tina apologized profusely. I assured her that it was no fault of hers. She looked at my three-month-pregnant belly and said her first grandbaby didn’t deserve all this stress. As my stomach grew, so did the annoyance of people who attempted to touch it without permission. Whether on the city bus or at work, I would have to wear huge coats and shirts to hide the situation so touching me wouldn’t be a temptation. While Stephen was talking on the phone four weeks ago, he laughed with his mom over the issue. She was very empathetic, understood, and even respected my wishes. Having experienced a teen pregnancy, there was no courage left to begin to defend herself against others running their unwanted hands over her womb. The shock of the circumstance had yielded adequate shame to the church’s royal clan. She was the pastor’s daughter so there was nothing left to say about anything was her thought process during that stage.\nThe evening had been robbed of its jovial aura and it was time to return it. I took Ms. Tina’s hand and placed it on my stomach. She was so amazed at how firm it was. I also invited Jade to do the same. They both were in awe and conversed with Stephen about the miracle of new life forming. Ms. Tina asked her son if he was just as astounded as they were, and it was revealed that he was more scared than anything. His mother interjected with words of encouragement; all in all, he would make a great father. She also shared stories about when Stephen and Jade were born. Hearing about the history of the family I now had a lifelong connection to was fascinating.\nStephen hated to interrupt but noticed it would be getting darker early because of the season. He respectfully waited for his mother to take a break before declaring that we would need to get back home soon.\nI started to clean up, but Ms. Tina made me stop and grab some food to take home instead. There were only two people in her house and there was no way they could eat all that was left over. Furthermore, Jade would most likely eat out for most of the week anyway. I joked that even though I was supposed to be eating double the portions, my appetite still thought it was serving a party of one. My almost mother-in-law told me to just take it so no cooking would be needed for the next few days and work lunch can be checked off the list as well. I loved the sound of both. She headed upstairs as I was taking to-go containers from the cabinets. When the bathroom door closed, Jade and her brother started their mischief. They turned to each other and whispered the questions as if passing a basketball to a teammate. Stephen wanted to know what happened, while Jade was wondering why Kim always had to be the center of atrocities.\nThe jokesters started pretending as if they were discussing the fish tank that sat in the left corner as Ms. Tina made her way back down the steps. Turns out, she had fallen for their act and began to say how the whole aquarium was overdue for an upgrade. Stephen talked a little about his deceased piranhas and then went out to warm up the car. He was back in so fast that we all asked an amazed how. A nonchalant smile appeared with a serious question of whether was it really that fast. “Ugh, yeah, but don’t think you are something special” teased Jade. Ms. Tina and I snickered like schoolgirls. Goodbye, hugs, and safe travel wishes were bestowed upon us along with extra snacks. My arm was quickly grabbed by Stephen the minute I stepped onto the snowy sidewalk despite me telling him I was ok. He ignored and walked me all the way to the passenger side door. It was a relief to sit on the warm leather seats. While getting into the driver’s side, he gestured to his mother and sister to get back inside. “Call me once you all get in!”, Ms. Tina yelled. A thumbs-up was given in response. It was quiet as we were getting the food situated and seatbelts on. “What an adventure”, I exclaimed as we made a right onto the main street leading home.\nMy love replied with a sigh of agreement. He continued with how God will use a negative situation and turn it into a miraculous experience. I felt like since we were on the subject of negativity, now was a good time to share my mother’s reaction to the exciting news. He thought it was a joke initially and then realized no laughter was involved. This was not the first time she had crossed the line, but I was just too naive to notice. The former offense was so snakelike slippery, that it went right over my head. To that end, he was not thoroughly surprised about her or my father’s reactions. I then asked why this engagement was bringing out the worst and upsetting others so much. “You mean exposing them!”, Stephen rebutted. I implied that perhaps we should wait until things were calm before getting married. He wanted to be wed within the next two months. We were now pulling into the parking space in front of my humble abode. Even though a baby had already been conceived, we still wanted to wait until husband-and-wife titles were obtained before living together. Thereby, I was so thrilled about being able to move into one dwelling after the marriage and my face must have shown it. Long night kisses, hugs, and sentiments of love were exchanged. The lack of cohabitation was helping to build a strong foundation. We went our separate ways for the night only to see each other again tomorrow." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: In to Get Out\n\nGenre: adventure\n\nWord Count: 1462\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story in which a character navigates using the stars." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "He found her below deck, near the ethereal crystal that powered the ship to stay afloat. She sat cross-legged with her eyes closed. Her frizzy hair needed brushing and he noted as he got closer, that a bath and some new clothes wouldn’t hurt. He didn’t know if he had any female clothing but would look to get her something clean. \nDespite her abysmal appearance, her serine face was concentrated. Brows creased as whatever powers mingled with her thoughts. \nHe knew better than to interrupt a Kristl during their…process. \nIt still boggled him that a week ago she was his prisoner. Now, her soul was tied to the ship- his ship, no less. She could never part from it and neither could he. \nHe was still uncertain how the Emporer would react. He had specifically ordered a live Kristl be brought back- which he was doing- but there was no way to separate her from the ship without dire consequences. Would the Emporer have him killed off and commandeer his ship? He had been faithful and loyal to the Empire his entire life and this was his reward? Besides, it wasn’t his fault she’d been bound to the ship; it was an accident! If it hadn’t been for those bloody pirates-\n“I can hear you thinking from here, Captain Forge,” she said, cutting off his thoughts.\nWith a quick shake of his head, he emptied his mind. He should know better than to think too much around a Kristl. He wasn’t aware of the full extent of their powers, and while reading thoughts wasn’t confirmed, he wouldn’t cross it off the list of things that they could do. \nHe approached her, careful to keep a respectful distance, but not wanting to show that he feared her. “How’s my ship doing?” he asked. \nWith her eyes still closed, she said, “She’s doing what she can. The pirates did a number on her.” \nHe ground his teeth. “Aye, no need to remind me, we were all there.” \nShe blinked her eyes open, revealing faintly glowing irises that matched the ship's core crystal blue hue. “Is there something else on your mind, Captain?” \nHe swallowed, hating how weak he would sound. “It appears after the pirate attack the wind shifted us off course and in the confusion we never noticed. We’re in Azar territory now.” \nShe blinked, the only reaction of surprise she’d show. \n“I don’t know much about this place, but I do believe that you’re the expert.” \nShe let out a soft sigh and got to her feet. “Much like a butcher's shop, if I were a cow, I wouldn’t want to stay very long.” \nShe was young, even by Kristl standards, but they all spoke in odd ways. Still, he had seen the power she had wielded against the pirates. There was something formidable and terrible within her. She knew things and was taught things that any sane person would never be able to fully comprehend. The Azar territory was full of those same cryptic and elusive things. \nHe chose his next words carefully. “The Azar isn’t a normal place, surely you know that?” \n“What is normal?” \nHe ground his teeth and tried again. “There are things out there that I do not understand-” \n“Maybe try again to understand them.” \n“-things that I was never taught. Things that you understand, however, and can guide the ship through.” he finished. \nShe tilted her head. “You’re lost, Captain Forge.” \n“Yes, I’m bloody lost!” he exploded. “I need you to get your ass upstairs and guide the helmsman out of here!” \nShe giggled at his outburst. “Now was that so hard to ask?” she remarked, stepping past him. \nClosing his eyes, he took a deep breath. If he didn’t need her alive, he might have thrown her overboard a week ago. He turned and followed before she reached the top deck. \nOutside, the cool night air touched his skin, and the familiar wood and crystal core scents were replaced by what he could only describe as the color blue engulfed him. The ship sails bent at awkward angles as if the wind was coming from multiple directions. Something howled in the distance and his hand instinctively went to the handle of his saber.\n“It’s alright Captain. The Abyss Whale is far away and hasn’t scented us,” she said. \nHe relaxed, but only slightly, and watched as she examined the surrounding sky. \nHe had spent years aboard this ship. The Wolf was his home, and he’d learned very quickly from a young age to read the stars. They were a map, always pointing him where to go, and showing him exactly where he was. \nThe Azar sky was nothing like the stars he was used to. \nIt was as if someone had taken a giant paintbrush and smeared water across the night sky. Shades of dark blue mixed with black, and flecks of the remaining stars tilted and swirled among the mixture. It was beautiful, and he had to force himself not to stare at the wonderful, awful, and mesmerizing texture that had ruined his familiar sky. He had already sent most of his crew below deck simply because they were unable to fight the hypnotizing state it put them in. \nThe Kristl blinked up at the stars, then shifted her gaze to the stars below the starboard side. She counted silently on her fingers and then looked up again. Just when he thought it was a lost cause she announced, “Hmm, it appears the wind is upside down, Captain.”\n“What is that supposed to mean?” \nShe looked up to where the helmsman stood. “Flip the sails upside down then sail backwards,” she stated like it was something he should know. “It’ll take us forward and further in.” \n“Wait, wait.” He shook his head. “We don’t want to go further in, we want to get out.” \n“Mhmm. We get out by going in.” \n“That doesn’t make any sense!”\nShe giggled again and climbed the stairs to get to the helmsman. “When does it ever?” \nHe ground his teeth and climbed the stairs after her. If only those bloody pirates had never shown up, he wouldn’t be in this situation right now!\nUpon reaching the helmsman- Mr. Redsmith- she ordered, “Flip the ship upside down.”\nThe older gentleman's weathered and cautious face glanced to the Captain. “I thought you wanted the sails upside down?”\n“Turning the ship is easier,” she answered. \n“Do as she says,” grunted Forge. \nMr. Redsmith swallowed, but swung the wheel of the ship and everything violently tilted. \nThe Kristl placed her slender hand on the railing and a second later Forge felt his balance return. While everything spun, gravity remained solid within the ship. The only indication that they were flipping upside down was the violent whirlpool that was the night sky. \nThe ship leveled out a moment later.\n“Take us in, Mr. Redsmith,” she ordered. \nAfter another reassuring nod from the Captain, the helmsman obeyed. Almost instantly the sails caught a gust of wind and the ship lurched forward. If it hadn’t been for the Kristl keeping gravity working Forge was sure he would have been knocked off his feet. \nAfter a few minutes of the wind steadily pushing The Wolf forward, Forge asked, “How long till we’re out?” \nShe shrugged her gaze focused on the stars. “It’ll be when we’re out.” With her free hand, she grabbed the wheel only to turn the ship slightly. Another gust of wind took the sails. \nHe ground his teeth and prayed he wasn’t putting his hope in a mad person. \nThe same thing howled again, this time sounding closer. \n“The smell of fear is powerful. Don’t let it draw the Abyss Whale closer,” she commented. \nCaptain Forge had never seen an Abyss Whale and he didn’t want to find out. At least not while they were still in the Azar while The Wolf needed repairs. The crystal gunnery wasn’t damaged, but the Core itself couldn’t sustain the kind of power that the blasters needed. Forge didn’t feel like blowing up his ship, so he calmed his nerves. He closed his eyes for a moment and took a few deep breaths. \nHe could have sworn he had his eyes closed for only a few seconds, but when he opened them the ship was the right way up and sailing free of the terrible Azar night sky. When had the ship righted itself?\nWhile relief and gratitude at seeing the real sky flooded him, he glanced at the Kristl with a new weariness in his apprehension of her. \nShe smiled boldly at him. “In to get out,” she simply said. \nHe realized then that so long as she was on his vessel he’d never escape crazy." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: False Gods\n\nGenre: adventure\n\nWord Count: 2998\n\nPrompt:\n\nImagine an origin myth that somebody might use to explain an eclipse, or some other celestial event." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The ship’s log would state that Captain John Tanner was the first to set foot on the newly discovered lands. This was not the case. Tanner was a shrewd and sometimes cunning man. He prioritised survival over the flim-flam of bravery, chivalry and honour. He had a head on him and he used it. His crew, those who were lucky enough to live through the depravations of numerous long and treacherous voyages, would have likely referred to him as dependable. The word would be qualified, but not expanded upon. Not that anyone would have asked the opinions of the braggards and criminals conscripted into the navy, they were mindless scum and barely fit to be sailors.\nThe voyage to these unchartered lands had seen two in every ten of the crew expire. Most of those deaths had occurred in the weeks preceding landfall. Scurvy took many a sailor and although there were clever minds seeking to address this economic issue, their discoveries were thwarted by the thick and choking gases of ignorance. The establishment of facts has always been a tricky business, in a world where opinions and beliefs rule.\nFrom the outset, it was clear that these lands were inhabited. The signs were there, but most of all, the men could feel scrutinising eyes upon them and so precautions were taken. Muskets were loaded and knives and swords delicately and covertly brandished. There was no way of establishing whether the natives were friendly. Everything would ride on the first encounter. Those tasked with first contact were well aware that the guns of the Albatross were trained on the beach and the treeline beyond. This was cold comfort. Cannon balls cared not as to whether they met friend or foe.\nThe interlopers landed on the sandy shore and dragged their boats out of the lapping waters. Once this work was completed, they formed a line and waited. The wait was tortuous, even for the sailors watching from the comparative safety of the Albatross. Not all the men were friends. There were conflicts and disagreements aplenty, even before a word was said and some of those would never be resolved, such was the nature of men. Nonetheless, there was a bond they shared. They were one and they were about to face outsiders. The desired outcome was one of triumph and conquest. The empty hold of the Albatross could not remain so, and the prospect of leaving these lands empty handed carried with it a bleakness that spoke of death sentences for many, if not all of them.\nThe natives were in no rush to make themselves known. Their absence, and the pregnant silence that accompanied it, carried a warning far more intimidating than war drums. Everything could turn in a moment and even the comparative safety of the big ship could not stave off the growing anticipatory fear of the unknown lurking beyond the treeline.\nWhen the warriors of the tribe stepped forward, it was something of an anti-climax. The men were fierce and self-evidently strong, but they carried with them primitive weapons and they stood a full foot shorter than the swarthy sailors. Any fight would be one-sided. Simple lambs to a beachfront slaughter.\nThe two rows of men faced each other, sizing each other up. Any apparent deadlock was avoided then the largest of the natives lowered his head to listen to words from a wizened, dishevelled and strangely garbed man at his side. Having considered these words he nodded, raised his spear above his head and spoke a few words. In response his warriors lowered their weapons and he and his old companion stepped forth.\nFrampton, Tanner’s second in command, also stepped forward. With him was Baker, the ship’s cook. Baker had been lumbered with cooking duties when the original ship’s cook was taken a hold of by melancholy, stole a sizeable quantity of the ship’s rum and jumped overboard one evening three months back. Despite his lacklustre culinary skills, Baker had a way with languages that leant itself well to this encounter. He was also a head taller than Frampton, making up for the officer’s slight build and timid demeanour.\nWords were exchanged and gestures made. It was apparent to all who witnessed it that the natives were curious and rendered friendly in their curiosity. All was well and before the sun had fallen in the sky, a second group of sailors had disembarked and the visitors were treated to a welcome feast.\nWithin a week of the Albatross’s arrival, a series of deals had been made and these included agreements for future trade. The tribe had accumulated a sizeable pile of animal furs that would fetch a good price back home. They sold these cheaply, exchanging them for a small number of useful tools that fascinated them so deeply, the crew suspected that they would become items of worship and never see another day’s work.\nWhen it came time for the Albatross to leave, there was an impasse with regard to the level of provisions the natives were willing to part with. No deal could be reached here because, as the chief of the tribe explained with a series of gestures and lines drawn in the dirt, Winter was approaching and many of the tribe would starve to death were they to part with such a large proportion of the food they had put aside so they could last out past the thaw.\nDispleased with the prospect of inadequate rations for the voyage home, Tanner took himself off to the Albatross. There, awaiting him on deck was Frampton. Without a word, Tanner bid his number two accompany him to his quarters. Tanner had a look about him that would not be denied and Frampton fancied there was murderous intent in the eyes of his captain. He shivered with a premonition of bloodshed as he trotted along behind him.\nWith the door shut, Tanner indulged in the unexpected, pouring Frampton and himself generous measures of rum. He downed his first glass and refilled it before handing Frampton his rum. Frampton raised his glass as a prelude to sipping delicately at the rough and burning liquid. His eyes watered and he fought the urge to gag. \nTanner eyed his man thoughtfully, “there is a solar eclipse the day after tomorrow, is there not?”\nFrampton, resisted the temptation to nod agreement thoughtlessly. Whereas it was wise to defer and please his captain, getting anything wrong could cost lives, his own included, “Higgins has spoken of such.” He thought for a moment, “I asked if it was to be a partial eclipse, but he was adamant that this one would blot out the sun in its entirety.”\nThe captain nodded and smiled a sly smile, “then we will use this to our advantage.”\nFrampton nodded, said nothing. He knew better than to question the captain. The atmosphere in the cabin then drooped and gave itself over to an ominous quiet. This was how Tanner dismissed his men. Frampton gazed down into his glass of rum sorrowfully. Damnation lay below the surface of that cloudy liquid, and it also stood above it. He could not leave his drink, that would not do. He stifled a sigh as he brought the liquid up to his lips and poured it in its entirety into his mouth. He held it there for a moment and almost choked as he sent it on its way.\nThat evening, Tanner dined with the chief. In attendance was the old man who seemingly never left the chief’s side. Tanner did not like that man. He was filthy and smelt, but there was also something knowing about him. Tanner had caught him staring on more than one occasion and the man never averted his eyes. He had no sense of decorum or shame even, and those staring eyes went right into the very centre of Tanner as though the old man were reading the truth of his very soul.\nAs had been the case from the very first day, Tanner was accompanied by both Frampton and Baker. Had Baker been a gentleman, Tanner would have preferred him as his second in command. Sometimes, Tanner found himself at odds with the notion of birth-rights. Frampton may have been born of a gentleman, but he lacked most, if not all of what it took to be one. \nThe group sat around a fire and having eaten, they smoked their pipes. An agreeable activity that aided digestion. Tanner was the first to break the silence, parting the aromatic smoke with his words.\n“We need those provisions,” he said tersely.\nHis meaning was clear and there was no need to interpret his words.\nThe chief shook his head. Whatever he said equated to a single word; impossible.\n“Our gods will it,” Tanner stated.\nBaker stutter-spoke in tracts of the native language and used hand gestures to help convey meaning.\nThe old man shook his head and smiled. Tanner suppressed his own smile. He had anticipated this. In fact, the old man had inspired his plan. Moreover, the plan had the added bonus of Tanner settling the score with him and addressing Tanner’s dislike of the grubby and insolent thing that dared seat itself before him.\n“If you do not acquiesce to our requests for food,” Tanner said across the fire, “our gods will blot out the sun to show you their displeasure. This will be a warning that you would be foolhardy not to heed as our gods are all powerful and they will not be denied.”\nHe placed increasing emphasis on each word and when finished he nonchalantly brought his pipe to his mouth and relaxed into his smoking. His point had been made and he effected an air of detachment, even as he studied the response his words would have as Baker relayed them.\nHe was rewarded with looks of shock and of fear. The old man babbled words into the chief’s ear. Tanner looked askance towards Baker, but the man only shrugged in reply. But then Tanner knew all he needed to as the old man skuttled off, giving the captain a swift, churlish backward glance before opening the flap of the tent and retreating into the night. Victory was Tanner’s, and now he revelled in the old man’s defeat.\nThe chief spoke briefly, and then he too left his own tent.\n“What did he say?” Tanner asked Baker.\n“They want to see just how powerful our gods are, sir.”\n“Then they will,” replied Tanner before rising and returning to the Albatross.\nThe following day, the entire ship’s crew formed on the beach and as the time of the eclipse approached Tanner gave forth a rousing speech. His timing was impeccable. Just prior to the moon drifting across the sun he raised his arm theatrically and bellowed “Behold!”\nThe men fell into an awed hush. Sailors are a superstitious lot. The sea is a cruel mistress and they do their very best not to displease her. There were many signs of the cross and whispered prayers as day fell to an unnatural and unwelcome darkness. \nDisconcertingly, as the last of the sun succumbed to the shadow of the moon, the tribesmen broke into an unholy hullabaloo. They wailed and they screamed and they danced around small fires waving torches as they jigged this way and that.\n“They’ve lost their minds!” exclaimed Frampton.\n“Wouldn’t you in the circumstances?” replied Tanner.\n“Well, yes. Quite,” said Frampton, but he was taken with a notion that did not quite fit with the captain’s plan and would have voiced that notion had he had the good fortune to spot the look on the old man’s face in that very moment.\nAs the light of the sun returned, the chief approached Tanner and bowed. In his hands he held a ceremonial pipe. This he offered to Tanner whilst remaining in a pose of supplication and humility.\nTanner took it from him and gave thanks.\nThe chief spoke.\n“What did he say?” Tanner asked Baker.\n“They want to hold a feast in your honour,” Baker told him.\nTanner nodded, the tide was turning. His plan had worked. These primitive natives now believed that Tanner’s gods had the power to turn out the light of the sun. He cast an eye around for the old man, but was deprived of the sight of him. He smiled at the thought of the defeated old man skulking off in the aftermath of his defeat. Good riddance to him. He was nothing to Tanner now. A busted flush.\nIn a matter of minutes a procession of tribesmen returned with food. Pride of place was a roasted bull, the sight of which prompted a cheer from the crew of the Albatross. The prospect of a fresh cooked meal was always welcome, more so when the men knew they were about to embark upon the return journey home. A journey that would necessitate many hardships, including the consumption of food not fit to grace the trough of a hog.\nAs the light of the day waned, gourds were produced as though from nowhere. \n“Seems they want to toast our gods,” smiled Tanner as he clapped Frampton on the back, “tomorrow we will take our provisions and leave this place. We will return home and we will both be men of means.”\nThe gourds were passed around from native to sailor and there was much coughing and spluttering as the coarse spirit was downed by the sailors. It seemed that even the most hardened rum drinker found this native delicacy to be potent and none quaffed it with any semblance of ease. The tribesmen however had no such trouble.\nThe chief handed Tanner an ornate gourd and urged him to drink. Tanner looked about him as a sudden quiet descended upon the assembled party. Solemnly, he raised the drinking vessel and made a point of drinking well from it. Try as he might, he could not hold his composure and he coughed and spluttered as though his chest would burst. The sailors gave forth with a loud and raucous roar of appreciation of their captain and through tear filled eyes he saw his men beaming at him. In that moment he experienced a feeling of companionship like no other. He wanted to capture that feeling and hold onto it for as long as he possibly could, and so as it dissolved all too soon, he experienced a crushing sense of loss.\nIn that fugue of loss the old man appeared and with him he brought an inexplicable feeling of dread, even before he smiled a sickening smile at Tanner. Something was very wrong here. So very wrong. \n“Something is afoot,” Tanner said the words but they stretched and contorted and made no sense as they tumbled from his gummy mouth. He raised a hand to his lips as though to make sense of what was happening, “Frampton?” he said with a milky meekness that shamed him.\nIt was with much labour and strife that he manoeuvred himself into a position to view his number two. What he saw undid him further. The man was there, but he was not there. He was taken with a vacancy that horrified Tanner. He tried to distance himself from the absence of the man, but his limbs no longer obeyed him. There was commotion about him, but he could make no sense of it. The world was slowing to a stop and in the moment that it ceased all motion, a moon eclipsed the light of the dying sun. It was the pockmarked face of the old man, and now, as this man spoke, Tanner understood every word.\nOur gods are strong and they are knowing.\nWith the only movement left available to him, Tanner fell backwards so that he was lying on the sands of the beach, staring upwards into the heavens. With unblinking eyes he bore witness. He bore witness as the earth began moving backwards. He felt the movement underneath him and then it crept inside of him and possessed him. \nHe sensed the approaching darkness more than saw it and he understood what it meant even before the sun was blotted out once again. He had lied in an attempt to gain what he thought he had an absolute right to. He had committed heresy and demanded the sacrifice of these people. Now they and their gods would make him and his crew pay for those lies and that heresy. There would be a sacrifice, but it would not be the natives of this land who gave their lives, it would be the entire crew of the Albatross.\nWhen the moon face of the old man loomed over him one last time, it was not his face that Tanner observed but the wicked blade that he gleefully brandished. His fears of a cut throat were unfounded though, the old man would afford him no such mercy. His gods demanded a much higher price than that and he would exact it with zealous fervour. \nAlthough numbed by the liquid he had been invited to drink, the pain he experienced at the hands of the old man was amplified a thousand fold. Before his mind eventually broke and turned in on itself, he found himself wondering how it was that they had all drunk the same poison and yet the tribesmen had not been affected.\nThe answer came to him before the darkness of the second eclipse fell upon the land. Their gods demanded a sacrifice and those gods would choose who lived and who died via the imbibement of that magical and holy liquid. He felt it inside him now. Invading and manipulating him. Consuming him from within. Tendrils slipping upwards into his brain and playing with his thoughts and memories until they crashed into each other in a chorus of exquisite pain and madness.\nAnd then the sun was no more." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Time Machine\n\nGenre: african-american\n\nWord Count: 1175\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about someone who wishes they could turn back time." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "(Sensitive content regarding a child drowning).\nIf I could I would. If only I could turn back the hands of time. Things right now would be so different. You my darling would be able to see the pretty vibrant sun every single day. I would get the pleasure of being the old me that I once was when I was so very happy, and you were so very happy about life. I would get to be the old me who got the honors of seeing your pretty, big smile. To be able to hear your little sweet voice would just be the perfect music to my ears shall I say. I would have gone back into time to August 11, 2018. I never knew a pain that was so unbearable until that date. You see back before August 11, 2018, things were so much better. You were still here, and I would get to see my best friend in the whole wide world. I would have hugged you a little big tighter and a little big longer had I knew what I know now. Back then I would smile so big, and it was a smile that made you feel like the prettiest little girl in the whole wide world. I would have read to you more and got to laugh with you more if only I could change the hands of time. My Darling I never knew that something like this would even exist in my world. That day, August 11, 2018, is when my whole damn life came crashing down on me to where it could not even be repaired easily. Hell, at one point I thought I was at the point of no return because how the hell were I supposed to go home without my precious dear child, my baby girl, my firstborn, my precious best friend in the whole wide world. How the hell was I supposed to tell your friends and the family that you were gone already. I would have turned back the hands of time, my dear you must know this. Every single night I would just wish that this were all just a big misunderstanding or perhaps it was just a hell of a bad nightmare that I just knew I would awaken from. Somebody, please wake me up because this cannot even be real. I know I must be dreaming but this feels so damn real. Why cannot I just go back to the day so that I could firmly tell you no. No, you cannot go with your friends today, you must go with me to church so that we can get our cool little tee shirt and hear the word that we love to hear. I would get down on my knees and just pray to the lord that he will grant me my one time wish to bring you back home by going back in time and turning the hands back. Then I must bring myself down to reality because in the real world there is not a real way to even go back into time. Oh, how I would love to own a true time machine. I wish I could go back into time because you loved the life you had no matter what. You were a person who had so many pure intentions, intentions to be a good daughter, a good friend, a good granddaughter and even a good sister to your siblings who loved you so much. There was so much time left and you deserved to live a long happy fun life. These words cannot even describe how much I just wish I could really go into a time machine to turn back the hands of time. Your life was so short lived, and it is so unfair that you had to leave me so early. One thing that I can say Is that even at the age of 12 you understood the importance of life and how important it was for you to live your life each day and to love your family and your friends. So many people came out to honor you and show support to me, your mother. No one will ever know how much I crave to bring you back and that is why I wrote this. I wanted to express my thoughts about how badly I want to go back to August 11, 2018, to change to outcome so that you would not have drowned. August 11, 2018, is the day I lost you and it was a sad day because not only did I lose you, but I also lost the woman who tried to save you. It was a two-person casualty, and it was the worst day in my entire life. If I could my darling, I would turn back the time to love on you more and to show you how much you really meant to me, my daughter. I will never understand this because this loss was out of turn. No Mother should ever have to bury their sweet child. You see I would change it and make it be me that was supposed to have drowned in the Meramec River at Castlewood State Park. I write this little, short story in hopes to share with someone how hard it is to lose a child. Even though I struggle with this I know that I will never be able to go back into time. The thought of even being able to do so is just satisfying and what a way to use my imagination. The thought of having a superpower to have a time machine to go back into time is a very nice thought and a very great way to express my feelings that I sometimes tend to keep bottled up inside. I do not want to keep repeating myself, but I am the character in this short story. You can call me Lala, a woman who wishes she could most definitely change the time to be with you and to be the happiest woman that I once you to be. You are my sweet angel, Deniya Johnson. I will always be your mother and I will always long for you to be with me but until we meet again, continue to watch over you family. I will continue to wish that just for once, just for a day that I could go back and change the time and then my darling you would still be mine and still be here. As I close this little, short story I reminisce on all the good times that we shared and all the precious memories that we once made. I will always love you and I will aways continue to honor not only your life but the legacy that you left here on earth. You left your mark here on earth. Signing out, the grieving woman who will always have a wish that I could go back into a time machine and change the day that you left me." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Hands of a Sailor\n\nGenre: adventure\n\nWord Count: 2937\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story in which a character navigates using the stars." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I sat in front of Dobie as he got animated while telling his tale of the Turtling hurricane that he survived. I know a little was going to be from his imagination but I sat to hear the tale of a real storyteller on a starry night with a warm breeze against my cheek and the gentle rock of my ketch in the change of tide swell. He took a gulp of rum and began with a nod of head.\n‘The wind started to go all wrong and Cop’n had to order a reef in the main. Then he had to order the jib topsail down, then another reef. The seas were kicking up with the wind against the current and the confusion from the reefs way behind us they said. We pulled down the foresail and the outer jib and charged through with just the main, foresail and inner jib. It was wet sailing on a dry boat as they say. But it didn’t stop there, no. Soon, it was wet from above and decks awash, and a howling that pushed the schooner steadily sideways. We found it tiring just to sit on that bumping, slanting deck. We had to pull all sail down, and off, and stowed, as best we could, below decks. We were now just hove-to with the handkerchief of a heavy staysail stropped to the main mast and pulled tight amidships to keep our head on and slanted to some monstrous waves. \n‘The bowsprit stuck into the seas and put our decks completely awash with us hanging on to anything we could. Cop’n and Uncle Tubby were at the helm struggling to keep her at the right angles to the seas as we would go up and up into bright turquoise, then race down into a valley of dark green. We could see fish and even sharks and tortle in the waves turning over and over. My Junior Tote was gone along with his mates as the deck was cleaned off. A Nor’wester was what it was or a hurricane was what I was later told since it was the wrong time of year for a Nor’wester.\n‘Cop’n changed course as we went down a wave and put us on a beam reach with the waves surfing us but the bowsprit was out of the water and we almost stayed still but we were pointing away from our destination and toward the reefs again.\n‘I have to say though… that I liked it. No, I loved it. The wind and seas flying, the taste of salt something close to being really free, you know. With the wind on the beam you could stand up again and I remember standing there in the waist by the lee rail. That storm jib was strained and wet and shiny. The seas were foaming by us, aside us, under us. They had to be at least twenty foot and we just went up and up, then down, then up. The sky cleared and the rain stopped and the wind lessened a bit but Cop’n did not turn back the course at all.\n‘I volunteered to take the helm, some of the boys were below and I think scared but I was almost in heaven in that storm and wanted the feel of control the wheel gives. There were always two of us throughout that day and we were not going forward much just enough to keep the vessel controlled, you know. The teeth of those reefs were still where they were and we did not want to be near them, so no more sail went up until evening fell. Cop’n made the boys come up on deck and set the forestaysail, but kept the storm staysail up, as he turned us back toward Key West since the waves were lesser now. I was sure we were out of it now and was even joking with Tote about being in a real storm at sea. Uncle Tubby heard me and said we were not in the storm yet. That there was a hurricane coming up and Cop’n wanted to get us as far away from the reefs as is possible before it hits.\n‘I saw him tying two axes and a couple of machets to the main mast and an axe to the foremast. Tote told me we might have to cut the masts out. I had heard of that but when you are there it doesn’t make much sense and it too unreal, you know? When Uncle Tubby passed I called to him and asked if we would be cutting out the masts. He said if we have to but this hurricane was coming and Cop’n wanted to keep trudging toward Isla Pinos so we might have to cut them out. Uncle Tubby was of the opinion that we should reach over to Rio Largatos and hide in the mangroves over West in the Yucatan, in Mexico. But he knew it was not to be. Cop’n was a hard man to change his thoughts and was going to try for Isla Pinos and the reefs off there. Cop’n, Uncle Tubby said, thought the reefs would protect us since they would give us a windward shore. Thing was, Uncle Tubby said, hurricanes travel in a circle which could also make the reefs a leeward shore. It was too much of a gamble, he thought.\n‘Part of Cop’n’s reasoning was that we had already lost all the tortle on the deck and would have to try and get some at Isla Mujeres after the storm but Uncle Tubby felt that we might lose some time at Lagartos but still be alive. This was all exciting to me. Tote thought I was nuts. The seas grew again. Their power was truly grand, no, not just grand, more than that. It was threatening, menacing like it was alive and completely focussing on us. The seas pulled the sky down until you could not tell the difference. The seas were in command and made everything loud and black. Night fell and the hissing and howling made me scream and now I was scared. I was scared. I had to pee but couldn’t move. I couldn’t see anybody though Tote and Uncle Tubby were right next to me pulling on me to get down. Life was a screaming blur, man.’\nDobie stopped and looked around. He drained his rum and looked around again, then down to his hands that were shaking. He looked at me and shook his head with his mouth open, then smiled.\n‘Whoa, that was something, man. That was a true memory there, Rod. Man, I was there again. They say you can’t really remember a hurt or a fear but that is definitely not true because I just went through both. I was there and a tortle log flew at me and hit me in the arm. Uncle Tubby was yelling at me. I looked around at blackness and felt the cabin top, trying to raise myself up but being pushed down by wind. Wind. Wind pushing me like I was a piece of paper. I just felt it all, man.\n‘I don’t know how long I was laying on the deck holding on to the foremast. I don’t remember getting to the foremast. This hand of wind just pushing me straight along the deck with my legs streaming aft. I don’t remember us going up and down waves, maybe because I couldn’t see through the water and wind in my eyes. I don’t know. But the morning came in as the wind increased then dropped to nothing. The seas ran this way and that and Celia just jumped around like a football being kicked between boys. Big old vessel she was, she was still just a football being kicked around. I had to hold on to even get to a sitting position. I only saw a couple of the crew’s heads just above the cabin top forward. The Cop’n and Jamie were at the helm. Their waists were lashed to the wheel box and their heads were hatless and tilted forward studying in the compass, steering by the compass. Jamie looked up. I think he had just noticed the lack of wind. He spoke to Cop’n, who looked up and around and slowly shook his head. It was so hot that my eyes were sweating in the stillness with wavelets jumping all around and Celia bouncing up and down. Then, she settled and the seas lay flat. Uncle Tubby yelled to get the tortle from out of the hold. He was yelling and yelling and saying we didn’t have much time. Get that weight out of the vessel was what he was yelling to us. I ran to the hold and jumped in. Tote was already there. We were lifting two and three hundred pound snapping and scared tortle up to hands above us.\n‘Then the breeze started up and relieved the heat a bit as we hauled and hefted up by their flippers those shelled reptiles. I was glad that they were going back to the sea. Strange at that time to be remembering that I was glad that all of our work and time and pains of mosquitos, no-seeums, loneliness, homesickness was for nothing. I was really glad, man, deeply glad they were going overboard. Maybe I just had to think of something else other then this crap that I found myself in.\n‘The seas started rolling with a rhythm again, they started growing tall as the breeze became a wind, became a gale. We got all the tortle out and could barely gain the deck again my arms were useless and my weight was much more then I remembered. Some hands pulled me out and I looked up at seas as high as the masts charging toward us. Celia rose and rose and rose with us tilted backward. I was holding onto the foremast again and feeling like I was laying against a wall with no bottom for my feet. We started going down the other side and I wrapped my legs around the mast. Things and people rolled, bounced, flew by me. The wind hit hard like a fist against my back. Maybe I have gotten this all out of order, I don’t know. I was there with a wind pushing me and Celia climbing again.\n‘The wind had a soft whistling tune that I remember thinking of some song but could not remember what song. Maybe it wasn’t a song but a train whistle like in the movies. It was a train whistle but with deeper notes, then high pitched notes. It was a wind train charging at us pushing us up and pulling us down. When I looked I could see three men at the helm but did not recognise them because of the water spread across my vision. Then, trying to clear my eyes, I saw it coming from the stern with a clear blue sky above and perfectly outlined by that blue was a white mass of wave top, curling teeth-like, moving much faster then we were and we were not rising. I lashed the loose end of a water barrel line that was tied to an eye on the cabin side around my waist and waited. The wall of water sucked up the stern, lifting it and I could see Cop’n, Uncle Tubby and Jamie at the wheel all three of them with turned heads looking up at the sea.\n‘That was the picture that remains to this day in my head. That was the last I saw of them. I can still see the Cop’n’s white shirt with blood stains on them, Jamie’s chequered shirt buttoned to his chin and Uncle Tubby shaking his head with a corner of a smile showing on half of his face. I think he was just accepting the fact that he was going the way of his father and his father’s father. I want to go that way too, you know.’\nDobie paused after saying that to turn his head and wipe a few tears away that wouldn’t stop flowing. He got up and walked over to the rail and cried up his sorrow at that loss and memory. His back was shaking as he let it out with a moan of deep hurt. After a while Dobie came back, smiling.\n‘Yeah. Well, after that wave the seas got up bad and poor Celia was suffering. Somebody, on their sides so I could only hear them, were chopping at the main mast. Another big wave came and washed over us. No wheel. No Cook-rum. When it finished there was no main mast and the rigging had crashed across the cabin caving in a long streak of torn and splintered wood. Celia had turned to have the waves on her beam because of the mast dragging still connected to her by the rigging on her port side.\n‘The next big wave came and we turned sideways and leaned and she was going down. I, with a clear thought somehow, pulled my knife out and cut the barrel loose from the cabin side. The barrel was basically empty and we bobbed up to the top of the seas. There was wreckage and the foremast top sticking up with a few men clambering on to pieces of board and anything floating. Another wave came and another and another until the big ones all stopped and I was alone, drifting with the barrel.\n‘I saw a half of the cabin top and kicked my way over to it, hauling myself and the barrel up onto the top. There was still wind and a lot of sea but the big waves were only forming at one spot and Celia’s foremast with her wind pennant blowing sweetly was still sticking up there.There was nobody around that I could see but there was a dinghy upended floating a little way off. Somehow I tore off a part of the cabin top and used it as a paddle to get over to it. I got it upright and baled most of the water out with the scupper that was tied to the after thwart. Fishing lines were in a tangle but hooks and line were still aboard. A water cask held a little water in the bottom so I felt I could make do for a while. I broke up more of the cabin top to make paddles and the whole thing fell apart and mostly sank. The wind moderated and I went to sleep in the water in the bilge of the dinghy.\n‘When I woke up it was night again but the wind was gentle and the seas were calm. The half moon stood out like the world was a nice place and I kept trying to piece it all together but couldn’t. When I moved my arms and legs were a source of sharp pain so I just lay there and fell asleep again. The day woke me with heat. I saw that I had a bunch of cuts on my body and my left shoulder was really hurting and I could barely move my arm. I saw where the sun was moving and knew that West would be Mexico so I baled water out of the dinghy as much as I could and got up into the bow and paddled. Later, when I figured it out with the fishing line, I tied pieces of wood from the wood I had saved for paddles and made a short mast then tied my shirt and trousers like a very ill-shaped sail and the dinghy responded and moved forward. I used another piece of my cabin top wood and rigged a rudder and very slowly started reaching toward the bottom of Mexico. I followed the sun during the day and the waxin’ moon at night. Then, there was Orion racing across the sky and the Big Dipper circling the North Star. I could figure where I was but not how far to where I wanted to go. No use worrying about it though, so I just kept moving West.\n‘I would stop every so often to check the fishing line I was trolling with some of my blood soaked onto a strip of shirt. I caught a bonito and ate it too quickly. I vomited in the bilge while I was eating. I used part of that fish as bait and caught a small dorado. I ate a few chunks out of that and cut the rest into strips and laid them on the middle thwart to dry cook like we did at home.\n‘The first night a haze blurred the stars I did start to worry since I could only go by the current I hoped was going West too. That next day I could see that that haze was brown, meaning land and washed my worries away. The stars came out that night making me smile and my heart beat wildly as I saw my current thinking was right. The next day almost at day break I made it to a reef and found a small cut to get the dinghy through. On the shore were people sun bathing and some of the women were topless.\n‘So,’ Dixie had concluded, ‘that’s the story. And, as you can see I am here to tell it.’\n‘You went back turtling for years though, didn’t you?’\n‘Yeah, man.’ Dobie folded his thick right hand across his thick left hand." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Ripples Across The Universe\n\nGenre: adventure\n\nWord Count: 2830\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story in which a character navigates using the stars." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The moon was absent that night. This was a night when the see lapped at the night sky. Kissing it gently until the dark heavens succumbed and there was no way of knowing where sky and ocean began or ended. The two lovers intertwined in a brief embrace that should have been desperate in its stolen transience, but was instead languorous and so hypnotically natural that Glen could no longer remember where the horizon should have been.\nHe stared out across the boat and lost himself in that distant lovemaking. The ebb and flow of the water underneath him gradually rubbed the boat away until he was floating in the depths whilst soaring in the heights. Pin pricks of light were eyes watching him solemnly. The universe witnessing the flare of light that was the blink of his life. He felt his insignificance and it imbued him with a power he had only ever suspected he held. The overwhelming, infinite universe welcomed him, awaiting the acts that were the dance of his destiny.\nIn another life, a realm so far removed from this place he suspected it to be a dream turned sour in the harsh light of reality, he heard muted sounds of destruction. Once, he would have winced at that cacophony of chaos. There was a time when he thought it was his place to stem that tide. He may or may not have been right. But in the end he was forced to acknowledge that to remain steadfast in his defence of hearth and home, and everything that made those things possible, would be a form of madness. He had to accept defeat even though it pained him to do so. Then he remembered that battles were lost in order to win wars. Conceding ground could be part of a plan that led an enemy to their downfall. Let them win, when what was really occurring was the prelude to a crushing defeat. Use the opponent’s momentum against them and bring everything to an end that heralded a fresh beginning.\nGlen sighed a breath into the darkness before him. A notional final breath. A symbol of what was about to come. A moment of peace that he would hold dear for evermore. This moment was his. A reward even before the job was done. Sometimes, time flowed in the wrong direction. Sometimes, you had to take what you were given because the offer may never be made again.\n“I have to say this is very unexpected.”\nReluctantly, Glen slipped from the reality he could have spent an eternity in. A sadness caressed his face and encouraged tears that he had to swallow back. He had had his moment. He could not muster the arrogance to think he would have another. That was an impossibility. He was entirely different now and the person he was, the person he had to be, was not welcome in that place of serenity and beauty. \n“Was there a problem?” he said to Shirley, whilst looking toward the closed hatch.\nShirley shrugged and moved her lips into an approximation of a smile. A well-rehearsed expression that, combined with her cold, scrutinising eyes, was designed to wound.\nMartin was down there. \nTheir son. \nGlen had struggled with those two words for over a decade now. Over that time, Martin had become something other and something else. He didn’t even bear a resemblance to Glen anymore. The transformation had been impossibly gradual. There was a warning of this dark transition, but it wore a disguise of lies. Even as Glen cast his eyes back along the path of their shared lives he could not discern it. Retrospect was itself a lie of sorts. The context of now distorting all that had gone before.\nAll the same, Glen was haunted by the thought that he should have known. His refusal to accept the worst had blinded him. And it had been used against him. Even now, he looked at Shirley and in seeing her for what she really was, still wished for her to be something better. Someone. Someone whole. The way she embraced her brokenness still shocked him, as did the way she drew him in with a promise of something good. A promise of love that had not once been fulfilled. \nFool me once… Glen could not bring himself to complete the phrase. He had been fooled over and over again. But then, he hadn’t been fooled by anyone other than himself and his desire for things to work. His absolute need for love and the connection that would make his life and his very existence make sense. The connection that would alleviate the pain of his being. \nThe one thing that Shirley had given him was pain. All she knew was how to take. She’d created an emptiness that terrified Glen. That void encompassed what had once been their son. Glen saw it pulsing within the boy. He felt it staring balefully through Martin’s eyes, even though the boy no longer looked upon him.\nBy the time Glen registered that something was wrong, he was reeling, drunk with confusion. He knew everything had gone wrong and that he would never have the words for it. He also felt it inexorably moving against him. There was a terrible darkness here and roiling within the darkness was a hungry shoal of lies. Before he even got to grips with what was happening in his own home he understood that there was no going back. There was no fixing this. And that he would never be believed. That last was a crushing frustration. He knew the truth, but no one would ever share that truth with him. They would prefer to go with the stories of the smiling liars. It was easier that way.\nIn these anguished times, Glen still found it within himself to give thanks for all that he had learnt. That in an abusive cocoon of lies he had discovered truth. And in that connection with the truth of the universe, he had found a way to live and that was all there was. The rest was just noise and chaos.\nThe hatch opened and Martin stepped up onto the deck. The boy who was the size of a man did not look at his father. Hadn’t truly looked at him for many a year. He preferred to look down into the depths of darkness that he’d latched onto and would never let go of. Shirley had shown him that place and convinced him that it was theirs and theirs alone. That they were special. Better than the rest.\nGlen remembered better times. Shirley and Glen did not. They had burnt those memories away. The void required sacrifice and past and future were a part of that sacrifice. By the time Glen had noticed something was wrong, he thought that it was a simple case of parental alienation. That would have been bad enough. The thought of a parent weaponising their own child and using them in acts of petty revenge appalled him. \nWhy people did these things was a mystery. That they hadn’t let go of a ball of pain and angst was apparent. People were really bad at letting go, even when they knew they were damaging themselves and others. After all this time, all Glen could say in answer to why? was that people did things because they could. They went with whims and urges and didn’t think and didn’t care. Consequences were for later and consequences were for other people.\nGlen looked from Martin to Shirley. In the depths of his despair, when all he could see was their acts of cruelty and the coldness with which they operated in the world, taking a callous vengeance on innocents, he had thought he could not love them because they had ceased to love. That in being past redemption thanks to their total rejection of the world and all that was good, he could not relate to the monstrous that they embraced with a religious fervour, nor could he connect with the monsters they undoubtedly were. \nHe had returned to this again and again. His struggle with the love of his wife and son troubled and shamed him. He could not give up. That was not an option. In a way, giving up like that would be to join them. But he understood that he could never join them. That they were as isolated as could be. He saw the divisions between them and also within them. All they had was their dark friend. A darkness that could never be a friend. A cancer that they fed and grew and wished to inflict upon him in their addiction for a fleeting buzz that they saw as validation of their betrayal of their very souls.\nIt had taken Glen an age to find their light. Diminished and impossibly small, but they were still there. Stars from a far off galaxy. Stars that were so far away now that Glen would be dead before he could reach them. \nOnce he refound that light, Glen never lost sight of it. There resided his love for them. That was enough. That was all there was. He took solace from the fact that he loved them still. \n“Is it done?” Shirley asked Martin whilst staring at Glen.\n“Yes mum,” mumbled Martin.\nGlen nodded. He could make an educated guess at the destruction that Martin had wreaked below decks and he understood what purpose that was intended to fulfil.\n“Don’t think we’re fools,” Shirley said in the cold monotone she reserved for Glen when they were alone together.\nGlen smiled. He didn’t think they were fools, he knew they were and he knew that was the least of their worries. Their constant anger made them ignorant. Once he’d understood what they were and what they were about, they were simple to predict. They weren’t superhumans using mere humans as a supply to their addiction, they were no longer human. They had sacrificed their humanity to the dark gods. He could see it in their eyes. The emptiness beyond. There was nothing there anymore, barring the fading light of their souls. An eternal light that could never be extinguished, no matter what they did. That light held them anchored in a space that tortured them. They hurt themselves most of all, but blamed others for their pain. Never would they take responsibility for themselves or their actions. They thrashed about in the simplest of traps. Glen pitied them and their miserable existence.\nShirley scowled at Glen’s smile, “whatever you were planning, you’re screwed now. You’ve got no way of getting back to the harbour, not without the satnav.” She smiled that awful, predatory smile of hers, “not without Martin. You need him.”\nGlen shrugged. Shirley had overplayed her hand, she just didn’t know it yet. Glen didn’t need Martin, neither did he need Shirley. They needed him. They always had. That was not to say that were he to go, they wouldn’t find some other poor sucker to draw in and latch upon. \nThat wasn’t to say that he could just walk away. They would never allow that. His total destruction was their aim and if he were to leave, they’d throw everything they had at him and he doubted he’d recover from the smear campaign they concocted. Besides, he was too tired and worn out to start all over again, and maybe there was some belligerence there also. An unwillingness to allow them to win their awful game.\n“You better take the rudder then,” he said to Martin.\nMartin moved forward. Glen watched him. Head down, shoulders drooping. There was a brokenness conveyed in his entire demeanour, but Glen knew better than to underestimate the man. He was strong and he was vindictive. More than a match for most. He may look like a self-piteous loser, but as well as that martyr complex, he was possessed of a god complex and that made him proud and egotistical. That was one of his weaknesses.\nGlen made to step away as Martin approached, but did nothing of the sort. The bowed head act unsighted the younger man and it was a simple matter of using Martin’s forward momentum to send him towards the edge of the boat. The wooden cudgel Glen had been concealing at his side completed the trajectory Glen had planned. He swung the extension to his left arm and it connected with the back of Martin’s skull with a sickening crack. \nGlen watched the thing that had once been his son go overboard. The thing that had been his son but had been broken and twisted into something dark, cruel and monstrous by his own mother. There was no movement from the monster to break its fall into the water, and this fascinated Glen. Survival was the monster’s prime directive. Martin was likely dead before he hit the water. If not, there was no one here to save him. He remained in dark isolation even at the very end.\nGlen turned back to Shirley. Having her at his back even for that briefest of moments made his flesh crawl. She was as dangerous as they came. Even more dangerous than the monster she had made of their son, after all, she’d had far more practice. Her face was another mask. This one a mask of rage.\n“How dare you!” she hissed, “he was mine!”\nGlen met her murderous stare, but said nothing. He held himself in check. She’d just seen her son die and all she could say was that Martin was hers. Shirley was angry because Glen had dared deprive her of what she considered to be a possession. Martin was hers and hers alone. A toy to be used and used badly at that. Now she was without her favourite toy. Glen wondered at that, then realised that he should not. Shirley liked her toy, but she hated the boy.\nHe meant his silence to be reply enough, but the words came unbidden, “he was our son. He was a lovely little boy filled with love and joy. You took all of that from him. You took everything from him. You killed him long before today. I don’t know who did the same to you. You’ve never talked about your parents. Not really. Only that you had a bad childhood, which was an excuse for how you are and reason for me to be sorry for you. What I do know is that the same thing happened to you. All abusers were abused. We all follow the same patterns again and again. I wonder when it all went wrong? A hundred years ago or more? And ever since that initiating event, a parent has taken a bitter and twisted revenge upon their own child for the abuse they received as a child. And so it went on.”\nShirley trembled with rage. There was no mask now, and Glen saw her for what she truly was. Ugly, callous and venomous. Her mouth opened, no doubt to spout vile words. Glen spoke first.\n“It stops now. There will never be another of your kind. Not in this family.”\nShe barked laughter of derision, “you’ll pay for this!”\n“I already have,” Glen said quietly as he approached her.\n“You wouldn’t dare,” she hissed as he stood before her.\nBut the time for words was over and he choked the last of them off. \nThey say, that if you end a person the way Glen ended Shirley, you see the light of their life fade from their eyes. Glen stared into Shirley’s eyes and all he saw was her light. The light was all that mattered. He freed it from the prison Shirley had made for it.\nAfterwards, as Glen looked up at the stars, he fancied he saw two more in the night sky. He didn’t have a clue as to how a sailor might use a scientific reference of the stars to navigate a boat. Even if he did, he would not have bothered with its use. He trusted those stars and he knew the universe had a use for him, so he allowed the stars to do their thing, guiding him towards where he was supposed to be next. He stared into the eyes that peered down at him and lost himself to them.\nFree at last, all three of them. The release from a legacy of pain untethered him from the world and he drifted out and beyond this end. There was a beginning awaiting him somewhere out past those watching eyes. The water rippled and he was reflected a million times in those ripples. The ripples nearest to the boat faded even as a million more ripples travelled out across the entwined, night time lovers. What was done was done, now there was only the truth of the light and a love eternal." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: American Mythology\n\nGenre: african-american\n\nWord Count: 2710\n\nPrompt:\n\nYour character, having abstained from their worst vice (big or small), finds new clarity." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I was ten years old when I ran away to join the circus. The lady who worked from the state came and explained to me what was going to happen to me after my mother died giving birth to my brother Abel. My father had gone north to Alaska to find work, but we hadn’t heard from him in almost a year. \n“Martin Landover.” She addressed me with a smile, “You will be placed at Harper’s Home for Boys. I have a flier for you to look at.” \nShe placed the glossy brochure in front of me. I glanced at it. It had pictures of boys and girls having a good time, but I had a feeling it was a scam. One afternoon on the playground at school, Brody told me that state placements were like a prison, because his cousin Willard had been sent to one of them. He told me that some of the whitecoats would chase him around and if they caught him, they would beat him with leather straps. \n“Doesn’t that look like a lot of fun.” She sang as I sat there silently staring at her. “Someone will come and pick you up in the morning.” \n“Alright.” I nodded as she took the brochure and put it in her bag.\n“We will see you in the morning, Martin.” He tussled my hair before leaving. Once she was out the door, I ran to my room and packed all my worldly possessions into a suitcase I stored under my bed. Clicking the latches on the beat-up old traveling bag, I shut off the lights and walked out the front door into the dark.\nWhen I walked out the door, I became what was known back then as the King of the Rail. It was what I would later call the Great Depression and I was just one of an army of folks who were forced to become travelers of the rail. I must be honest, leaving was not the scariest thing I’ve ever done in my life. I was sad when Aunt Precellia took me to my mother’s funeral. \n“Marty, I wish I could take you in as a favor to my baby sister, Marie.” She went to one knee so she could look me in the eye. She looked a lot like my mother when she smiled, “But Burt and I barely have enough to scrape by. We can’t afford to feed another mouth. We have contacted the state. Somebody should be stopping by soon. I am sorry about your ma and baby brother. They are at peace with the Lord.”\nShe put her gloved hand on my cheek as tears flowed down my cheek.\n“Come on Prissy, we gotta move along.” Uncle Jed tugged at Pricillia’s arm.\n“Just a minute, Jed.” She shook her head, “You do what they tell ya, Marty.” \n“I will.” I promised.\nBut I would not keep my promise. I did not want to go to a place where I was not wanted. There was nobody there who wanted me. Uncle Jed had always treated me as if I was some pickpocket from some alleyway, but the truth is, his pockets were empty except for his hip flask. By the end of the day that too would be empty. \nMy father had left our home in Jerome, Arizona when the mine he had bought failed to produce any substantial amount of copper. Before he went north, my ma was pregnant with my brother, Abel, whom I would never get to know in this world.\nThe train ran out of Flagstaff. Using my thumb, I hitched until I arrived there a day later. One of the drivers along Highway 66 talked about the socialist in the white house as he put his hand on my knee working his fingers due north on my leg. I brushed his hand away, but like a pesky bug, it landed on my knee once again. He tipped his hat when I got out of his Ford pickup near the rail station in Flagstaff. I shuddered and took my suitcase. \n“Hey kid, you wanna head east.” A dark skinned Coleman Porter greeted me at the bench in front of the depot.\n“Yessir.” I looked up at him. Dressed in his whitecoat and cap, he seemed like a giant with his wide shoulders and gigantic head placed on his portly frame.\n“Whacha gonna do when ya gets there?” He laughed.\n“I’m gonna join the circus.” I squinted with the unrelenting sun in my eyes.\n“I was gonna do that too.” His laugh came from a place deep inside his belly. “Instead I came to work for the rail. Y’all gonna be a tightrope walker?” He gave a casual shrug.\n“Clown.” I answered.\n“Oh, I see.” He leaned back and shook his head, “This country is wide and a chile like you could easily get lost. You gocha a ticket?”\n“No sir.” I shook my head.\n“How ya ‘s’pect to get there?” He took a deep breath.\n“I get in a box car and ride for a while.” \n“Dat so? Hmpt, seems to me a dangerous thing to do.” He glanced at me.\n“My ma’s dead and so is my baby brother.” I told him.\n“So sorry to hear that.” He sounded genuinely sympathetic, more than anyone I had contact with since my mother died. “If’n I sees ya get on a train, I has a duty to call the police.” \n“Don’t do that, please.” I pleaded.\n“Why not he’p me out here.” He shrugged.\n“I could.” I nodded.\n“Otis, time to get a move on.” Someone called out from inside the depot.\n“Dat be me.” He winked. “Wanna be my shada?”\n“Yessir.” I stood up and followed him inside the depot.\n“Gotta load Engine Number 17.” A skinny man with an unbuttoned blue jacket pointed to a pile of suitcases. \n“Got me a helper.” He pointed at me.\n“Otis, this is no place for a child.” The man shook his head. His glasses set at the end of his long skinny nose nearly fell off.\n“It be okay, Randy.” He smiled and put his arm around me. Unlike the man who drove me here, he did not seem to have any malicious intent. His hand upon my shoulder was warm and welcoming. “Whacha name, boy?”\n“Marty.” I answered.\n“Marty? I’m Otis Kendall. I’ve worked here for almost twenty years.” He threw the bags on the wheeled cart.\n“Be careful with my bags.” A red faced man warned Otis, “My bags had better make it to Chicago this time.” \n“Yessir, I will make sure.” Otis nodded. \n“He seemed mean.” I whispered as soon as the man stormed off.\n“Folks sometimes don’t know how to talk to folks, Marty.” He seemed sad as he said this. “I wish they would on account it would make things a whole lot easier.” \nI helped him pile the bags on the cart and once all the bags were in place, he put his back into pushing the cart whose wheels dug into the wooden floor making it difficult to move it. I helped by adding my small effort and the cart began to move.\n“Thank ya, Marty.” He chuckled as the cart clunked across the uneven floor.\n“Hey dere, Otis, I sees ya got some help.” A man wearing a Coleman's jacket reading a newspaper on the bench near the tracks waved.\n“Indeed I do, Albie.” He said proudly as he stopped the cart near an open door on the baggage cart, “Dis be the place. You gets inside and I toss up the bags.” \nI did what he instructed me to do and within a few minutes all the bags were on board the train. \n“She be leavin’ in about twenty minutes.” He grabbed the handle and closed the door to the train car. “Headed for Chicago.” \n“Maybe I will go there.” I said.\n“What for?” An expression of sadness overcame his face. “You gots no home.”\n“State lady was supposed to take me to Harper’s Home.” I announced as I stared down at my shoes with a big hole near the toe.\n“Ain’ no place for no young’un.” He put his hand on his chin and slowly shook his head. “I stays in a boarding house up on that hill there.” He pointed. “Maybe I can talk Louisa into lettin’ ya stay.”\n“What’s it like in Chicago?” I asked.\n“Ain’ no place for no young’un neither.” He shook his head again. “Place is full of crime and no good folks.” \n“I can’t stay here.” I dug my hands into the pockets of my trousers. \n“Kid, y’all can stay with me.” He put his arm around my shoulder.\nI worked for the rest of the afternoon, loading and unloading luggage from the trains, but he told me about his life in Alabama as a boy where having dark skin was not considered a good thing. He talked about some guy named Jim Crow and I thought it was strange that a black crow would have something against people with dark skin. Aunt Precillia always talked about the darkies and how shifty and lazy they were. Uncle Jed talked about Klan meetings. It wasn’t until much later I understood what he was talking about. \nLouisa Rawlings was a large lady and if I didn’t know better, I would have swore she was his kin. The house was a two story Victorian painted baby blue on the outside, but inside it was warm and smelled of good home cooking. When I first met her, Louisa came into the foyer wiping her hands on a soiled apron with a big smile pasted on her face, “Otis, glad ya made it in time for dinner. And who is this handsome young man?” She squatted down to look me in the eye.\n“Marty.” I said in a tiny voice.\n“Marty?” She put her finger to the corner of her mouth.\n“He be my helper all af-ernoon.” Otis hung up his jacket on a coat rack near a staircase with a heavy oak rail. \n“I reckon he be in need of a good dinner.” She stood up running her large hands through my hair.\n“Yessum.” I nodded.\n“I pay extra for him.” Otis tilted his head.\n“No such thing.” Louisa shook her head. “I has an extra cot. I put it in yar room, big man.” \n“You an angel.” He kissed her on the cheek. I had never seen a man kiss any woman on the cheek that wasn’t his wife. \n“Go on in. Dinner’s on the table.” She jerked her head toward the kitchen. “And make sure this strong man gets his fair share.” \nShe was talking about me. I was the strong man. I wish I could have been with my ma when she went to meet Jesus. Maybe if I was so strong, I could have kept her from going away.\nThere were three men sitting at a large table in a nicely decorated room. One of the men had dark skin with white hair atop his head. He gave me a sour look as he asked, “And who might you be?” \n“Marty Landover.” I answered, reaching for a warm biscuit.\n“Manners, boy.” He scowled.\n“I see ya met Mr. Swanson.” Otis sat in the empty chair next to me. “We don’t get food until we say a blessing.” \n“A blessing?” \n“Sure, sure, to give thanks to God for this meal before us.” Mr. Swanson said as a smile slowly came to his face.\n“Bud Swanson isn’t such a bad fella.” One of the men sitting at the table shrugged. “My name is Clyde Manning half Negro half Apache.”\n“Careful boy, he’ll take your scalp when you’re not looking.” The third man chuckled.\n“Keep it to ya-self, Noah.” Clyde pointed at Noah.\n“Son, I’m Noah Beecher. Happy to meecha.” He held out his hand and despite my father’s warnings about shaking a Negro’s hand, I felt the warmth when he wrapped my hand in his. \nAfter the blessing, we passed around platters of steaming fried chicken, biscuits and gravy with a helping of “greens” which I ate along with the rest of the meal. Ma used to get on me about not eating my vegetables, but here I was eating every morsel on my plate.\n“Dija enjoy that, Marty?” Louisa asked as she began to clear the plates from the table.\n“Yes’um.” I immediately answered. My enthusiastic response was met by her smile.\n“Glad y’all enjoyed it.” She walked into the kitchen with her arms full of dishes.\n“That Louisa is a great cook.” Bud Swanson winked as he moved the well-chewed toothpick in his mouth.\n“I’ll say.” Noah agreed.\n“Finest cook in Arizona.” Clyde patted his stomach.\nI felt as if I had come home. Otis winked at me too as he lit a cigar.\n“Mr. Kendall, what is my rule about smoking cee-gars in my dining room?” Louisa called out from the kitchen.\nOtis rolled his eyes before answering, “Do not smoke it unlessen I gots one for you.” \n“Do ya?” \n“Right here, ma’am.” He answered as the others around the table snickered. \nLouisa emerged from the kitchen, took the unlit cigar Otis held in his hand and lit it using his lighter. She sat down in her place and took a big puff..\n“Got this lighter when I served in the Great War.” Otis held the silver lighter in his hands. “Weren’t no Negroes allowed to billet with us, but we got killed just like the white soljers.”\n“I lost my brother in that dern war.” Bud said sadly, folding his hands in front of him on the table. It was quiet for a time before anyone spoke. It was as if our silence was in the memory of those who had left us.\n“Ready, aim, FIRE!” The sound of seven rifle cracking followed.\n“Daaaddd, why are we here?” Zack, my youngest son moaned.\n“He was a friend of mine.” I answered remembering how Otis Kendall had saved me from a life changing mistake I was about to make. “He was a decorated soldier.” \n“Just like you.” Jennifer added as she squeezed my arm.\n“I did what I was ordered to do.” I shook my head trying to ignore the silver star hanging from the left pocket of my dress uniform. I was presented with the medal just before my discharge in 1945 from the United States Marines. \nIt was a simple story of someone who reached out and saved a boy from making a mistake and thus changing his life for the better when it would have been easier to just turn your head and let fate take charge. There were so many reasons for Otis to turn his head, but he chose not to even though I was an orphan, my skin color didn’t match his, and I had been raised to believe the traditional mythology that is intertwined between the races. \nWhen I showed up for Otis’ funeral, I got a lot of strange looks from his family and friends gathered to pay him homage, but there was one person who greeted me with the warmth and joy that crossed the color line.\n“Marty!” She ran to me with her arms wide.\n“Louisa.” I buried my head in her shoulder.\n“I’m so happy to see you.” Tears were in her eyes.\n“I came for him.” My voice caught in my throat. \n“I know ya did, he knows it too.” She kissed me on the cheek.\n“Dad.” Zack tugged on my jacket. “Who is she?” \n“A friend from a long time ago.” I told him.\n“I’m Louisa. I knew your dad when he was your age.” She squatted down to look my son in his eye.\n“My age?” He was surprised that I was ever his age, but when she smiled, so did he.\nIt was clear to me at that moment. If Otis had turned his head, this precious moment would not have been possible. Just as Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. once dreamed, there is a way to make that dream a reality, but first we must learn to put aside our beliefs in our American mythology." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: To Be Heard\n\nGenre: adventure\n\nWord Count: 2679\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about a character who risks their life to take a photo." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Content Warning: This story is set during the Holocaust through the eyes of a fictional character. This story will contain themes of violence and death, and depictions of Nazi occupation in Poland, as well as anti-Semitic themes (which I do not support). Extensive research has been done to ensure this text is as historically accurate as possible. Any relation to real people is purely coincidental. Viewer discretion is advised. \nThere are two days in my childhood that time will never take: the day I got my camera and the day it almost cost me my life.\nOn my seventh birthday, after months of begging, my father bought me a beautiful 1938 SIDA camera in gun-metal gray that ran on specialized 33-millimeter film. Upon ripping off the paper wrapping, I squealed and hugged it to my chest, the cool metal pressing nicely against my skin. \n“Now, don’t you go using all the film all at once, Wanda,” cautioned my father. “That type is specialized just for that model, so it’s not easy to replace.”\nTapping the little camera, my mother smiled and offered, “Capture the photos that come with stories.”\nI agreed, despite not understanding her advice at that moment, and spent the following months snapping photo after photo. \nA European green woodpecker— “It flew up on that branch, see? It was so close, mama! You could see all of its colors!”\nA lone white lily— “I’ve never seen one on its own before! Isn’t it pretty, daddy?”\nA star-filled sky— “How many do you think there are?”\nAmidst my photographic adventures, I frequented the library two blocks from my home, run by Miss Ferenz, a widowed woman with tired hazel eyes who enjoyed staring into the sky. Several days per week, I skipped up the old stone steps and met her at the front desk, camera in hand. \n“May I use the darkroom, Miss Ferenz?” I’d ask each day.\n“I still don’t understand why you ask,” she would answer with a smile.\nAll of the library’s books were confined to one wall of shelves at the entrance. Past that, the shelves were bare, covered in dust, devoid of any knowledge they may have once held. \n“Where are the rest of the books?” I once questioned on another trip to the darkroom.\nMiss Ferenz’s eyes widened slightly behind her glasses, holding my gaze for a long moment, contemplating an answer.\n“Another day,” she replied shortly, averting her eyes back to whatever she worked on behind her desk. I ceased to ask any further questions. \n———\nBeing the youngest on my block, I was barred from participating in games deemed “too difficult” and conversations deemed “too grown-up.” Therefore, I did what any eight-year-old would do: learn to eavesdrop.\n“Did you hear,” began a blonde-haired boy one summer evening, “about those camps the soldiers are working on?”\n“Shush! Don’t let the adults hear you talking about that!” A brunette girl hissed to him.\n“But he’s right!” Argued another, shorter boy, who kept his voice to a whisper I strained to hear.\n“I never said he was wrong,” the girl bit back, “I just don’t want anybody getting scolded.”\nI kept stock-still on my front steps, fearing my presence would send the conversation crumbling to the pavement and I’d lose the “grown-up” knowledge I was receiving. This conversation, shared away from the adults in the darkness, was sacred— I didn’t even dare to breathe.\n“Have you heard, though?” The blonde boy prompted again, his voice having dropped to a whisper.\n“Certainly,” replied the brunette girl. “We all knew it was a joke when they told us they were simply work camps, now, didn’t we? Nobody was going to fall for that.”\nThe shorter boy shrugged and replied matter-of-factly, “Plenty of people fell for it. Why do you think it hasn’t stopped?”\n“That,” added the blonde boy, “and the fact people don’t want to end up in those camps themselves. Those soldiers—“\n“Nazis,” the girl corrected.\n“Those Nazis don’t take kindly to those who defy them. They say you could end up stuck in those camps…or worse,” warned the boy, whom I had never witnessed take anything seriously in his life.\n“How do they kill ‘em?” Questioned the short boy.\nAs the blonde opened his mouth, the brunette cried out in surprise, her hand popping up to point at me. \n“How long have you been there?!” The girl demanded.\n“A bit,” I admitted sheepishly.\n“How much did you hear?” The blonde added, to which I fell to silence.\nThe trio exchanged worried looks and spoke in nearly silent tones for several agonizing moments. They were contemplating what to do with me, weighing the options of what may happen with an eight-year-old sharing some of their knowledge.\n“You didn’t hear it from us, got it, kid?” The brunette finally ordered, turning back to me with what seemed to be anger in her eyes. When I nodded, she breathed a sigh, turned her back to me, and promptly vanished into her home along with the two boys.\nWhilst reflecting on that exchange years later, I realized my fault. It wasn’t anger in her eyes frightening my young self. It was fear. \n———\n“Mama, what happens in the camps?” \nI dared the question at dinner some nights after my exchange with the older kids. My mother froze with her fork halfway to her mouth and slowly turned to look at me.\n“Why do you ask?” She questioned, setting her fork on the table.\n“Do they hurt people there?” I pressed.\n“Wanda,” sighed my mother, “they’re work camps. They’re so people can have an easier time finding jobs to make money. Who told you people were hurt there?”\n“Word on the street,” I lied.\n“Regardless,” my father interjected, “it’s not our problem.”\n“But people say—,” I started, only to be promptly cut off by my father.\n“People are making up stories. Don’t worry about it,” he growled.\nI shut my mouth.\n———\n“Agata!” I called the following evening, catching the brunette's attention as she was climbing her steps to return inside. Her eyes met mine for a brief moment before flicking away.\n“You better not have snitched, kid,” Agata warned.\n“No, no, I didn’t!” I assured her. “I have a question!”\nAgata considered me for a moment, one hand on her home’s doorknob. \n“What about?” She questioned.\n“The Nazis,” I answered.\nAgata came down from her steps and beckoned me to the middle of the street. I jumped up from my own and hurried over. She knelt to meet me at eye level, for she was twice my height.\n“What do you want to know?” She asked in a hushed voice.\n“What do they do to the people in the camps?” I asked, matching her tone.\nHer eyes scanned the quiet street, then returned to me.\n“I’m only telling you this because I trust you won’t snitch, all right, kid?” When I nodded, she continued with an answer.\n“Well, the word on the street is that there are two camps: one is a labor camp, and one is a death camp. At the death camp, they haul people in on trains, make them strip naked, and gas them.”\n“Gas them?” I gasped.\n“Yeah, lock them in little rooms and fill them with poisonous gas, or so I’ve heard. You’d need to ask a Nazi, and they’re not going to tell.”\n“Why do they do it?”\nAgata stared at me for a long moment— how sick I was of silence! Then, with a heavy sigh, she muttered an answer:\n“Because they can.”\n———\nTwo nights later, after dinner, I posed the question about the activities in the camps again, only to be met with the same story as before. The tone of my mother’s voice and the sternness of my father’s gaze should have warned me to shut up, yet I ignored this fact.\n“Well, I heard people get gassed in the camps,” I blurted.\n“Where did you hear that?!” My father barked, suddenly appearing in the living room from the kitchen.\n“Word on the street,” I lied again. “Is it true?”\n“Honey, those are just stories. Besides, it’s none of our business,” my mother explained sternly.\n“Why is it none of our business?” I pressed on, my voice rising. “Shouldn’t we be helping people if they’re in trouble?” \n“Nobody is in trouble, Wanda,” my mother exasperated.\n“Then why do the Nazis kill people who defy them?!” \n“Enough!” My father roared, “Wanda, I’ll break that damn camera and get you a doll instead if you keep this up!”\n“No!” I cried, clutching my camera to my chest, my little arms wrapped around it like ropes.\n“Then quit talking about Nazis and camps and killing! It’s none of our business, got it?” My father commanded, eyes full of a rage I’d never seen before.\n“Got it,” I muttered begrudgingly.\nI did not sleep that night; rather, my camera and I concocted a simple plan: if I wanted to be heard, I would have to prove it.\nThe following morning, my father must have believed I had already left, for I caught the end of a conversation I likely should never have heard.\n“Thank God we’re not Jewish.”\n———\n“Darkroom?” \n“What do you know about the camps?”\nMiss Ferenz’s expression became a mix of perplexity and curiosity. Her gaze snapped up to meet mine.\n“Is it true that the Nazis hurt and kill people in the camps?” I asked.\nMiss Ferenz hesitated. My heart raged. \n“Is it?” I pressed, fighting to keep my voice from rising to a shout.\nMiss Ferenz held up her index finger, rose from her seat, and disappeared down the corridor for several minutes. When she returned, she did so with a cardboard box overflowing with more books than she had on the shelves. She plopped the box down on her desk.\n“Here,” she explained, “you cannot check these out nor reveal I still have them, but you may read every word until sunset.” \n“What’s wrong with them? I questioned, pulling a book off the top of the pile.\n“Do you remember when you asked me why the shelves were empty?” Miss Ferenz asked, which I confirmed with a nod.\n“What the Nazis dislike, they eliminate, using the remains as an example to others to display the consequences of not conforming to their beliefs. Fire,” she explained, “is a ruthless destroyer, and its ashes are the remains of what once was and what will never be again.”\nFrom sunrise to sunset, I did not have to worry about losing my camera. I was not restricted to what my parents refused to talk about. Some books spoke of a country across the ocean, dubbed the United States of America, where Miss Ferenz had a pen pal. Several more talked about Poland prior to 1942, much of which I never would have learned until I was older. Each sunset, the books were shoved back into their box and carried back down the corridor— I was unable to follow —and I would lay awake, too restless to sleep, in my bedroom with my camera, tormented by a plan I had yet to carry out. \nDon’t you want to be heard? I’d silently scold myself. You need proof to be heard! \nAt the break of dawn on August 27, 1942, before my parents had even begun to awaken, I pulled on my shoes, snatched up my rain jacket, and set off with my camera on a mission we’d delayed far too long.\n———\nIt took little time for the familiar sights of Wolka Okraglik to give way to disorienting greenery— no path was alike, yet no two looked remotely different. Each turn had me running into trees whose leaves blotted out the sky but did little to shield me from the fat teardrops of water that threatened to destroy my camera and, with it, my only chance at being taken seriously, at being right, at being heard. I hadn’t a clue of where I was going, nor the time, nor what my parents may be doing. I wasn’t even sure if I would make it back at all.\nLarge roots booby-trapped my paths, sending me stumbling through rocks and mud and low-hanging branches that scratched at my skin. Other branches tore at my clothing like mad animals, claws digging relentlessly into the fabric. I swatted at bugs that buzzed by my ears. I wondered if I was truly chasing a fantasy.\nCrack.\nThe birds were silent.\nMy foot rose, revealing what I’d stepped on— a porcelain doll with curly brown hair, bright blue eyes, and an off-white dress…all stained with blood. \nBlood?\nAhead of the doll lay a brown teddy bear with its arm torn off. Blood was splattered on its face.\nBlood.\nI dared a step forward. I dared another, another, another, until I was standing in front of a massacre of dolls and bears and action figures, all covered in varying amounts of blood. From the color alone, most of it was fresh. My stomach twisted with nausea. My eyes widened in horror. My shaking hands brought my camera up to my eyes in a dreamlike state.\nClick. Click. Click.\nA train horn shot through the air, snapping my brain back into action. My camera locked in a death grip in my small hands, I took off through the forest, ripping through branches and roots and soaking leaves. Thunder shook the ground. I wrapped my camera in my rain jacket as the sky opened up and rain poured down in buckets. The wind screamed in my ears. The rain soaked me without remorse. My small body pleaded for rest, but I didn’t stop running until I came crashing into the library again, screaming to get into the darkroom.\nIt occurred to me years later that, in looking for life, I had been a step away from losing my own.\n———\nMy camera and I watched Miss Ferenz bring the little negatives closer to her face, then further away again, then close again, saying nothing. My hair dripped with rainwater, each drop vanishing into the floor like a ghost. I toyed with the band-aids littering my arms and legs and scraped at the mud still on my face. In the agonizing silence, Miss Ferenz slowly turned to face me, and I beamed with pride. \nShe heard me.\nShe gently placed two of the negatives into my free hand, sliding the third one into her pocket. I followed her out of the darkroom, through the lobby, and through the rainy streets of Wolka Okraglik to a small, square-like building just big enough for three. Inside, Miss Ferenz extracted the third negative from her pocket and slipped it gently into a white envelope. She licked along the seal flap, pressed it closed carefully, and took her time writing an address in black ink. She blew on it softly to allow it to dry. She slid it through the mail slot.\n“Who are you mailing it to?” I finally asked.\nMiss Ferenz turned to me, her face lit up with something like a smile.\n“A friend.”\n———\nThe young reporter is practically shaking with excitement.\n“Now, you were eight years old at the time. Did you really not realize how close you were to Treblinka II at that moment?” He asks, shoving his microphone further into my face, which I politely remind him to stop doing. \n“No, I really didn’t know,” I confirm yet again, “and I hate to wonder what may have happened if I had stayed for another second.”\n“Incredible, truly incredible! Your photo is one of a kind! Is it what le you to your career as a photojournalist now, Ms. Brzezinski?” The reporter continues, his words quickening.\n“Most likely, though I’d always loved photography before that, it may have just cemented it,” I reply with a shrug.\n“You are hailed as a hero for your photo, do you know that?”\n“A hero?” I can’t help but chuckle at the label. “I’m no hero. I just wanted to be heard.”" } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: The Mountain that Walked Away\n\nGenre: african-american\n\nWord Count: 2863\n\nPrompt:\n\nSet your story during a month of drought — whether literal, or metaphorical." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I tie the Jerry Can to my back with a cloth belt, which hugs my thin shoulders like a noose. The morning commute to the riverbed is a test of endurance. At eleven thousand feet, the half-hour journey down to the river with the smelly, miserable cows and goats crowding along the roadway is my least favorite part of the day. The dry air and oppressive ninety-degree heat smother me. After school, in the afternoon, I will have to go back for more water, but the weather will be cooler by then.\n\nMy mother, Nima, is caring for my little brother, Junior, who has another fever. He lays on top of the cot, his dehydrated limbs soaked with fever. Nima fans him with a wicker lid and clucks and makes soothing noises until he stops squirming. Junior is severely malnourished. The Doctor has prescribed him to take RUTFs—a paste like peanut butter that comes from UNICEF in a plastic pouch and is rich in protein. The Doctor says it is magic. Junior has been doing better since he got the rations, but he has gotten sick again this week. And with the fever, he cannot keep anything down.\n\nThe cruelty of disease is it robs the body of needed nourishment while the body exhausts its resources and starves the sickness. It is a war of attrition in the sub-Saharan. Does the host have enough reserves to outlast the bug? Before both die? If we can get him well so he can feed, and keep getting down the RUTFs, he can gain weight.\n\nThen, if the measuring tape on his arm says Junior is doing better, I will be able to keep my little brother. Junior sits up, unable to rest in the stifling heat. Nima hands him the last of the silty water from yesterday, which she has salted with minerals, and tells Junior the story of the Mountain that Walked Away to distract him.\n\nNima says, “The mountains were fighting something fierce. Some big rocks were crashing together. The sound of the crashing rocks was terrible, with shaking rocks raining down on the people, like an earthquake. The land in our village rumbled, and the dust of the street rose up like a cloud. The great Imatong Mountain looked down south from Torit. It saw that the land was plentiful to the south. And so, the Imatong lifted itself up and walked down here, away from the fighting to the north. The mountain set itself down, right on top of an evil village, full of greedy herders that were always fighting and hoarding all the food. Killing them all. And ever since, the mountain range stands over our village, its home, to keep the peace.”\n\nJunior sips the liquid, his parched and cracked lips burning from the salt, and he grimaces as he swallows, his dry, parched throat pained by the swallowing. “But Nima,” he says, “Will the Imatong walk away again?”\n\n“No, Junior, the Imatong will stay put, to watch over us. The spirit of your brother Akib has gone into the mountain, and is bonded to our tribe. Akib protects us from the peak of the mountain. He cries out to Alwet for her to unchain the rains and wet the land.”\n\nOur neighbor, Aisha, visits on her way to fetch water, to offer Junior her daily cup of porridge. She leaves it on a stone table by the cot because Junior is too weak to eat it now. The hungry among us are constantly giving up our food to starving people. There is an unexpected deluge of grace and mercy from those of us who live in death’s shadow—when all are close to death—everyone has charity for suffering.\n\nJunior looks up at me and holds out his hand.\n\n\"What is it Bareedak?\"\n\n\"Be safe, Nagat.\"\n\n\"I will.\"\n\n\"And if you are killed, promise me, Habob, that you will go to Alwet and bring down the rains.\"\n\n\"I'm not going to die Bareedak. But, I promise. If I do, I will become the Hujan.\"\n\n\"Yes, Habob. I love you,\" Junior says as I leave.\n\nThe silty drinking water from the river makes us sick. But we must drink it anyway. This is our life in Sudan. Women and girls bear the heaviest burden. We must sustain the family while the men find ways to make money to trade. They are constantly away from home and dare not show their faces unless they have been successful. And all day long, we have no protection. Neither from the elements nor from the other warring men, or from any who might do us harm in our daily travels. We are like the cattle. Expensive and expendable creatures storing up value for someone else to consume.\n\nJanuary is only the beginning of the dry season for us. And there has been no rain for thirty days. As the eldest daughter, in Wuluturu, I must do my chores and collect water before I can attend my classes. My duty to my family gives me hope for better days. But by the time I reach the schoolhouse, I will be exhausted and will have difficulty concentrating. All the time, I will be thinking of Junior. Thinking of how the same thing happened to Akib and how the men in our family fade quickly with the fever. Worrying for Nima. Worrying for myself. Worrying over everything under heaven.\n\nAs I ride along with the train of girls carrying their Jerry Cans on cloth belts or balancing them on their heads, I see a snake on the roadside, stranded and dying. The yellow snake sits motionless, no thicker than a twig, occasionally twitching, but too weak to scramble away from the danger of a hoof or a cartwheel, which would mean its end. I have named the snake, Squirt, and I have seen it all these last five days. Day by day, Squirt has shriveled, growing thinner, until now he is hardly as wide as a lead pencil, like the ones in the schoolhouse. On the return trips, I douse him in a puddle of water, to give him a chance.\n\nI live in a world where the flanks of cows look like thin rugs draped over jagged rib bones. The herders who own livestock are rich, but they must find grazing pastures and water. Desperate to keep their hard-won possessions, the men will fight and kill over land and animals. On these dry mornings, people hobble about, zombie-like, coated in dust, drained of energy and hope, stubbornly clinging to routine and duty. Rising defiantly against nature’s curses.\n\nEven when no rain comes, it falls on me to travel to the well and try my luck. We are lucky to be in River County near the mountain runoff where the water is more plentiful, and the valley is more productive than the barren plains to the north. For that, we are grateful.\n\nFrom the ridge, we can see the IFAD center in the far valley. No one is congregating there today in the bustle of the early morning. IFAD has conflict resolution centers near every roadway, where men in white robes and button-downs can meet and sit at real chairs in circles in the shade, talking out their differences. And their verbal agreements can avert bloodshed.\n\nThe agreements are confirmed by many witnesses and the truces are binding. The consequences of a breach are too severe for any to pay. But what do you do when it is bloodshed or death? What penalty has meaning then?\n\nFrom the ridge, we can also see the white tents of the refugee camps and the black reflection of the reservoirs scattered along the pathways that hug the riverbanks.\n\nWatering holes and reservoirs are spaced out every few miles, to provide a chance to water the livestock on the long journeys from pasture to market. But these reservoirs are still dry this time of year and the conservation pits drain out in the dry season, leaving the animals in a state of predation.\n\nWe can see the men traveling with their parades of livestock, further up the river, to where the reservoirs are still full. But to go that far is to risk being robbed or losing animals to the dry heat.\n\nBoog, our donkey, whuffles and grunts with thirst, as we head down to the riverbed.\n\n“Wake up, Nagat,” Elma says, jabbing my shoulder. Elma is an older girl who always walks by my side. And we are always together, always talking. Divining the moods of the gods. “Wake up, Nagat!”\n\n“I’m not sleeping,” I say, as my eyes close and my body rocks back and forth to the drowsy rhythm of Boog’s bouncy gait.\n\n“Nhialic must be angry with us,” Elma says, “There is no other explanation.” Elma wears only a white thobe, wrapped around her head, covering her thin, bony body from head to toe. Only her black-dusted feet are uncovered and her comforting cheeks protrude like small hills from the flat valley of her face.\n\n“Nhialic frowns on us and has cut the cord between heaven and earth, sealing up the skies,” I say. “Only if we reconnect with heaven and make amends will the connection be restored.”\n\n“Our wars against each other are an offense to Nhialic. Ayum’s winds blow, buffeting Alwet and keeping her in her cave, locking away the rain.”\n\n“Our murders offend. It is right we should be punished.”\n\nWe try not to talk politics openly. But the politics are there, inside the myths and legends, and in the way we tell them.\n\nA group of young men in fatigues, driving a military jeep, armed with Uzis and AK-47s drive down the ridge, and everyone crowds the cliffside to let them pass. They whistle and snicker and spit at us when they pass.\n\n\"If you don't give the young men a place in the village, they will burn it down to feel its warmth,\" Elma says.\n\nI nod my head, wondering if it isn't on fire already.\n\nAtop the ridge, the river tributary from the great Nile River looks like Squirt, a dehydrated snake, thinning in the dry season. Lazily awaiting death. Helplessly suffering predation. It gives its life as a living sacrifice to the bold and smoldering sun, which roasts its shores and burns its rocks to a dusty blood red.\n\nWe crest the ridge and travel down the path to the riverbank. Then, we wait for the others to fill their cans. Finally, we take our turn. I make sure to fill my can to the brim. Then I use a rope to tie my can to Elma's and balance the two 5-gallon cans on Boog’s back, placing a small towel underneath the rope.\n\nBoog whuffles and snorts at the weight.\n\nI pet Boog’s haunch and walk beside him, as we head back.\n\nI return on foot to ease his load. Without Boog, these travels are almost unbearable. Carrying the heavy jugs by hand is too exhausting for one my size.\n\nIn Sudan, the things we carry with us are all unbearably heavy.\n\n* * *\n\nWhen I return, Nyaguey is preparing the water lilies. The green bulbs and red, furry roots are sharp and thick and not fit for eating. Aunt Nyaguey expertly cuts off the corky rind of the dried plant. And begins the process of grinding the petals to flour. She pounds the petals against a rock mortar and uses a wooden pestle to mash down the contents and make the flour.\n\n“There had been goat meat,” I say to Nyaguey.\n\n“Mira, the she lion, came last night and got the meat,” she says.\n\n“Didn’t Nia make a sacrifice to appease her?” I ask.\n\n“There was nothing to sacrifice,” Nyaguey says.\n\nIf I die, my kujur will reincarnate into a goat, a great gray Khaya tree, with its branches opening like an umbrella, to soak in the sun as it travels the sky, or maybe I will return as rain or fire, or another great lion. And if I reincarnate, these elements will be bonded to my family. Will protect them.\n\nUs Dinka believe that the she lion that scavenges in our village is our family member, Medina. We must sacrifice to her spirit, so she will stay away from our livestock, will not hunt our little ones, or steal the little meat we have to sustain us.\n\nIf I am faithful to my duty, one day my soul will remain and watch over my people, and they will honor me with sacrifices, so that I can mediate with Nhialic, and with luck, coax Alwet from her cave, unleashing the life-giving rains.\n\nWalking back on the path, I look for Squirt, but she is gone now. I wonder whether a desperate scavenging bird has taken her, or whether she has become grease for the wheel of a donkey cart.\n\n* * *\n\nSalva gathers the villagers, and our teacher, Hanan, brings us all out to see this momentous event. There are rumors that Salva will bring a team from overseas to make us a proper well, to bring clean, clear water to Wuluturu. But it is too much to hope for.\n\nIf they build this well, will it be too late for Junior? Will the soldiers come and take all the water for themselves? Will they charge us a fee for what we need to live? There are so many questions.\n\nDep is one of the elders. Jonah is another teacher from the local school. Dep and Jonah gather everyone around for a serious meeting. Salva was one of the “Lost Boys” who had emigrated to the United States. He arrives with an entourage and strides into the clearing like a celebrity, walking around the circle of onlookers and speaking with sweet words about how everything will go and what it will be like when the water flows from the ground.\n\nWhen you bathe once a week, the drying wind and dust, and even the shade of trees help with the pungent odor and gritty, filthy feeling of being cooked in your own juices.\n\nIn the brick schoolhouse, the pungent odors stew, and we keep the windows open so that the breezes can give relief.\n\nNow, as we all shuffle out to the meeting, into the hot midday sun, we can smell Salva’s aftershave all the way from the door. A musky strong chemical scent that is like perfume. It smells like money.\n\nAfter the meeting, we return to our studies. But everyone is talking and passing notes. Everyone is excited. They are distracted. Mesmerized by the promise of change. All smiles and giddiness. I do not dare to put my faith in such promises.\n\nAll I can think of is returning to the riverbed to fetch more water so we can give Junior back his strength before it is too late for him.\n\n* * *\n\nWhen Elma and I return to the village, there are many women outside our hut. My stomach feels like it is filled with rocks and a surge of electric storms through my arms. I clench Boog’s leash and grip it so tightly that I can feel the thinning skin of my palm rip apart where the leather digs into it.\n\nNima runs out to me and hugs me, just like she did before when Akib went ahead of us.\n\n“Oh, Nagat,” she says. Precious wet tears drip down her face.\n\n“What is it, Nima?”\n\n“Junior rose up and walked away to the south,” she says. “He tried to wait for you, but his kujur wanted to find peace in the mountains.” This is just what she had said with Akib.\n\n“No, Nima. I just saw him this morning, sitting up,” I say.\n\n“He was too weak, Nagat. He closed his eyes and lifted up his soul to inhabit Imatong. To watch over our people.”\n\n“No!” I say. And I pull away from Nima and look back over at the Imatong Mountains. I curse Nhialic. I curse Alwet. And all the other gods. I curse the Sudan. I curse the drought. The dust. The pardonless sun. As my eyes burn with rage and burst with a single salty tear, I clench my fists and I stomp my feet in the dust.\n\nAnd then I hear a rumble above me.\n\nThe gray, groaning clouds open.\n\nA torrent of cold rain pelts down.\n\nIt rolls down my face and back. It mixes with my tears. I feel as if steam will rise from my head, as I feel the burning fever in my limbs. A well of anger as deep and broad as the agonies of the sub-Saharan plains.\n\nNima and Elma and all the others hold up their hands in gratitude and utter prayers. They dance and sing.\n\nWhat had I done that Alwet could not have unshuttered the skies a day earlier?\n\nI know that this is my brother telling me it will be alright. I know that he is watching down over me.\n\nBut somewhere in my kujur, the last drops of stagnant hope evaporate and heave upward into the tormenting skies." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: My Oasis\n\nGenre: african-american\n\nWord Count: 1757\n\nPrompt:\n\nSet your story in a bar that doesn’t serve alcohol." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "My mouth had been dry, and I couldn’t tell when last I’d a tipple. In fact, a long time ago, all the bartenders in all the bars along the strip knew who I was. They knew me so much that even a drink was named after me: Top Me Up, a mixture of rum, coke, orange juice with a splash of gin and a lemon wedge on the glass’s rim. Talk about blowing one’s head off. My concoction was something I’d been introduced to while away. I’d made all the bars notorious because of that one drink and partygoers from far and wide would visit the strip and ask for TMP, rather than TMU, since TMP rolled off the tongue. I don’t know who made up the name but TMP it was, and I became the TMP Man. A moniker I took with pride every time I returned home.\nWhen I’d ventured from my apartment, everywhere looked new. New apartment blocks stretched high above my head, with black and white patched windows. Some residents home, some still yet to make it home or were out like myself, trawling the strip. Heavy traffic had slouched beside me. It was cold. I’d checked my watch. I’d been early. Vehicle horns had blared as if that would get the drivers nearer to their destination or rendezvous. A dark sky had introduced slanting rain and it had me slouched deeper into my winter coat. The city’s noises had me on edge and I’d shivered and tugged at the scarf around my neck. Thinking back, that had been an unconscious action. Maybe I wanted to keep myself safe. \nI was taken aback when I saw my usual haunt’s new façade, it was different to when I last saw it. I’d stood outside staring at the large picture window with its new sign in big, bright orange letters: Mingles. A number of tall metal fire columns with orange-red blaze atop, warmed the area and a canvas awning covered ornate metal chairs and tables with seated patrons still in their jackets and coats - laughing and drinking – looking as cold as me. I’d wondered if they were consuming TMP. It was a new kind of crowd. Young, trendy, stylish. I’d felt out of place, why I hesitated outside staring at a new reality. Like most, change was hard to digest, especially when it came to your regular drinking hole. My oasis.\nIt was Bob who saw me. He’d stood in the doorway as large as I remembered him but older.\nHe’d said: ‘Nigel! That you? Long time man! What are you doing in the rain, staring at the place? Come in!’\nI faltered. I didn’t like the look of the place or the people. It made me feel old and they made me feel out of place. One of my coat pockets had a hole. Nonetheless, it was Bob who came out into the rain, grabbed my arm and hauled me into my one-time drinking haunt with its new face.\nBob had threaded through the contemporary tables and chairs. They were new. Dim lighting was strategically placed on the walls and ceiling, and a hardwood floor looked polished and modern. At the far end, a long polished wooden counter. I knew nothing of wood and wondered if it was mahogany, cedar or pine. I smelt a rose aroma – incense. The high bar stools in front had padded seats with metal stands. All new. No rustic décor like before. If being outside I’d felt out of place, it was worse inside and if it hadn’t been for Bob, I would’ve made quick my escape.\nInstead, he’d plopped me onto one of the high stools, went behind the bar and said: ‘We no longer sell alcohol.’\nI stared at him. For sure, he was older. Dark skin, medium height, crow’s feet meandered from his eye corners and a salt and pepper beard and hair with his portly stature, made him look much older than I knew him to be. He looked like a sage. I wondered how I looked to him.\nHe shook his head, a sad look in his hazel eyes. ‘Yeah, my friend, new regulations and law, we can no longer serve alcohol.’\nI said, ‘Bob, that’s crazy. What can I drink that’s close to alcohol? I really need something strong. What do the people do now if they want a drink of alcohol? That’s mad. Has this country gone to the dogs?’\nHe glanced over his shoulder and shrugged. ‘You don’t know?’ I shook my head. ‘All the bars are now monitored. A central computer system is in all the bars that we must use and is controlled by the authorities. If we try to bypass the system in anyway, it can be picked up since all inventory needs to be accounted for. So, when I scan in a barcode for the drink purchased, it is crosschecked. Every single bar, drink and transaction are matched in this database. If I step out of line, just once. That’s it, Mingles will be no more.’\nI swore.\n‘You haven’t been around Nigel? Where have you been?’\n‘What’s your strongest drink, then?’ I asked, deflecting his question.\n‘We’ve natural beer. Straight from hops, no added stuff to make it alcohol. Pretty good, I say.’ He walked to a low fridge filled with bottles, opened the door and extracted a dark-coloured one.\n‘Ok,’ I said, ‘what happened Bob? When did all of this happen? We live in a dictatorship now?’\nHe screwed off the bottle stopper, handed me my drink. ‘Where have you been Nige? How have you been? How long as it been?’\nI’d a rapid swallow. It tasted like beer. It was good. I sighed and recalled when I started drinking. It was on my first rest and recuperation from the front. There was only so many tears, blood and death one could take, and a good, stiff drink helped to ease the pain and memories. But they never actually went anywhere and were always there, lurking in the background.\n‘I was away. In the army. On tour,’ I said. ‘I say it’s been about eight years. It looks like a lot has happened here in that time too.\n‘Tour? You went to fight in the war?’ He was thinking about the last Gulf War. There’d been three and a fourth was about to begin.\n‘Yes,’ I answered. Bob remained silent. ‘I was in prison too.’\nHe recoiled. ‘What?!’\n‘Military prison. Striking an officer.’ I gulped my natural hops. I really liked it. And as far as I was concerned the officer deserved what he got. Mind you, to me, his busted jaw and smashed nose was much better than me pulling out my sidearm from its holster. Word-for-word, my psyche evaluation, before I was sentenced, stated I was ‘a volcano with bubbling magma just below the surface, ready to erupt’. Apparently, my childhood traumas eventually had an outlet. By being recruited into Uncle Sam’s Military and once I was in his organisation, it helped to unleash that concealed part of me. I’d been a rebellious child and resorting to violence when forced to go against my will, was natural for me. Especially when going against my own morals. I was a damn good soldier for the good old US of A. Had it been eight years, two of which I was jailed? Why had I lashed out when I was ordered to shoot a prisoner I’d captured? Was there something else?\nMouth agape, Bob gazed at me. ‘Really? I never knew you to be that way. I thought you to be a gentle kind of person. You were always quiet.’\n‘Maybe. War changes people.’ I signalled and gesticulated. ‘Why the change Bob? There are no old faces or places anymore? What happened?’\nHe shrugged. ‘Progress.’\n‘I don’t like it.’\nHe shrugged again. ‘Not a lot you, I or anyone else can do. Times change. And those wars changed everything; the old faces you knew, ended up in some armed service. You’re the first I’ve seen come back. And those who remained, made the best of it.’\nI nodded. ‘I’m here to meet someone, anyway.’\n‘You want a table? Food? It’ll be on the house.’\n‘Ah thanks Bob, you always looked out for me.’\n‘I have to, you became a part of the furniture here. I agree too, everything around here has lost its character for sure. It’s sad. New developments. New communities. New people. Those who came before made it what it was but, what to do now...’ He motioned: palms out, shoulder hunched and went to ready a table. I told him what kind of table I preferred.\nSuddenly, I was nervous and tried to remember the old Mingle faces to distract myself from my inevitable meeting. Instead of being honourably discharged with a bag of medals on my chest, my one indiscretion wiped the backstory of those awards completely clean. My bravery hadn’t mattered after that mad act. Still, I found justification in what I’d done. I’d saved a life. I’d saved a prisoner of war. But I needed to explore that room where that little child was locked away. I needed to see him again. I needed the room door to be opened. It was just a matter of having the right key.\nI fidgeted, rubbing my clammy palms on my jeans. I finished my bottle and a second suddenly appeared. I hadn’t seen when Bob removed the empty and replaced it with another filled one. Something caught my eye which I didn’t seen before; the oval-orange label actually said: Hops Beer. Sipping, I wondered how best to approach what needed to be said and the more I thought about it, the more I struggled with formulating my words.\nI checked my watch; thirty minutes had elapsed. I’d been real early, now they were late by ten minutes. I sat with the main door in full view and the kitchen to my left but in my periphery. I hated surprises.\nBy the time my beer was halfway through, I caught sight of them by the doorway, surveying the tables, then landing on me. Our eyes locked. My heart leapt. They nodded and with long, meaningful strides, strolled over, worming through the tables. I rounded the table and dragged out their seat and returned to mine. Within a few seconds they stood in front of me. I nodded. They sat.\n‘They don’t serve alcohol here,’ I said to my father." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Cries in the dark.\n\nGenre: african-american\n\nWord Count: 1057\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about someone who has been tasked to keep a flame burning, surrounded by total darkness." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "My ‘ma has left me by the pile of logs. She said she wouldn’t be back — and at the time I only took it as a joke. She warned me not to leave, to keep the only light source we had burning. I had asked her many times what she’d do in the dark.\n“That’s grown folk’s business,” She said with her gruff voice. There was the same look of penitence on her face, one she’d carried for years on end. \nI asked again and again, receiving the same demeaning answer. By the time she trudged through the snow, I was already agitated. I just… can’t understand. Why leave me? Why not give me any reason?\nTaking deep breaths, I felt my agitation subside as the fire flickered. It danced as if doing the Xhosa, and the familiar images made me laugh. Bright and dark oranges mixed together to create an intimidating warmth and leaving the snow around it melted. A beautiful contrast to the stygian surroundings that plague the world. \nIn only a moment's time, I can see the small spits of fire slowly dying. As if on autopilot, I grab the nearest log and chuck it into the flames. It roars at me, its mouth opening wide – for a moment I fear being swallowed whole. Almost as quickly as it revived it went back into the harmless form it harbored. \nThis repeats a few times; the logs eventually run out and I’m left with no other options. \nThere’s a wailing in the distance. A warning? A call for help? It’s difficult to make out the quiet sound. Either way, I do my best to ignore it. I’ve encountered dark before and nothing good inhabits it. \nBright oranges take no time to die down again. I look around, standing up from the numbing cold. No logs. There’s only one option left for me. Slowly, I take off the scarf gifted by my late father. Its fluffy feeling causes tears to well up in my eyes. Looking away, I chuck it into the demanding blaze, a stray cry escaping my lips. \nAs if mimicking me, I hear another cry in the distance. It’s closer. An obvious cry for help, soft whimpers and moans as they trudge closer to my flame. \nI can’t leave.\nCan I?\n‘Ma would reprimand me if she comes back — but I don’t know if she ever will.\nIn a weak voice, I finally call out to the shadows. “Who’s there?”\nA groan follows, followed by another slow step.\n“Hello? Answer me, or don’t come any closer!” I call out, getting closer to desperation.\nSilence. \nAll sounds stop. Not only in the distance, but near me as well. I look around as the space around me is engulfed in nothing but blackness. The fire… I let it die. My heart pounds in my ears and I can barely feel the way my knees buckle to land me on the ground. \nSuddenly, a faint sound finally reappears. A familiar cry, and an unfamiliar dragging of feet. Not one, but two pairs of feet, as if it’s crawling. Paws? I don’t know anymore. It’s slow, painstakingly slow, and I can hear its heavy breathing as the creature drags near. There’s a subtle ‘swish... swish’ as it moves through the darkness, as if whatever it is, is coming directly for me.\nIt groans and wails. My mind reels and all I can think about is how it sounds almost exactly like my ‘Ma. But it can’t be. She doesn’t demean herself to crawl. She doesn’t cry nor groan — doesn’t even make a sound when she walks. So, why? Why does it sound like her voice echoing in the small sobs of the creature, begging for help that I’m incapable of giving? \nA small light flickers once again. \nIt’s in front of me, its huge eyes glowing a sickly green and its teeth gnashing. I stare into the creature’s eyes as if being hypnotized. Images of my mother and father play in my head, when the world was once light. When we had pizza on Fridays and Alfredo on my birthday; before my mother lost my baby brother to a miscarriage and my father decided he couldn’t handle it. I remember her crying and sobbing for him to stay, I remember him pushing her off of him and leaving without taking a look at his little girl one more time. \nI remember ‘Ma blaming me for all of it as she drank her sorrows away and punched her anger out with things I couldn’t handle. I remember her sitting me down on the couch a few hours ago, saying she’d never be back.\nShe lied.\n‘Ma is back now, screaming at me with teeth that should belong to a wolf. Her eyes, a usually calming sage, seem to drip with hatred as she screams at her only child. She swishes the half-empty bottle in her hands, crying and imprinting words into my brain.\n“I told you to leave the light on, you dumb kid!” ‘Ma screams.\n“I…” It really wasn’t my fault.\n“I’m sorry.”\nI wonder what I did so wrong in my past life to end up here. Truly, the lights only went off because she forgot to pay the bill. Truly, I only opened the door because I thought she’d be happy to see me. Truly, I… I should’ve done what I could to keep her away.\nI look down at my black hands, small and calloused. I run them over my princess dress that I’ve used as a means of reality. The coils of my hair are matted and improper, sitting on my head like a reminder of how little I mean to those who should’ve cared for me. My skin is ashed and my lips are dry.\nI look up at my mother, crying as she glares at me. Angrily, she blows out the small candle she’d lit only seconds before, cursing me as she walks into her master bedroom. I’m left alone in the dark living room, only being able to pray that she never leaves her room. I can only pray she leaves silently in the morning.\nBut I failed to keep the light on.\nMaybe I deserve this darkness.\nBut I will pray that I escape it." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Second Chance Café\n\nGenre: african-american\n\nWord Count: 2902\n\nPrompt:\n\nSet your story on New Year's Day." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "On New Year’s Day, a line of hopefuls seeking a second chance formed outside Joyce’s diner. Joyce believed that everyone deserved as many second chances as they needed to get through this life, but Joyce was surprised that no one had been willing to take a chance on her when she was first released from prison.\n\nA man with a bald, black-shaved head stood in line, shivering in the cold. Joyce immediately recognized him as the Shetani. The hair was gray and chalky, but it was him. A shiver of fear ran down her spine. She’d recognize him anywhere. But his eyes were clear without spider-webbed veins. Joyce froze at the counter. There was a Glock-19 handgun under the register.\n\nDid she really mean what she said about second chances, or were there some people who did not deserve one?\n\n* * *\n\nJoyce Amalinda had been just 11 and had been living on the streets in Johannesburg when a man offered her a meal and placed her in the back of an old white transport van, smeared with mud. Joyce had been born in Florida, but her parents could not make a living there and returned home to Johannesburg. One day her father didn’t come home. Not long after, her mother became ill and never recovered, dying in their home. Leaving Joyce alone. The Landlord changed the locks and left her out on the streets.\n\nJoyce was placed in the back of the van with two other girls, who were eating sandwiches and drinking bottled sodas to stave off weeks of near starvation. The man came around and opened the doors and gave her a hot sausage and egg sandwich on a round roll. He also handed her a yellow pillow and an old stained crocheted blanket.\n\nJoyce was transported to Cape Town. A vineyard owner had purchased her and the other girls to work in the fields tending to the grape vines. She worked from sunup to sundown out in the dry heat that chapped her lips and blistered her skin. Especially during the dry, hot season of the winter months. The vines would cut her hands and arms, as she pruned them. The pesticide chemicals she sprayed on the vines burned her nose and the splatter of the spray got on her ankles, leaving permanent white burn marks on her dark black skin. After the long days, Joyce would be given her meal, mostly bread, gruel, porridge, or beans.\n\nJoyce and the other girls slept on mats on the cold ground in a barn where equipment and haggard mules were stored. Joyce cried on the first cold night but also felt lucky to have a place where she would be away from the danger and poverty of the streets—someplace where there was food.\n\nJoyce got used to the conditions. She barely spoke to anyone during the day. Sometimes she played with her bunkmates at night if they weren't too tired. There were no older girls at the vineyard. The older hands told the girls that the owners thought women workers were a distraction to the men. One of the girls, Anika, who was two years older than Joyce left one day without warning. Joyce had no idea what happened to her, but she would soon learn.\n\nOne day Joyce had been taken to the bunkhouse where a group of men were playing cards and smoking cigarettes around a folding table. There were casks around the corners of the room, which had an earthen floor. The room smelled of honeyed fruit and oranges and the musty smell of rain on peaty soil.\n\nA man in overalls, with no shirt, and a trucker hat, who was sweating down his chest, had sat her down and asked for her birthday. She had lied and said she was born on December 31st on New Year’s Eve and was turning fourteen this coming winter. The man asked her questions about her birthplace, her parents’ names, and many other things. She had lied about all of it. The older girl who had left, Anika, had told them about the day she had been brought to the bunkhouse and had warned them to lie—because the men were creating papers for their transport. Transport to where? But Anika had only said that they always moved the girls on their birthday. Joyce had remembered this and chosen a December birthday because it was the hottest time of year, during the hot, dry season before the January harvest. Joyce couldn’t think of any better time than New Year’s Day to start over.\n\nAfter that, Joyce counted down the days until December 31st. The other younger girls distanced themselves from her but occasionally asked her if she was ready. She lied and put on a brave face for the benefit of the younger girls.\n\nThe same man in the overalls came early in the morning before the other girls woke up and said he was taking her on a trip for her birthday. She was brought to the same van that had brought her to the vineyard but this time she was stowed in the back with three older girls. None of them spoke.\n\nThe one girl was shaking in fear and crying. Another girl was talkative and kept saying they were taking them to a brothel. She was clearly afraid of the brothel. The last girl, who seemed older and more experienced, was calm and kept telling the others that it wasn’t that bad and it was easy to escape. In the meantime, she said that there would be food. Warm beds. Clean clothes. Playtime. And medicine. But the girl who was crying kept saying, escape to where? Escape how? They’ll have us under lock and key. I don’t even have my own papers.\n\nA different man, this time a black man with a scruffy beard and a baseball cap and denim button down came back and gave the girls white pills, saying, this will help with the movement sickness—help them to rest—these pills he said were “for peacetime.” The girl who was older and more experienced took hers right away and they all followed her lead. Joyce began to feel drowsy and weird right away.\n\nThe house was on Piet Grobbelaar Street in Brooklyn, near the Ysterplaat Air Force Base. There were burglar bars on the window and a steel, hinged fence outside. It had been dark when they had arrived, and the girls were led through into a back room where there were several beds and a small bathroom. The room was locked from the outside, but there was a small window in the wall that connected to a kitchenette room that could be accessed through the window. There was another man who looked similar to the driver who was always holding guard in the kitchen. The rest of the time the door to the rest of the residence was locked tight.\n\nThey were left alone for several days. One day the man who had driven them returned and took them outside, made them strip down, and hosed them down with a garden hose. He provided soap for them to wash themselves. He watched. The man they had started calling \"Tikoloshe\" because he disappeared, as if invisible, told them they should go back into their quarters. They’d find new clothes there. On each of their beds were white loose linen dresses.\n\nThe man had come in while they dressed and had given the girls little pills called “blue rocks” that the man said would give them motivation and “keep them from being lazy.” Joyce didn’t like to think about what happened next. It happened almost every day for the next four months.\n\nThe Tikoloshe would appear and call her name and bring her to another room where a man was waiting for her, and she better not let him down. The Tikoloshe always told her afterward that she had done well and gave her some food and talked to her and apologized for what was happening but told her she had to behave and had to do as she was told and bring him the money and she could work off her debt. The Tikoloshe said the man who owned all of them was very bad, but he would release the girls once their debt was paid off. The Tikoloshe said he was looking out for Joyce.\n\nAfter four months, the Tikoloshe took Joyce out one night to the town and said they were going on a trip. She was placed in a shipping container at the port which was loaded onto the biggest ship Joyce had ever seen. Joyce sat in the container with at least fifty other girls, on the cold hard steel. It was dark, and she could not tell how many were there. Many looked bruised and beaten, their faces all drawn, all pale, all looking out from the grip of the white and blue pills. Out at sea they all became sick and were hurled around the metal dungeon, into one another. One girl hit her head and died, and her body began to smell before they reached the port.\n\nJoyce was taken to a similar house in Newark as to the one in Brooklyn in Cape Town. It was near the seaport. From there she was taken to a motel, the Starlight Motel, and asked to do what she had done a hundred times before. Her handler, the man who looked after her, was a drug-addicted Jamaican man with long dirty dreadlocks who always smelled like rum and cigarettes. He was a slovenly man who smelled terribly and who was abusive and beat her. To this day, she still had nightmares about the look of his foggy red eyes, scratched with red spider web veins and filled with venom the world had put there without giving him the antitoxin.\n\nIt was six weeks of beatings, rapes, and starvation, fueled by white pills and blue pills, under the man’s guard. She called him “Shetani” which means shape-shifting demon, because he took many different forms, and his abuse flowed from those shifting attitudes. Then Shetani took Joyce out for her first job to the Starlight Motel, driving in a big German car that was something like twenty years old, but still drove alright. The Shetani apologized for what he did and what the other man she was meeting would do. He told her she had a lot of debt to work off, and for both their sake, she better behave herself. Later, the police could never identify the Shetani. He was a ghost, a real demon, without any official record or any means of identification.\n\nThe man in the room was different from the men in Cape Town. She would learn later his name was Ronald Jackson and he belonged to a gang. Ronald’s face was thin with a sharp nose and his eyes were black like two empty midnights. There were marks on his arms, a constellation of marks, and he yelled at her and called her names she did not understand. Then the man grabbed Joyce’s arm and punched her in the jaw. Joyce’s face stung from the blow and her knees lost balance. The room was lighted, but she felt at once in pitch darkness. Her stomach burned and her chest screamed at her. As she fell to her knees she shrieked. “Shut your mouth you dirty street whore, or I will shut it for you,” Ronald had said. Joyce did not doubt he meant it. And as she stood to her feet, all the pain rose within her and turned to blinding white anger. She didn’t think, just acted.\n\nOn the dresser was a gun. Without thinking, Joyce ran to the dresser, took the gun, and pointed it at the man’s head, her little wrists trembling. The man called her a name and charged at her. Afraid, Joyce fell back, falling to the ground in front of the dresser, hitting her head on its knob, and as she fell the gun went off. The man fell forward and lay on the floor beside her, and she felt the blood from his head, leaking out onto the floor and into her hair.\n\nJoyce could not remember the days and months that followed, being brought to the police precinct, telling what happened, going to a hospital where nice people tended to her—where all the nurses knew her name and spoke in soft soothing tones, and eventually to a jail, and then going before a judge, and being told to sign certain papers, and then being brought to a prison, where she remained for fifteen years, serving what they told her was a life sentence. What a joke, she had thought. Didn’t they know that she had been serving a life sentence from the time she was born?\n\nEventually, she learned English well. Eventually, she learned about what had happened to her. Eventually, she grew up. And one day a hope came into her mind—a dream—an idea—the Second Chance Café. But she did not think she would ever get a chance to make this dream a reality.\n\nLaw Students from Seton Hall Law School would come to visit her, and Rutgers University Students too from various clubs. They all asked her to tell her story, and she did, over and over. They all made various promises and showed her papers they had written and sent out to different people, judges, organizations, and the President of the United States. All manner of people they thought would hear her story and help her. But no one came forward with any help. What had made her hopeful, these visits, eventually made her angry, and she became cynical, and she went to a place where she accepted that she would never leave. And eventually, she was okay with it.\n\nThen, one day, one of the guards came to Joyce’s cell and said that the President of the United States had pardoned her, and she was free to leave. Free, she thought. She was excited but also scared. Free to do what? And in that moment, she remembered her old dream of the Second Chance Café.\n\nWhen Joyce was released, she went to a halfway house, and with the help of her parole officer, she tried to get jobs in a restaurant, in a bakery, in another diner, and even as a secretary. She applied for every job he gave her that was looking for cheap help. But no one would hire her when they found out what she did.\n\nFinally, she got work cleaning the houses of rich people in high rises who didn’t ask about her background. It paid cash. She played music while she worked. She smoked Newport cigarettes on their balconies and enjoyed the fresh air. She fantasized about one day living in a place like one of these. The parole officer didn’t like it. But what choice did she have? And she used that money to buy a car, and she used that car to do Uber driving, and eventually, she saved enough money to get a lease on a restaurant. She lived in a boarding house with other women who had been incarcerated for a long time, and she took out loans against the business assets—the kitchen equipment, the steel cutlery, the dishes, coffee makers, and all the rest—from companies that sounded legitimate but wanted to be paid back 150% of what they gave her.\n\nDespite all of this, Joyce managed to open the Second Chance Café, right there in Newark, down the road from the scene of her crime, and right down by the courthouses. She chose New Year’s Day for her Grand Opening, during which she would take applicants and staff the business.\n\n* * *\n\nJoyce sat at the counter on a bar stool, interviewing one applicant after another. She had hired several servers who had done serious time, a cashier who had been convicted of embezzlement, a dishwasher who had committed manslaughter, and a few short-order cooks who had dealt drugs.\n\nShetani sat down next to her and said, “The name is Amil Kumar.” The man was clean and washed, but she still recognized the stink of his skin. Her throat clumped and she felt cold sweat pool on her forehead. Now that she knew his name, she could make one call and turn him in. “What kind of work do you want?” Shetani flashed a toothy smile and said, “I’m a good short-order cook.” Joyce looked him in the eye, but he didn’t recognize her. “What is it—what do you need a second chance from?” Joyce asked. “Do I have to say?” he asked. “Yes,” Joyce said, sternly. “Honey, I trafficked young girls, I raped, murdered, stole. I was possessed of the devil himself. Served over a decade for some of my crimes—the ones I got caught for. And I will understand if you turn me away. I surely deserve it. I only want a chance at redemption.” Joyce bit her lip and looked at the man, not recognizing the evil in him, though it was surely still there underneath it all. “Let me ask you a question, Amil,” she said, “what is your specialty dish?” Amil, whose head was hung, lifted his head, fastened his eyes on her, and said, “I make a killer gumbo.”" } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Storm Chaser\n\nGenre: adventure\n\nWord Count: 1656\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about a character who risks their life to take a photo." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "It was forecasted to be a simple thunderstorm. And even a simple thunderstorm would do after the uneventful season we’ve had. As a meteorology student in Indiana, it has been perfectly - boring. We get the regular blizzard left over from Chicago and standard rain showers, but it’s not like we get slammed with a nasty Nor’easter or live right in the smack dab middle of Tornado Alley. That’s not to say that there’s no severe weather, no tornado or flash flood that occasionally rips through here, because of course there is. But in the three years I’ve so far been in my atmospheric sciences graduate program, not much beyond pea-sized hail has happened. Even Professor Jansen’s field course on storm chasing has been fairly irrelevant – though he is the coolest professor in the department so I probably would have taken the class anyway even if there isn’t much to chase now. But when we saw the tiny blip of a thunderstorm on our radar, as measly as it was, Professor Jansen decided it was time to take us on a road trip. \n “Don’t expect too much to happen,” he warned us as we rode in the department’s storm chasing Chevy Tahoe. Its antennae have been fairly quiet, barely even swaying in the mostly calm wind, and the windshield wipers only occasionally squeak against the glass in the slow rain. “This area is only under a Severe Thunderstorm Watch, but keep track of the updates closely – these things can get iffy in a matter of minutes.” I think he said it only out of responsible obligation, not that he actually believed it as the virtually nonexistent storm seemed to lighten up even more. \n My friends and cohort-mates, Jasper and Ally, from the backseat sporadically track the radar and notifications issued by the National Weather Service as we roll along the highway. I’m in the passenger’s seat, essentially doing nothing besides staring out the window, just keeping a notepad on my lap in case anything noteworthy should come up but really I’m doodling on it. I’m also in charge of the camera, and I snap one quick photo of the dark blue cumulonimbus clouds before they dissolve away into the plain grey sky – nothing more to see here. I watch the colors of the sky stretch on for miles and miles of grey, in some places starting to break into light blue again, and I start to wonder when Professor Jansen will get just as bored as us and turn back around towards campus. Even Jasper who doesn’t get bored from watching grass grow has zoned out from watching the radar. \n I turn back to the window where, wow surprisingly, the sky is the same drab grey. Under the stratosphere shade, the fresh spring grass has a nice bright contrast to the mist hanging a few inches above the ground, and the amber fields of Indiana harvest ruffle in the wind that seems to have picked up a little. I glance back up at the sky and notice some heavier clouds have started churning angrily. At the same time, a beep interrupts the Top 40 station on the radio and chimes on Ally’s tablet.\n “The National Weather Service has issued a Tornado Watch for the counties of…” the static-y voice announces and Ally paraphrases as much for us.\n “Looks like there’s some rotation picking up just east of here,” she shows us the velocity radar. “Doesn’t look too substantial yet, but there is a slight hook in the clouds.”\n “Could be worth a look,” Professor Jansen says, taking the next exit ramp eastbound. “Got a weather balloon ready?”\n “Got it,” Jasper confirms as we set on the new course, Ally giving directions. \n As we drive further into the storm, it becomes clear the system had intensified – rain slams down, occasionally turning into hail plinking against the car with a metallic denting sound; the wind whips up, making trees bend at weird angles and at times, I can feel it push the car slightly off-lane. The sky is now a strange oil paint mix of blue, green, and black, and it becomes almost as dark as dusk. \n “Ally, how’s that rotation looking?” Professor Jansen asks.\n “Velocity tracker has it starting to spin up but then eventually settling down. No new updates from the Weather Service.”\n “We can keep going then.”\n We are seemingly in the middle of nowhere when the next alert comes in.\n “Tornado Warning,” Jasper announces. “Radar-indicated tornado moving east just below I-294. Looks like it’s coming right toward us within 15 miles.”\n “Any funnel cloud confirmed?”\n “Not yet.”\n “Alright, let’s go, but stay a safe distance away. What’s its path looking like?”\n With Jasper planning out the route, we drive closer to the area the tornado was suspected. At first, it seems like there’s nothing going on – but they don’t call it the calm before the storm for no reason. As we get closer to its trajectory, hail starts pelting the car – at some point, I wonder if it’s going to break the windshield. The wind picks up like never before, causing Professor Jansen to pull off to the side of the road.\n “Trajectory indicates we should see the tornado coming up in about six minutes,” Jasper says. His voice is full of anticipation – part excitement, part anxiety – and he leans forward to look through the window. “Whoa, look at those clouds.”\n The clouds now look like thick black smoke, billowing and swirling in dense layers. \n And then.\n It appears.\n A cone of clouds dipping from the sky rips through the farmlands, kicking up a haze of dust and debris, raging its way across the horizon. Even from this distance, we can hear its low rumble. It’s not some skinny little funnel cloud spinning tight pirouettes; it’s a monster of a tornado, whirling around slowly but heavily.\n All of us are speechless, dropped-jaw and wide-eyed. My heart stops and then races up to the speed of the wind as I roll down the window and snap a few shots.\n “Look at that, it’s huge!” Ally cries.\n “Send the confirmation to the National Weather Service: tornado spotted,” Professor Jansen instructs. “Get the word out for people to take shelter now. Jasper, get the weather balloon out.” \n “I’m going to go take a couple more photos,” I say, jumping out of the car. \n “Be careful, Kevin. It’s still far away now but these things can change on the edge of a dime.”\n I cut across the field, the wind pushing and pulling at me. Out here, I feel the full force of the storm: the rain and hail mix slashes at my face; debris flies around me and makes me duck tree branches, chips of wood, and scraps of metal; and the wind nearly picks me up. Struggling to hold the camera, I shoot the tornado from each angle I can get. I feel so incredibly exhilarated, the thrill and adrenaline of standing in the way of something of such power and force, just far enough on the edge to still escape safely. At some point, Jasper’s released weather balloon zips by before it gets sucked into the vortex, and I realize that edge has kept up dangerously close. \n “Kevin, get back here!” Professor Jansen calls to me. “The wind changed direction – it’s heading right toward you!”\n But I am frozen in my place, stunned and unable to pry my eyes away from the twister. From this close, I can see the strips of shredded clouds building its shape, the pieces of debris flying in and out of the funnel, and I realize – it’s beautiful. \n “KEVIN!” the professor and my cohort-mates scream for me to come back.\n The tornado is almost upon me now. My feet barely touch the ground, and the camera nearly flies out of my hands, but there is no way I’m missing this shot now. The twister fills up the entirety of the camera lens, and I snap one shot after the other. \n “Come back! Hurry, Kevin!”\n “Kevin, I swear, if you get yourself killed, I’m flunking you!”\n Just one more shot, I promise, the tornado turning to its good side and I’m filled with awe, snapping one more shot. Then I realize its good side is the side barreling straight into me. I always thought the howling train sound was just a cliché, but hearing it for myself now, I realize it’s true as my ears pop and realize I can’t hear myself even think: “RUN!”\n So I run as fast as my feet will take me – which I realize is pretty futile with 300 mph behind me. Tornado sirens wail in the distance. At one moment, I’m knocked off my feet and trip into a ditch, realizing I have no time to get out anymore. So instead I pull my arms over my head protectively, hunch down, and pray for the best. \n Just one more shot, I plead. Let me get one more shot to accomplish something in my life. Finish grad school. Get married. Have kids. Move out of the Midwest. Something more than this.\n I brace myself for impact, when at the last minute, the air shifts and gets calmer again. Daring to peek my head out, I see that the tornado has veered off course, making a U-turn in the middle of the field and going in the opposite direction, and I breathe a huge sigh of relief. Ally, Jasper, and Professor Jansen run out of the Tahoe and pull me out of the ditch, exclaiming how glad they are that I’m alright.\n Brushing the mud off me, I look back where the tornado has started dissipating along the horizon, returning to the sky. I take one last photo of the torn-up path through the grass left in its wake, and follow them back to the car." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Cute As…\n\nGenre: adventure\n\nWord Count: 1496\n\nPrompt:\n\nCenter your story around a photo that goes viral." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I never expected to become a fashion icon. Does anyone? I’m the last possible candidate for such status.\nI never considered the potential impact of paparazzi, photo shoots, or celebrity on my simple life. There were none. My time was my own, until…\nBut here I am, standing in the wings. (Wings – get it?) While awaiting my debut, I’m fighting off butterflies. My life transformed after that photograph went viral.\nOf course, Phil isn’t a mere photographer. He discovered me. He has vision. We became friends. He’s my trusted manager.\nAnd, thanks to him, I’ve released my own line of cosmetics. You must’ve heard of it. Or, have you been living under a cabbage leaf? I call it, ‘All Abuzz.’\nI should begin at the beginning. I’m Dottie.\nAs I said, no one was more surprised than me over recent events. I should explain some things about my background, before fame lit up my life…\nYou might have guessed I’m no ordinary supermodel. Before Phil discovered me, I was your garden variety ladybug. Nothing special.\nYes, a ladybug. I’m quite aware of certain anti-insect biases in human society. Though not very sociable, I assure you I’m benign. I’m a loner. And I’m told I’m also cute as hell.\nThe day Phil and I met, I’d finished my favorite lunch and had settled on a leaf to doze in the sun. A shadow moved and Phil loomed over me. Actually, I saw his magnified eye peering at me through what looked to be the bottom of a coke bottle.\nLater, he explained that was the macro lens of his camera. He’d only wanted to snap a picture of the ‘cutest little bug he’d ever seen.’\nBut from my vantage, he was intruding on my space and taking my picture without asking permission. No introduction. Nothing. What cheek.\nI called out, “Hey! Hey! Hold it there, big boy. What gives you the right to take my picture? You have a signed release? I may have been around the block once or twice but I didn’t arrive spattered on the business side of a windshield.”\nThat gave Phil pause. He leaned in.\n“Can you speak up? I didn’t quite catch that.”\nI continued. “You a stalker or what?”\nThat’s when he said he was a nature photographer. I’d heard of them. Bumblebees were always comparing notes on the best locations.\n“So, why me?” I asked.\nPhil chuckled. “You may not know it but you are so cute. Cute as…”\nI did a slow burn. “Yeah, I’ve heard that. Never mind.” Longlegs, my ‘daddy,’ wore that out.\nBut Phil had my attention. He told me about the markets for pictures; fashion, news, art, and so on… He insisted how honored he was to capture my beauty.\nHe said, “I can help you.”\n“Help me what? My life is fine without your blocking the sun.” He moved out of my light. “Wait! There is something. Can you deal with all the birds? They vex me. Can’t enjoy my lunch without worrying I’ll be some bird’s lunch.”\nAnts have colonies. Bees have hives. But we ladybugs enjoy our solitude. A day alone is a day in good company.\nPhil ran into the yard waving his arms and shouting. Normally unflappable, the birds took off and didn’t look back.\nPanting a little, he returned wearing a huge grin. “Haven’t done that since I was a kid. Happy to help.”\nHe seemed sincere.\nWe found agreement. If my image got attention, he would reimburse me for my time. Basically, all the aphids I could eat.\nSounded like a win/win deal. I had doubts though.\nI said, “Sounds great, Phil. But I’m not some moth, dazzled by bright lights. What’s the catch?”\n“I understand, Dottie. You don’t know me. Let me prove myself. You won’t feel like bat guano.”\nI told him, “Okay… Let’s try. Step by step.”\nA few days later, Phil found me in the garden and told me how many thousands of clicks my picture received. That’s a lot of aphids. He showed me my photo on some rectangular gizmo he held in his hand.\nI can’t deny my surprise. I’d never looked in a mirror. I had no idea, no concept of what a ‘photograph’ is or what I looked like. I figured my family resembled me, but vanity didn’t run in my crowd.\nBut, to tell the truth, I could see it. I am cute! And I’m a bug. So there!\nBut what Phil told me next, blew me away. I was so shocked, I wanted to fly away home. He said women everywhere want my ‘look,’ whatever that means.\nI don’t know. Who expected polka dots to be all the rage?\nHe set up a meeting with a cosmetics firm wanting to offer a product for women seeking that ‘look.’ My look.\nPhil introduced me to the team. He assured me he and I were partners. He also warned me the buying public can be fickle. What’s popular this week might be passé in a month.\nI said, “Don’t worry about me, Phil. I’m in it for the duration. I’m not some fruit fly – here today, gone with the dawn.”\nThe meeting went very well. I did my version of the ‘fly on the wall.’ Phil represented us well. I felt respected. Some details got into the weeds a bit. I know nothing about cosmetics. And fine print is for those who can read. Women want my look? I’m here to help.\nThey told us we’d get our own shelf in the big outlets. And my picture would be featured on the wall above my product. Like the other supermodels.\nA few weeks later, Phil took me to see the display at a free-standing make-up store. I’m a bug so, of course, I’d never seen anything like it. I couldn’t believe the swarm of women wanting my makeup. The staff kept restocking the shelves. Customers did ‘selfies’ with my big picture over their shoulder.\nAll the jostling got unnerving. Phil kept me incognito, riding on his ear, so I’d feel safe.\nThat night, I hosted a party in. It was huge. The garden was crawling with family and friends. They couldn’t believe our good fortune. Aphids, aphids everywhere!\nOf course, some neighboring ladybugs took an attitude, saying they were cuter than me. Bunch of termites… They may be. I don’t care. But Phil found me! I have ‘the look.’\nOne man’s bug is another man’s cutie.\nSo, that brings my story up to date.\nThe emcee brought Phil onstage to tell my back story.\nI stood in the shadows, about to go out and strut my stuff. Phil told the crowd I don’t do autographs. He asked them to respect my privacy. No crowding, please.\nHe said, “You get it. Don’t bug her.”\nThat got a big laugh.\nThen Phil shouted, “Everybody! Let’s welcome Ms. Dottie Ladybug!” Music swelled. A spotlight lit the curtain that hid me. That was my cue. Applause rippled.\nI can’t tell you how I felt that moment. So many people came to see me. Me! Little Dottie from the garden. So strange. Beyond comprehension.\nBut the music kept going and so did the applause. All those hands clapping. One slip and that’d be it. Oops! Squashed. Bye, bye, Dottie! What a sendoff!\nIt was now or never. I braced myself and took flight out of the shadows and into the blinding spotlight. I almost lost my way. I’m used to trees and hedges.\nThe hall was immense and filled with people. My image, a thousand, million times bigger than me, was projected on a screen overhead. Was that me? How could it be?\nBut I trusted Phil. He’d helped me the whole time.\nI made a beeline to the podium where a silver plate lay covered by a white cloth. Cameras were aimed so everyone could see the real me, up close for the first time. Wow!\nWhen I landed, the music stopped. The applause stopped.\nThen, crickets.\nAll I heard were crickets.\nYou never know who your friends are until you become a supermodel and see who shows up to your first show. The crickets came through. They weren’t ladybugs, but our families always got along. They showed up! They spoke my language!\nThe show was a success. I was even on television (whatever that is). I had my moment in the sun. Happy I didn’t need to speak, I did what I was best at – being cute.\nYes, I’d made a splash, so to speak. But you know how fickle fashion is. Tastes change.\nWhen sales flagged, I told Phil I’d had enough. We agreed I had a good run. Phil bought a private garden for me and my family. And aphids galore!\nI returned to my quiet life to enjoy peace and quiet with my family and friends. We were set. Life was good.\nAnd I’m still cute." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Top of the World\n\nGenre: adventure\n\nWord Count: 2323\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about a character who risks their life to take a photo." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Note: Hundreds of people have died due to attempts to take spectacular photos and selfies.\nMateo realized his mistake when his leg lodged hip deep into the old, moss-crusted roof. He had his digital camera in one hand and a bottle of Coke in the other when he’d fallen in. Glistening soda splashed the aged roofing. The surprise overrode the pain for a blink, but as he watched the bottle roll down the roof and off the ledge the stab of something in his thigh screamed for his attention.\nThe sky was the fading blue of late midday, the air sweet with spring edging towards summer. It had been the first day it hadn’t rained in almost a week. Mateo tasted metal in the back of his throat and smelled a sudden burst of mold.\nHe’d only been on the roof to get a full view of the main asylum grounds. He could see all the windows on the north side from where he was on top of one of the groundskeeper’s houses. The area was supposed to be heavily patrolled by staties. Where were they? His throat was caught around pain, but after a second of choked silence, he was able to gasp out a groan.\nIt wasn’t the first time Mateo had been at the old asylum. He’d never seen the state troopers that were supposed to be there. The asylum grounds were huge, mostly shrouded by tall pines, and crawling networks of vines and underbrush. He’d seen squirrels, and foxes, and taken a great photo of an owl, but never seen the police. He’d avoided other trespassers, turning a blind eye to their petty crime as they did to his.\nThe first few moments went white as the tidal pain rose like his belated gasp. The stink of wood rot drifted from the hole his leg was stuck in, his other leg out in front of him on the roof. The agony of pulled sinew and mashed balls gave way to a mental reboot. In the purity of shock, his mind tooled backward in time.\nHe’d sipped from his bottle at a time when he should have been paying attention to the flex and give of the rotten roofing beneath him. He’d climbed through a window empty of glass and shimmied up the side of the house without a problem. It was so easy. Effortless.\nAll his focus turned to staying cognizant. He hissed through his teeth, “Fffffuck. God… This is fucking bullshit.”\nBirds twittered in the distance. Mateo tried to look around, see the ground, see where the beaten paths were around the overgrown yards but even just moving his head caused his thigh to scream under his skin. The inside of his leg felt hot and wet. Was it bleeding or had he pissed himself? Either, or both, was possible.\n“Fucking Coke,” he gasped, easing his hands down to push at the crumbling tarry sheets of roof shingles.\nIf it hadn’t been for the Coke…\nHe pushed gently, exploring the possibility of dislodging himself. A fresh, sharp burst of pain shot from that place in his thigh that he could not see. If he could see the damage he could assess it. Was it dug in a quarter inch, or halfway through? What was stuck in there, a splinter, a plank, metal flashing? Was it in his femoral artery and any motion at all would kill him in seconds?\nAs embarrassing as the situation was, his nerves were starting to eat at him. He still wasn’t fully invested in being caught trespassing there, but he couldn’t see his leg. The pain was significant. But was it his mind playing with him?\nIf someone showed up and it was something he could have gotten out of himself…\nMateo put his camera in his jacket pocket. It barely fit, so it was a struggle. His hands were shaking, and the wide body of the camera kept slipping just past the pocket mouth. He finally got it in with both hands working together. \nOnce both hands were free, He tried to push one down to find the spot where he had been invaded by unknown material. Flakes of old, dry, moss-impregnated roofing were gently scraped back to show the downward bend of metal pockmarked by rust.\nHe vaguely recalled the last time he’d gotten a tetanus shot. He’d been waist-high to the doctor. That white lab coat and the dull ache that followed days later had been much further than ten years back.\nHe tried to find his phone in his back pocket. It was wedged against his asscheek and the roofing. He tried to lean forward to get some weight off it, but the fresh bright pain it caused in his thigh stopped him. Instead, he tried to get his fingers on either side of it to pry it up and out. His arm was angled awkwardly, and his sweaty, dirty fingers slipped on smooth plastic.\n“Shit,” he muttered. Nothing was worth saying except curses. Deer caught in barbed wire fences, rabbits caught in snares, foxes caught in brutal claw traps, and him. They all had something in common. The difference was that no one would check this trap for its quarry.\nClouds striated the sky, and the sun was easing into the position he’d wanted for the photo. It was this moment he’d come for. The moment when light and dark were at their peak across the building, highlighting all the glory and misery of the old asylum’s architecture.\nHe felt tears pricking his eyes as he groped his jacket pocket for the camera. His fingers were trembling, trying to pry it out of the pocket he’d fought so hard to put it into. At least he’d get that picture, he thought as he wiggled it slowly free. Inch by inch until it popped past the tight fabric. His sweaty fingers slipped. When had they gotten so sweaty?\nThe digital camera spun on the tip of his index finger. He jerked to try to get ahold of it and then, just as suddenly forgot about it. The jab of pain at the desperate motion tore a ragged howl from his gut, the sound trembling at the end.\nSomething went clunk on the roof beside him. Through wavery vision, he saw the camera slowly sliding away from him, teetering on the edge of the rickety roof, then disappearing over the edge. Until just then he’d been scared, but not that scared.\nWithout the camera, without that shot, it had been for nothing. All the stupid things he did, all the pain, all the potential fines and doctor bills were for nothing. The failure was absolute.\nMateo put his hands on the roof and pushed, hearing his jeans tear, feeling the lighting hot jab of whatever it was in his leg. God, he didn’t even care, anymore. He should have been calling for help.\nHe felt hot wetness slide down his leg. Oh yeah, definitely bleeding. He stopped trying to escape as suddenly as he started. His defeat was a lightning storm without the warning thunder.\nHe slumped there, aching leg he could see out before him. He stared at his hiking boot. Brown leather, a little worn, very muddy, the boots accompanied him on many journeys before this one.\nHad it just been time? Statistically speaking, you can’t get away with being reckless forever. It hadn’t seemed particularly dangerous at the time. He’d climbed plenty of more dangerous things for a good photo. Why now?\nBecause you don’t get to pick perfection, his mind supplied. The voice was darker than his usual inner voice. You, Mateo, aren’t able to create perfect scenarios. You can imagine them, but they always fall short, don’t they? No matter how hard you try, you do something like this. You indirectly fuck yourself.\nMateo watched a bee land on the trail of Coke splatter. It flashed its wings as it sucked up the sweet liquid. A droplet disappeared, then another. The bee flew away as abruptly as it arrived. \nMateo blinked. It had been late afternoon when he got up to the roof, right before the bullshit chain of events happened. The sun was brushing the tops of the tall pines. What did that mean? When had that happened? He deliriously considered the position of the sun.\nIt meant no one would be here. It was a long walk from the closed road to the train tracks, through the echoing dark tunnel, and to the public parking lot where people left their cars. Where he’d left his car, not to park and ride but to walk the lonely course to the abandoned buildings. Other trespassers would have already left to avoid traveling the dark train tunnel at night or getting stopped by the states.\n“HELP!” Mateo heard his hoarse voice echo and bounce across stone buildings to peter out somewhere in the muffled pine forest. Should have done this earlier, should have tried to call for help and screw the embarrassment, should have… not indirectly fucked yourself. Or, in this case, directly.\nMateo screamed in ways he’d never screamed before. He’d shouted at games, at parties, at people, even, when they pissed him off. This sound coming out of himself was not recognizable. It was unthinkable, but it was happening.\nAt that moment, he realized that any terror he’d ever known was vicarious. Other people were this scared, not him. Other people had been afraid for their lives, not him. He’d known fear of poverty, fear of bullies, fear of bosses, and fear of embarrassment. Not this shit.\nPenance, he realized, as his voice gave out. He had not truly respected the concept of mortal terror until that day. The sun was no longer visible, a faint glow emanating between the thick, bristling pine branches. The shadows were long, the buildings dressed for mourning in their shrouds. He was alone. He was thirsty. That last sip of Coke had been barely a sip before the bottle was gone.\nHe had stuff to think about. He was getting used to the pain, in a way. It was constant, but the aching stabbing object had become familiar. His girlfriend, whom he saw on the weekends, wouldn’t worry about him until maybe the day after tomorrow when he didn’t text or respond to hers. Didn’t call or answer. His boss would call tomorrow morning when he didn’t show up. Would he be dead by then, or would he still be there on the roof?\nMateo tried to get the phone out again. It worked about as well as the last time. It was pinned perfectly by the roof. \n“If only my booty wasn’t so juicy,” he giggled to himself, something wet and slick finding its way down his cheek. The tear kissed his lips and he spat it out. \nNo one was there to hear him. He decided to save his energy for an indication of people. Light, voices, something like that. The road with its multitude of barricades wouldn’t allow patrol cars. But there were others like him, people that came to take photos or look for ghosts. Cops had to make the walk down, eventually. They had to. He held onto that hope to keep himself calm.\nHe might have passed out for a while. Browned out, lost track of time, definitely. He slowly became aware that his trembling wasn’t from his emotional state. He felt delirious, feverish.\nTrauma can induce a febrile reaction. What did that mean? He heard the thought echo in his mind, then remembered what it meant. Trauma can induce a lot of things.\nIt was deep night. The stars were out, though the light pollution from the area killed the true beauty of the starfield above. Even so, the hazy quality was charming. The pine forest had its share of rustling. He heard doves cooing somewhere. It was nice.\nThe building he was on was a two-story house, on a higher elevation, far enough away from the main campus of crumbling stone wards to give a great view. It was a stunning panorama of eminence in decay. Mateo rested his palms on the dewy slick shingles and took a deep breath of moldy air. \nIt was beautiful up there. He felt like he was on top of the world, far from people. A delicious sense of loneliness filled him up. He was shaking with fever, pinned to motionlessness, but something in him felt almost content. At the moment, everything was okay. It was the way things were supposed to be. His soul felt swollen, yet thin enough to brush over everything, everywhere.\nHe felt kind of sad, though. It was sad. The whole thing was. Life was beautiful and sad. No one else could experience this incredible, profound beauty in the way he did. They looked at his pictures, spoke with him, and experienced the same things, but they’d never recognize the same things he did. And he couldn’t see their star field at the top of the world how they did. It was a rightly forlorn tragedy.\nSure, a small piece of him was crouching in horror at what could come, next. He felt lighter than a bee’s wing, floating on an interstellar breeze. No more tears were sneaking out. Sweat clung to his face, hot and cold. His leg was throbbing, sticky, hot, and felt far too big to be hosting whatever it was that was stuck in it.\nMateo closed his eyes to save his strength. If he saw the sunrise, there might be a chance to live. If there was a tomorrow, he hoped he wouldn’t eventually forget this, as he'd forgotten so many other pivotal, visceral things.\nMaybe, if he survived, he’d finally learn how to not indirectly fuck himself. Maybe he’d remember how to stay on top of the world, no matter what happened. Maybe." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Catharsis\n\nGenre: african-american\n\nWord Count: 1369\n\nPrompt:\n\nStart or end your story in a bustling street food market." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Yummy: “Start or end your story in a bustling street food market…”\nCatharsis\nBy Gabriele Micheala Lyman-von Steiger\nBelonging, (as the basis of all internalized resolutions), is as tangible as a wave crashing on the sand. It does not reside within or without, nor is it separated by a specific intensity. Belonging simply is what it means to “be”. For some this sensation of being is familiar and comforting. For them it is the understanding that they are appreciated by others. That their talents and positive attributes are acknowledged and praised; active acceptance of oneself in any surrounding. The simplicity of a person belonging (whatever that may mean to their individuality) is far more complicated than the thought of an object's ability to“be”. Objects are the product of something. Not always a thought or idea - A tree did not come about by scientific human contribution - However planting trees, with the understanding that we need them for survival, created a foundation for the production of more trees. Necessity encourages the thought that cause and effect create intentional and entitled belonging. Rarely have I seen this applied to humans and their nature.\nSamantha walked swiftly. Unencumbered by the thought of her destination and yet, her mind wandered hopelessly. The displacement of her own memory was like gravity plummeting a boulder off the highest cliff of self doubt. She felt heavy and shy of the world waking around her. At this moment, the raucous movement that enveloped her path seemed uneven. Making her feeling of unsteadiness grow and thicken. Her normally comfortable walk to work had become something of a harrowing undertaking. So much weighed on Samantha’s beaten shoulders, leaving her mind far away from the safety of home.\n It was early morning, and the market had barely shaken the sleep from all the surrounding storefronts. As Samantha turned the key in the lock of her own market, the small door leading to her shop sighed its usual morning sigh. The morning was like any other and still she could not ignore the confusion she felt in her mind. Attempting to alleviate some of her paws, Samantha turned quickly to close and lock the door behind her. As if such a thing could somehow unimesh her feelings of unease. Still close to the surface of her thoughts, Samantha could feel the world calling her, her memories of things once new beckoning her to the outside from which she desperately ran. \nThe sun had just begun its accent into the dusted blue-black openness, leaving the previously barren landscape of the sky half full, and wanting. Samantha knew that soon the marketplace would be just as full and open palmed as the sky was to the sun. Turning again to face the front door and windows, Samantha briefly acknowledged her well kept shop. Small antique items of all values lined the shelves and tables, creating a patient and dramatic pause. The shop was her stage, and she was awaiting the start of her performance. Basking in this familiarity and calm, she began to walk forward, still protected by the unopened curtains. The brevity of this moment was smaller than a grain of sand and just as rough. Though Samantha hadn’t a clue of how this day had come to be so unhappy, she was determined to ignore the urge to walk away from everything she had worked so hard to build.\nWith spite for herself and the yearning for comfort, Samantha shook away these thoughts and feelings. “This…” she thought weakly, “will get better. It is just another day”. At this she shook her head wondering if there could be a more sorry attempt at self confidence. With lackluster riding upon her sore shoulders, and with no other option, she once again moved to start the day. \nIn a slow arduous set of movements, Samanth grasped the shimmering, silk curtains that hung at the store front windows and flung them aside. Now, the sun was glowing in its abundance. Streamed ferociously into the small store surprising Samantha with its brightness. This caused Samantha to stumble. Her feet toppled over one another like children fighting for their mothers attention. She began falling backwards. Grabbing the window ledge, she shily avoided knocking over one of her favorite displays.\n‘What is wrong with me?” she thought. “That…” she whispered in her head “is not a good sign”. Samantha had followed these very steps thousands of times and countless mornings before this one…. Why did she falter?\n She was surprised at herself. Surprised by her lack of belonging in a space she was so accustomed to. Something was not right. Today's feelings of bewilderment and shame cut close to her heart. Close to tears, Samantha straightened her posture in defiant anger, still determined and wholesomely resigned not to let this day get the best of her.\nThe outside world was now wide awake and the din of the street shook Samantha from her paralyzing emotions. Neighbors all around her were opening their shops, unaware of Samantha. Too comfortable with their established morning happenings. Men and women poured from every corner and it seemed they gathered before the marketplace in a choreographed dance. Mopeds and bikes wove in and around the crowds, with shouts of annoyance closely following them, aware and uncaring. Samantha could hear buses at the corner screeching to a halt to let off masses of travelers and passers by, then rapidly plummeting forward towards the main street. All was as it should be, and where it belonged.\nRecovering slightly from her daze, Samantha carefully unhooked the latch on each window of the storefront. With gathered strength, she brought open the windows and was unsurprisingly surprised by what greeted her. The sounds and smells of the marketplace sprung into memories and dreams as if the windows were too her soul. She could taste every particle of the colorful flamboyance that was her very own marketplace.\n Samantha recalled the first time she had opened these windows. How broken and difficult it had been to un-lach them. The lack of fine silk that now dazzled their corners. She thought of how much and yet how little had changed within her time in the small shop. Heavily now, with the importance of a final breath, Samantha felt the beauty of her duress. Woven from years of hard work, difficult choices and deep sorrows, was the effervescent and joyous accomplishment that remained. A prideful reminder of all that was lost in her memory. mixed with the hope of what was to come. \n“This…” she thought “Will not be the end of my story.” \n“This…” she thought, “Is a new day”\nAnd as quickly as they had come, her shame, guilt, bewilderment and grief seeped anxiously out of her and far away from the marketplace. Samantha was untouched by any sense or lack of belonging. Abruptly joyful. Something about those windows struck her so very deeply, she struggled at the very idea of anything but happiness.\n The wonderful simplicity of neighbors in their well rehearsed morning routine, were the people she could now call friends. Smelling every aroma of the market as though it was pure love drifting into her shop, Samantha felt beautiful and peaceful; there was nowhere she would rather be. This Market…her shop…her life was worth everything and anything that the world could ever throw at her. The long, saddened walk before was somehow erased in its timeliness. Like the seconds of a clock and the brevity of calm she had felt before, the roughness of reality blossomed into acceptance.\nThe neighbors were friends, the smells were comforting. Even the sun was no longer vicious and mean, but soft, soothing and she revealed in these notions of truth…these understandings…this knowledge. Samantha basked in the glory of all the brilliance that was her place of being. This was no longer a time of foreboding. Her day had transformed just as easily as it had deprived her moments before. Samantha felt brave and ready. There was only one last thing she could possibly do.\nWith love and compassion she opened her arms wide, stretched them forward to the now busy marketplace and smiled. She was exactly where she belonged." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: STUNT DOG DEMONSTRATION\n\nGenre: adventure\n\nWord Count: 2928\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about a character who risks their life to take a photo." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I was with Lewis when he gave his remarkable and unexpected demonstration. It was late summer when unrelenting desert heat was spent, giving way to more amicable conditions. That clear, sparkling California morning came with early brightness and the promise of many adventures.\n Monday morning, Lewis chose to confound the evil slave system that inhibits true expression from a free-spirited artist—he called in sick. He used a telephone to call the telephone company, telling them that he was unable to work and maintain the telephone system—an irony that Lewis never appreciated. So, with freedom ensured for a day, he was determined to take some photographs. Not mere photographs, though—images, memorable records of life in a small California town. Lewis was my friend, and I accompanied him on this artistic voyage. I work on Saturday. I take Monday off, which is a simple and convenient arrangement.\n Lewis had a dog. A fine old fellow, delighted to break routine for a few hours and participate in our photographic odyssey. So it was then—Lewis, myself, various cameras, all necessary photographic equipment, and our good companion, Old Red the Pit Bull Terrier. Off we sailed on that fine morning to meet whatever challenges lay ahead.\n It must have taken about half an hour driving along quiet country roads before we reached the little turnout where the mighty Chevrolet Impala would anchor safely, waiting for our return.\nThe old, somewhat battered car was a monument in Lewis's life. Dark blue paint was faded in places, but beneath a shabby overcoat beat the heart of an eight-cylinder champion.\n In the driver's door, a small hole was covered with a band-aid—a permanent reminder that Lewis's expertise with a thirty-eight caliber pistol left room for much improvement.\n We fussed with the equipment for a few minutes and released Red. Before his temporary freedom could begin, Lewis needed to deliver a stern lecture on social responsibility.\n Red grinned amiably, having received directives similar to those in the daily routine for many years. Lewis shaded his eyes, gazed at a distant hill, and considered the prevailing light. Red lifted his leg and pissed happily upon a small sage bush.\n Into the hills we went. Lewis was searching for an unforgettable panorama. With no interest in any grand vision, Red scampered ahead, delighting in his unexpected freedom.\nI believe it was an hour or so before we stopped for a break. We broke crusty French rolls and topped them with thick, roughly cut slices of sharp cheddar cheese. A bottle or two of cool dark beer enhanced our simple snack. There is a quality of stillness in these high desert hills and canyons—perhaps echoes from far-distant times when Indians lived in these lands. We sat for a while in peace, each of us absorbed in our thoughts.\n It was time now to move on. Remembrances of years past now gave way to keen regard for narrow, sandy trails waiting ahead. We reached the crest of a rounded hill. Simultaneously, we stopped, each for our own purpose.\n To my left, the rough sloping ground dropped away steeply to reveal a clearing several hundred yards below. A small truck was parked there with its tailgate down. Somewhere in the distance came rippling sounds of music, chattering voices, and laughter.\n Lewis glanced below, then held his left hand in front of his face, fingers spread in a gesture reminiscent of a traffic cop at a busy intersection.\nHis interest was not in the clearing below but the scene before him. About fifteen yards ahead was a natural gully, perhaps twenty feet deep and several yards wide.\nBeyond that, the terrain continued smoothly with short, dried grasses and a few blackened tree stumps, uneasy reminders of a great fire that swept through these hills a few years ago. A jagged outcropping of blackened sandstone rock rose in the middle of this somber field. It was this stony monument that excited Lewis's interest.\n Our soon-to-be award-winning photographer shrugged the pack from his shoulder. With an unflinching gaze upon the rocky vision ahead, he brought the old Nikon to his eye. He quickly assumed many positions—dropping to one knee, switching to the other, lying flat on his stomach, and then rising on his haunches.\n I had no doubt that a perfect photograph would eventually be recorded if, on this occasion, he had remembered to load a roll of film.\n I looked away from his athletic demonstrations to the truck below. A red shirt and a brown shirt could be seen; little else was revealed at that distance. The redshirt waved several times. I waved back to acknowledge the greeting. It seemed that both shirts were now moving steadily upward in our direction.\n Old Red saw that distant movement heard their music perhaps and decided to investigate the source of the disturbance. I grabbed him by his shoulders, calling Lewis to pass me his lead.\nRed is an amiable fellow who wishes harm upon no living creature except possibly the neighbor's cat across the street. However, given previous encounters with nervous people and enthusiastic Pit Bulls, constraining Red until our two visitors arrived was a favorable course of action.\n Lewis came, lead in hand, then, with a flourish, passed one end through the hand loop and attached the spring snap to Red's collar.\n I stared at the lead that Lewis held. His hand passed through the slipknot that he had just formed. To what purpose, though? There was already a hand loop to hold.\n \"Let me have him,\" I said, \"I'll hold him until you finish shooting.\"\nLewis grinned. \"No problem, watch this. I trained him.\" Red and Lewis walked purposefully to the edge of the gully. Lewis bent down, pulled the loop wide, and slipped his left foot through the noose, pulling the lead tight about his ankle. Red was now secured to Lewis's leg, and sure enough, the dog lay quietly beside his master.\n This unorthodox method of restraint had presumably worked to secure Red on previous occasions, so my vague misgivings were probably unfounded.\n Two figures came slowly into view—a woman in a red shirt and a boy in a brown shirt. The woman was attractive, perhaps in her early forties; the boy was about eleven or twelve. I smiled. She smiled back.\n \"Hope we're not disturbing you.\"\n Her voice was husky, slightly out of breath. Red turned and smiled. In fact, everyone smiled except Lewis, who was immobile with the camera to his eye.\nSo, all pieces are now in play, and the end game is revealed.\n Two hikers, two strangers, and one Pit Bull Terrier. There is one more player to meet in this great drama. I started to reply that my friend would only be a moment or two. As I spoke, the last piece on the board was revealed.\n There was a moment of silence, and then suddenly, a short cry of surprise from the woman as a sizeable gray-white jackrabbit bounded across our path, seemingly to materialize from beneath her feet.\n Red took off like a flame of vengeance after the disappearing rabbit. Lewis's left leg became momentarily horizontal—parallel to the ground like a martial arts expert.\n His shoe flew into the air. Instead of tightening around his leg as intended, the lead was wrenched instantly over his ankle.\n There was shouting, cursing, and flailing limbs.\nLewis disappeared from our sight in a small cloud of dust.\n If only a flash of light or peal of thunder dignified his departure, but the only reminder that he ever set foot in this quiet place was a cheap tennis shoe and a small backpack.\nI stared at the woman for many seconds. Although her mouth was moving, no sound escaped her lips.\n The boy, transfixed with joy and admiration, grinned like an idiot. He was the first to speak. \"Oh, cool, way cool. Did you see that, Mom? Did you see the way he did that? Did you see the dog? I just knew they were stuntmen. That dog was trained, wasn't he?\" I nodded in reply.\n \"Oh yes,\" I said slowly, \"My friend trained him personally. Please excuse me for a moment, though—my pal may need a hand.\" I peered over the edge of the gully. About fifteen feet or so below, partially obscured by dry, stunted desert vegetation, I could see the wreckage of a once-proud, potentially award-winning photographer. I scrambled down to the thorny bushes where Lewis was detained. The boy followed close behind me.\n My friend, now attempting to stand, appeared like an evil, enraged troll covered in dirt and leaves as he coughed and grunted. The kid babbled excitedly, unaffected by that horrifying vision. He extolled many heroic virtues of Lewis's daring leap.\n \"Oh, that was so cool, mister. Will you be doing it again today?\"\n Lewis turned slowly and stared at our enthusiastic visitor for several long seconds. He wiped away the blood from his nose with the back of his hand. He meant to say,\n \"Go get the hell away, kid,\" but, trying to clear his mouth from dirt and grass, it sounded as if he mumbled, \"g' day, Kidde.\"\n The boy grinned hugely.\n \"You're Scottish? Oh, that's too much—my mom was born in Scotland.\n Yeah,\" he continued, \"I gotta go tell her you're a Scottish stuntman.\"\n Up the side of the gully, he scrambled to relay the news to his mother. I thought Lewis was going to cry.\n He took the canteen, rinsed his mouth, and splashed water on his face. He glared at me with fury in his eyes.\n\"You sonofabitch,\" he said, \"you push me over the side, then tell that moron kid I'm a Scottish stuntman? What the fuck is wrong with you?\"\nIt took me a while to explain. It was necessary to repeat various details of the event several times before he could accept that Old Red had committed such an unthinkable act of betrayal.\nI sympathized and told him how glad I was that he was not badly hurt.\nMy innocent remark uncorked a further tirade of indignation.\n \"Hurt! Oh, no, please. Everything's just fuckin' fine,\" he said with heavy sarcasm. \"Hell, my ribs are broken, my nose is busted, my hip is dislocated, my mouth is jammed with sand and shit, and a god damned cactus is sticking out my arse. Oh, fuck, no, everything is just great with me.\n \"How about the camera, then?\"\n He glanced down at his faithful Nikon, swinging from the shoulder strap.\n \"Looks okay, I suppose,\" he said. I handed him the canteen and went to retrieve his shoe. I noticed that the lens mount on his camera was bent, probably beyond salvation.\n The shoe was just a few feet from where Lewis performed his magical disappearing act. He was not alone in his ability to disappear, though.\n There was no sign of our visiting mother and son. Suddenly came the worrying memory of Red, the vanishing Pit Bull. I walked behind as Lewis made his way with some difficulty to the top of the trench. There we stood for a minute or so before he pointed to the brow of the hill.\n Mother red shirt appeared with two boys in tow. There were now two red shirts, for she held the lead that secured our highly trained stunt dog.\nLewis was temporarily distracted by a grand vision of revenge.\nIn his mind's eye, Red and the rabbit were secured with a chain around their testicles suspended above a boiling cauldron of tar. Reality soon replaced his fantasy.\n The merry trio was upon us, contributing much laughing and chatter. After introductions, Mary told us that she had come with her son Larry to finish a school nature observance project. They intended to grill a burger or two when Mary realized neither of them had any means of lighting the coals.\n \"Yeah,\" said Larry, \"we hoped you would have matches or something.\" He continued,\n\"As soon as I saw Mister Lewis with his dog, I thought you guys were from the movies, but when I saw him dive into the bushes, I knew you must be stuntmen.\"\nLewis placed a fatherly hand on the boy's shoulder.\n\"I used to do a lot of training like that, son. But now I just like to keep my hand in. Not stunts for movies, though; my training was for the real thing.\"\n I stared at the re-invented Lewis. I listened as he told tales of bravery and devotion to duty. No longer was he a featureless installation engineer pathetically enslaved to the phone company but Agent Lewis, a fearless operative for a secret branch of the U.S. government.\n Young Larry was lost in admiration, riveted to every word. Mary, with her head tilted slightly in confusion and disbelief, was probably not convinced.\n\"It was a wonderful demonstration,\" she said slowly.\n We chatted for a while, then walked together in pleasant camaraderie down the slope to Mary's pickup. Relaxing for a little time to savor burgers and hot dogs while enjoying the pleasing company was a welcome respite.\n I wanted to provide some exercise for the two cameras that I carried. Of course, Lewis really could not continue, though he protested otherwise. Mary devised a simple solution. She elected to drive the battered Lewis to his house. Vehicles would be exchanged later, and an opportunity perhaps to down a beer or two and commiserate with my old abused friend. Their truck soon found a path leading to the road.\n A cloud of gray dust eventually obscured the vehicle as it prepared to confront civilization again. I was not alone, though.\n Red was to be my companion for the remainder of the day. We were free, no longer squeezed between the thumb and finger of other people's schedules.\n It must have been at least five hours before we returned to Lewis's house. By the doorbell was a piece of paper folded several times and taped to the door—a note telling me that Mary and Larry had gone to dinner with Lewis. There were also instructions to replace the front door key and to please leave Red in the house.\n The small manufacturing company for whom I worked accepted a tendered bid from a government agency.\n This situation required me to work many overtime hours for the first six months of the contract. I saw little of Lewis during that time.\n As the weeks faded into months, Summer's pleasures were soon forgotten as winter suddenly approached. Lewis approached even more suddenly one Monday morning at about six am as I made ready to leave for work. He uncharacteristically refused offers of coffee and toast. No idle insults or chatter told me something was not right. Suddenly, I was overcome by a great foreboding. He was grinning like an idiot, humming a mindless tune. A feeling of sadness and despair threatened to overwhelm me. Obviously, the stress of telephone installation and maintenance had taken its inevitable toll. He was pushed to the edge of a mental breakdown. I put my arm around his shoulder.\n \"I truly am so very sorry, man,\" I said. \n\"Perhaps a week or so, do nothing but rest. The company will manage without you for a while.\" Lewis stared at me for some time.\n \"I truly am so very sorry as well,\" he replied. \"I truly am so very god damned sorry that you are such a deluded asshole.\"\n All was instantly well with the world again. The righteous, obnoxious, indignant, and surly Lewis of old had returned. He paused for a few moments.\n \"Can't seem to reach you anymore, jerk, so I decided to drop by to see you. Tell you that I'm getting married.\"\n\"You can't. I mean, you don't know any women.\"\n I stared in disbelief for several seconds before a coherent conversation could resume. I grabbed his hand and shook it vigorously.\n \"That's fantastic. Congratulations! When's the date? Who's the girl?\"\n Lewis grinned, moving from one foot to the other, giving an impression of embarrassment or guilt. Many seconds elapsed before he continued. \"As a matter of fact, old buddy Mary and I decided to get married.\"\n Mary? I ran through a mental list of Mary's that we had known. No Mary of any marrying potential registered with me.\n He rolled his eyes toward the ceiling, shaking his head.\n \"When was the last time we got together, last time I saw you?\" he asked.\n Unable to recall, I shrugged my shoulders. \n\"Remember that desert hike months ago? Remember when I fell down the embankment? Do you remember Mary?\" Suddenly, the images were recalled.\n \"Oh, yeah, of course I remember. Old Red kicked you into a ditch. That woman and her kid took you home.\" Lewis nodded and sat down.\n \"We've been seeing each other, dating for three or four months now. We both decided to get married. Thought that maybe you would be the best man. Not going to be a big formal thing—just a few friends.\"\n I realized that at least an hour had evaporated in pleasant reminiscing. My friend pushed himself up from the chair and walked towards the door.\n\"Gotta go, buddy.\" Turning back suddenly, he stopped for a few seconds and then said,\n\"How about next Wednesday? You and me both call in sick. We'll go into the desert, take a few photographs.\"\n I nodded. \"Sounds good to me, pal. Meet at your place in the morning, pick up old Red, and head out?\" Lewis smiled slowly.\n \"Give you a call this evening then, bout eight.\"" } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: More to Me\n\nGenre: adventure\n\nWord Count: 1153\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about a character who risks their life to take a photo." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "“GET INSIDE!” Jack could hear Ben, the chopper pilot, yelling over the incessant whuppa whuppa whuppa of the blades as he leaned out of the opening of the medevac so far he was more out than in, but he had to get the shot. It was his job. As they approached the ground and the dust flew everywhere, a bullet went right through Jack’s hat. The force of the bullet ripped it right off his head. Even so, it didn’t alter his approach to his work. When he was working, he used the camera lens as his eyes and today what he saw through that lens was absolute carnage under a dusty haze, which made it look like a dream. Or, rather, a nightmare. He continued snapping pictures as one man after another was dragged, carried or ran out of the jungle toward the chopper. Soldiers were running backwards shooting their guns, providing cover for the troops who were being carried or were too bloody and disoriented to protect themselves from the gunfire bombarding them as they made their way to the chopper. Jack shot it all as one by one they were loaded into the medevac. Once everyone was in, the pilot pulled the chopper up and flew back to base to the deafening sounds of whuppa whuppa whuppa and missiles whizzing by barely missing them. As they flew over the jungle of Vietnam back to the relative safety of the base, Jack thought to himself how beautiful it looked from far above and how unnecessary this all was. Once landed, the pilot jumped out of the chopper, and in a rage ran around to the other side yanking Jack’s shoulder back to stop him as he was walking toward triage. He could feel a trickle of blood running down his head from where the bullet grazed him. \n\n“Who the hell do you think you are? You arrogant jackass. I personally don’t give a shit if anything happens to you, but I’m the one that’s gonna catch hell if you don’t make it back. You can ride along with me, because I have no choice but when you hang out of the chopper like you just did back there, I can’t make quick movements because you’ll fall out! And that limits how I fly, and I can’t have that. I need to be able to maneuver to avoid incoming fire. I need to focus on getting those boys out of that god-forsaken jungle. If you make that one ounce more difficult for me I will push you out myself, and I won’t come back for you. Do you hear me? This may be a game for you, but it’s life and death for us.” Ben pushed him aside and walked away from him. Jack was shocked and ashamed of himself and realized that what he does here may put someone else in danger. He grew up a little that day. It was 1974 and the war would soon be over but he was only a 22-year-old kid fresh out of journalism school trying to make a name for himself.\n\nFrom that point on, he was aware of everything he did and everyone around him so that he didn’t get in the way or cause any problems. He got amazing pictures of an untenable war that were sent through the AP wire and were picked up in papers all over the world. Those pictures made him the most famous photojournalist of his time. Beautiful, ugly, haunting images of a war nobody understood and fewer and fewer people wanted. \n\nAfter that, he was sent on assignments all over the world. He covered wars, civil unrest, political coups in every far off corner of the globe and drug cartel activity that decimated small border towns, and he risked his life every day to bring the truth to people.\n\nHis coworkers and other correspondents called him a badass, but he didn’t think of himself as particularly brave. The people he was shooting were the brave ones, and he tried to convey that through his photography. \n\nHe had a life filled with risk and danger for over a decade but then he met a woman in one of those war-torn countries and fell in love. He brought her home, married her and they started a family. She never asked him to stop going on assignments but as the years went by and kids got older, the lure of getting that picture that perfectly encapsulated a moment in time began to be less important to him than Davey’s baseball game or Beth’s ballet recital. He decided to leave the dangers of photojournalism behind him, and he opened a photography studio in town.\n\nYou'd think that it would be easy, but it was hard. It was almost harder than dodging bullets in some far off land. After a while though he got used to the quiet and while he missed the adventure and even the danger to a degree, he did enjoy shooting the happy events of people’s lives. And he loved being able to be home with his wife and kids and soon no one remembered, not even himself half the time, that he used to be a badass who hung out of medevac choppers in Vietnam. \n\n*****\n\n“Papa, what are these?” Jake called out to his grandfather from the other room. “I don’t know, Jake. What are you looking at?” replied Jack as he walked toward the back bedroom where his grandson was. Jack was old now and walked with the help of a cane and hadn't taken any pictures of anything other than his family for a long time.\n\n“These pictures. Why do you have all these pictures of protests and soldiers,” asked Jake. As Jack walked into the room, he saw that Jake had taken all the pictures out of the closet and the Pulitzer Prize he had won for his photo series on Vietnam. As he looked at his grandson, who he knew only saw him as an old man who never did anything very exciting, he decided to finally talk about what he did when he was young. \n\n“You know, Jake, I didn't always walk with a cane and need bifocals to see. I was young once, if you can believe it.\" Jake looked at him like he knew it had to be true but wasn't quite sure. \"There’s more to me than the worn out old man you see when you look at me,\" said Jack with a smile and a distant look in his eyes. \"It’s kind of funny that your mom is so protective now that she doesn't even like me using the stove without someone being here but there was a time when I was a little wild, kind of crazy, and went on lots of adventures,” said Jack as his grandson listened intently to story after incredible story." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: The Sigmund-Thun-Gorge\n\nGenre: adventure\n\nWord Count: 1233\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about a character who risks their life to take a photo." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "He tilts his head slightly to the side and places his hand against the shell of his ear, but the thundering water drowns out the voice of the man standing opposite him. He gives a hand gesture, indicating a different direction. The other man nods and follows him over the crudely constructed wooden bridge, trembling and shivering as he holds on to the ropes that act as rails. The dampness that soaked the bridge's wooden slats rendered them soggy and each step felt like a passageway on a ship.\n\nUpon reaching the opposite bank, the man grasped the other man's arm, which held the satchel he had been carrying since November 1885, during the Serbo-Bulgarian War. He raised his head a little to look at the bearded man whose face was scarred from forehead to cheek.\n\n“Prepare the camera. He should be here any moment”. The man shouts over the sound of the water.\n\nThe other man, though, just nodded. The man holding the camera satchel pointed to a specific area. The walk there is steep and covered with ash trees, beeches, and bushes, yet it is perfect for a photograph. \n\nWith hands gripping branches and plants, the two men hauled themselves up the slope; and with each step, the slick earth gave way beneath their boots. \nThe men's broadclothes, in that era's traditional green hue, soaked up the surrounding moisture like a sponge, making their ascent up the slope all the more challenging.\n\nThe taller of the two had to halt more than once. Placing his palm on his chest, he felt it quickly rise and fall. Gasping for air, he briefly leaned his upper body against the slope and used his other hand to grip the branches to save himself from falling. The other man, already a few steps ahead, looked at him and then at the bridge that connected the gorge. He looked down at him again and gave him hand signals.\n\nHe yelled, \"Come on,\" with a firm voice.\n\nWith an even more impatient sweep of his hand, he took his pocket watch out of his vest. \n\n\"We're going to miss him out. Hurry up.\"\n\nThe other man with the satchel turned to face him after wiping the perspiration from his brow. \n\nHe gasped and exclaimed, \"Keep going. I need a couple extra seconds.\" \n\nWhen he saw the other didn't understand him, he gave him a hand signal. His feeble voice was lost in the sound of the flowing river. \n\nHe watched the other man climb the slope with skill and speed, arriving at the gorge valley bridge in no time. The lattice girders of the bridge were made of wrought iron and wood, and a tension rod attached to the beam supported the struts of the girders\n\nThe man grumbled as he leaned away, upper body off the slope, to have a better view. He looked up at the other man and pulled out his pocket watch.\n\n \"Damn. Ten more minutes.\"\n\nHe wiped the sweat from his forehead and searched for the next branches to pull himself up onto. His shoes were not designed for the slick terrain, so he had to take each step twice. \n\nHe was breathing heavily and kept slipping, shouting to himself aloud, \"What on earth..damned.\" \n\nHis chest rose and fell fast, with occasional gasps for air. He looked up at the other man. The edge was only ten feet away, but the man's face on the slope appeared bloodless, and its scars were more visible than ever before.\n\nHe shook his head, unable to understand a word the man on the edge said. The other man gave him a signal. He shifted his upper body slightly away from the slope, raised the arm holding the sachel above his head, swung it wide, and hurled it at the other man with all of his might. \nHe let out a scream, that resembled a kiai, using all of the energy he had stored up to bolster his will and focus. \nThe man on the edge had to bend his upper body far forward and could only grip the satchel with two fingers. As he lost his balance and was ready to slip down the slope, he caught a glimpse of a branch.\n\nHe glared down, gave the man resting on the slope the thumbs up, and moved past the mob in front of the bridge pushing others aside. The man on the slope had a good view to observe, and he shook his head, as the other man came closer to the area of interest. He could not hear a word they saying, not even the loud mop, but he saw the excitement in people's faces and children's laughs.\n\nShortly later, he watched out for the man with the satchel; he talked with the gendarmes about the passage, repeatedly indicating his camera and holding a letter. Finally, the gendarmes caved in and let him pass.\n\nHe noticed in the other man's glance that he was making a face as if Christmas and Easter were on the same day!\n\nNow was the time. Along with invited guests, priests, altar boys, and local officials, Sigmund Ignaz Graf von Thun and Hohenstein arrived. Soldiers shoved people aside to make space for Graf von Thun and Hohenstein.\n\nSigmund Ignaz Graf von Thun and Hohenstein were a distinguished individual who stood out from the crowd. As he marched to the center of the bridge, he walked with such pride and confidence that he raised his chin up to the sky. On the left side of his chest, rows of service medals and ribbons displayed his accomplishments.\n\nThe man put out the Vest Pocket Kodak camera from the satchel and attempted to go as close as two meters to Sigmund Ignaz Graf von Thun and Hohenstein, who were roughly the same height. However, the gendarmes seized his arm and dragged his entire body back, bringing the man further away.\n\nThe man yelled loudly and struggled with the gendarmes' grip with his arms and legs, but they forced him back in the back of the mob while they continued to yell \"Graf Hohenstein.\"\n\nThe man, still lying on the slope, his pallor slowly fading, whispered, \"Don't mess this up.\"\n\nHe gestured with his hand to the man on the bridge. The man on the bridge shook his head in a no-signal manner. He was seeking a better perspective for his shot, and after that, he turned to face the man positioned on the slope. He waved to the man, telling him what he intended to do, and without waiting for a reply, he turned and stepped onto the wooden railing of the bridge. \n\nOne step, then the next, and his shoes slipped slightly on the bending crossbar, nearly throwing him off balance and faltering. Seconds later, he rebalanced himself, holding the Vest Pocket Kodak camera.\n\n\"What the heck is he doing?\" the man rubbed his face with both hands. “What a moron!\" \n\nHe cast a sideways glance at the 30-meter-deep gorge; from the glaciers and mountains high above the Kaprun Valley, water rushes with unstoppable power through rock and stone, forming the gorge. From that point forward, the gorge was known as the \"Sigmund Thun Gorge\".\n\nHe looked back to the bridge, but the other man had vanished. Only the bag hung on the bridge railing, swinging slightly. But the man disappeared." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Quicksand\n\nGenre: african-american\n\nWord Count: 2426\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about two people living together who have opposing sleep cycles, and only cross paths at dawn and dusk." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "She caught sight of him at dawn when the sun woke from its slumber. He for a brief moment saw her at dusk when the sun peered over the horizon, and the moon rose to take its place. Like passing trains in the midst of night they traveled separate journeys. Neither spoke much these days, buried by the silence, and the reluctance to resolve their troubles.\nPuppy love turned to malevolence quickly after the weights of life beared down and reality sank it's teeth deep into their teenage fantasy. Brenda and Damon, almost thirty, no longer relished the idea of being in love ensnared by a suck hole they called marriage.\nDamon arrived at dawn; Brenda left at dawn. Neither wanted to shatter the piercing silence of their arduous life. They couldn’t afford to speak to each other because they would have to confront their lack of intimacy, the miscarriage that kept Brenda bedridden for months, and, above all, Damon’s affair.\nDamon preferred the night shift, providing him with an excuse to sleep the day away and evade accountability for his transgressions. As a result, Brenda preferred the morning shift in order to avoid looking at him for long periods of time. After discovering his affair, being in the same room with him made her skin crawl. One day, everything that had worked for eight months collapsed; She spoke.\n“This isn’t working,” she said, sipping her aromatic coffee that Monday morning. She knew she had to confront him. She took a deep breath and said, “It’s over.”\nAs he entered and placed his lunchbox on the table, Damon pretended not to hear her. Surprised and relieved to hear her voice, he pretended to be oblivious.\n\"What?\" he frowned, his brows knitting together in a perplexed expression. The unexpected news hit him like a sudden gust of wind, leaving him momentarily disoriented.\nHe grasped the meaning behind her words, but admitting that he couldn't afford a divorce right now was a bitter pill to swallow. The job at the warehouse was unreliable, with the constant threat of layoffs. Adding to the financial imbalance, she, as a legal assistant, earned more than him, and he had recently splurged on a new truck.\n\"This... the quiet, the lack of intimacy—I just can't go on like this anymore,\" she sighed, frustration evident in her tone.\nHad she found someone else as well? Not Brenda—she was loyal to a fault. A whirlwind of thoughts raced through his mind. He yearned to ask questions, but emotions tangled his words. Anything he said at this moment would be tinged with the intensity of his feelings.\n“Why are you doing this?” Damn it, there it goes.\n“Damon, you know just as well as me that this hasn’t been healthy for either of us,” she tossed her cup in the sink and prepared to leave for work, not bothering to wash it.\n“Is this about the affair? I told you that was a one-time thing. I don’t even talk to her anymore,” he tried to explain, though it was all just lies. He was still entangled in the affair and had no intention of giving up the pleasure and comfort the other woman provided anytime soon.\n“We need to end this and move on, my mother said…”\nAfter that reference to her mother, he shut down, unwilling to entertain any more conversation. Clarice, her mother, had been overly involved in their marriage, and he couldn't help but feel she should foot the bill for the divorce. Brenda, being the empathetic daughter, always seemed compelled to follow her mother's wishes. He blamed Clarice for the miscarriage, attributing it to the stress caused by her influence and the superstitious beliefs she had implanted in Brenda's mind. He harbored a strong dislike for Clarice, convinced that her deceased husband's escape was a deliberate choice to get away from her.\n“Oh, your mother said? You know you’re a grown woman, right? Your mother should not have a say in our marriage,” he walked off into the bedroom, shutting the door behind him.\nShe despised when he did that. It was precisely why she avoided these conversations with him. He never seemed mature enough to confront the blunt truth. Brenda followed him into the room, continuing to speak.\n“I’m leaving, that’s it. I’m packing up this weekend and going to stay with my mother in the country. It’s over, Damon.”\nAs she turned to walk away, her heels clacked against the linoleum floor. What happened next was beyond his control. He reached for the back of her jacket and pulled her back.\nBrenda raised an eyebrow, looking at him, unsure if he would respond with violence or perhaps a desperate kiss. To her surprise, he did neither; he simply released her. In that moment, he recognized he didn't deserve her, realizing he was destined to be alone, to grow old and face the final days by himself.\nThe pain he inflicted on her was tangible; he could feel it in the touch that had once held warmth. The light that had once glistened in her eyes, under the summer sun, was now extinguished. She had become an empty shell, drained by his lies and deceit. Brenda had yearned passionately to build a family with Damon and experience a love akin to her parents' enduring bond of 40 years.\nHowever, Damon fell short of being the man her father was. His peak in college still lingered in his self-image, holding onto the illusion of his teenage body. He was on the precipice of needing Weight Watchers, and, truth be told, she was no longer attracted to him.\n“I’ll start packing my things when I get off tonight.” That was all she said before disappearing through the front door. The urge to run after her and confess how much he needed her lingered, but the harsh reality that it was truly over had already settled in.\nHe sat on the side of the bed in his dusty uniform, staring into the abyss of his thoughts. Showering, sleeping, and gearing up for another 12-hour shift were the only things left on the agenda. He had lost his wife, and now, in the midst of this upheaval, he couldn’t afford to lose his job.\nBrenda couldn’t concentrate at work all day, the weight of realizing she had loved Damon for a decade, and only him, gnawing at her. How could he betray her like that after she had unwaveringly stayed faithful to him? He nullified their vows when he lay down with that tramp. She endured the loss of their baby, and instead of finding solace in him, he sought refuge elsewhere.\nHe didn’t care about her; his actions were purely selfish. It was time for her to be equally self-centered and prioritize her own well-being. During those months of grief, she lay there, in tears drowning out the world, mourning the loss of that small part of him she'd lost. He never once entered that room to console her, too absorbed in his own little game, occupied with someone else, fitting his piece into another puzzle.\nThe truth of the matter remained that he didn't know how to comfort her. His distraction came in the form of a five foot four caramel skinned coworker who eagerly took up the chance to seduce him. He accepted, and without regret continued even after Brenda found out. Brenda's boss looked into her eyes and sensed that something was profoundly wrong.\n“Are you okay, Bren?” Reynaldo had a look of concern spread across his face.\n\"Oh yes, I've completed the dissertation for the Bonner Oil case. I'll make sure to place it on your desk, Mr. Fields,\" she said, attempting to hide the strain behind a smile.\nHe settled on the corner of her desk, placing his coffee cup down.\n\"Call me Reynaldo, Bren; you’ve been part of this office for almost a year now. What's going on with you today?\" he said, leaning in.\nShe attempted to halt it, but events unfolded rapidly. Tears streamed down her face, and she found herself enveloped in his embrace, shedding tears without restraint.\n\"Hey, easy now; do you need to leave?\" he asked, genuine concern in his voice.\n\"No, it’s just... well, Damon and I are separating,\" she said, wiping away mascara.\nReynaldo lacked the details, but he sensed the significance of Brenda confiding in him. Brenda, with her long peanut butter brown legs and an hourglass figure, had caught Reynaldo's eye more than once. Office rumors painted her husband as a loser; she deserved better.\n\"How about we get out of here? I’ll buy you lunch,\" he suggested with a smile.\nHandsome and seemingly impervious to dentist envy, Reynaldo's perfect smile made Brenda hesitate to decline.\n\"I’d like that,\" she replied, her voice taking on a low, somewhat sensual tone.\n\"Great, grab your things, meet me at my car,\" he smiled.\nBrenda found herself in her boss’s Porsche, the wind tousling her hair as they drove with the top down. The scent of his Armani cologne wafted through the air, casting a spell. She had never regarded Reynaldo as more than a boss, but now, sitting there in his sunglasses, he looked undeniably appealing.\nDesiring him, she felt entitled to this one indulgence. She was determined to have him, even if it meant making it the last thing she did. Revenge, some might call it, but she was savoring her just desserts. After all, who didn't like dessert?\nBrenda didn’t return home until late that night. What started as lunch with Reynaldo morphed into drinks after work. Damon, who had never bothered to check on her before, now called her twelve times.\nShe didn’t answer. Recalling how he had ignored her pleas during his affair, Brenda hummed a tune from the restaurant, reminiscing about the charming Reynaldo. He was a breath of fresh air, pulling out chairs and opening doors, a stark contrast to Damon's neglect.\nWrapped in Reynaldo's fur-lined coat, Brenda hadn’t felt this way in ages. At the end of the night he'd kissed her and she let him. The house was dark when she arrived, and Damon, disheveled, awaited her in the doorway.\nShe pretended to appraise him before casually walking toward the kitchen for a glass of water. As she turned to see Damon standing behind her, rage burning in his eyes, she couldn't help but laugh at his ridiculous expression.\n\"Where have you been?\" he demanded, furrowing his brows.\n\"Don't worry about it,\" she laughed, heading to the room.\n\"What do you mean, 'don't worry about it'?\" he followed her, reversing their usual dynamic.\n\"Just what I said, don't worry about it. I'm here now. Aren’t you supposed to be headed to work?\" she asked with a smirk.\n\"I called in,\" he replied, plopping on the bed.\nShe walked off towards the bathroom, leaving her shoes in the hallway, an act she would never usually tolerate in her meticulous tidiness. Tonight, she didn't care. Living carefree, thoughts of Reynaldo danced in her head. Although he was her boss, he made her feel things she had never felt with Damon.\n\"You're acting really strange,\" Damon observed as she flounced around on her tiptoes, floating through the house.\nTired of his constant questioning, all she wanted was for him to go to work and leave her to her fantasies.\n\"It’s called happiness, Damon. You know, that’s when a woman feels beautiful and loved. Happiness,\" she scoffed.\nTrying to enter the bathroom, he surprised her by standing in the doorway, glaring at her with a look of hatred.\n\"Happiness, huh? What’s got you so happy?\" he squinted at her, rubbing his chin.\n\"Oh my God, Damon, can’t I just be in a good mood?\" she tried to push past him.\nHe grabbed her shoulders and shook her.\n\"Are you cheating on me?\" he bit his lip so hard that blood left the surface, making his lip white.\n\"What? Let me go. What is wrong with you?\" Damon couldn’t accept the idea of her with another man. She belonged to him, no matter his transgressions; He wouldn’t allow her to do the things he did.\nBrenda tried to squirm from his grip but found his hand around her throat, squeezing. Even without evidence of wrongdoing, Damon's actions were relentless. He couldn't endure the same treatment he subjected her to for months.\n\"Damon, you're hurting me,\" she whispered through gasps for air.\nIn this intense moment, Damon's grip tightened, fueled by a possessive desperation. \"Is it one of those fancy pants lawyers?\" he demanded, squeezing even harder. Brenda, engulfed in darkness, struggled to respond. Shocked and overwhelmed, she yearned to fight back, to kick or scream, but the reality of the unfolding nightmare paralyzed her.\nFinally regaining some sense, Damon released his hold. Brenda crumpled to the ground, tears streaming down her face. The weight of his actions crashed over Damon with a crushing force, a realization that struck him like a relentless barrage of heavy bricks, each one laden with the gravity of his deeds.\nBrenda, his college sweetheart, and the pillar of support during his most challenging moments, standing by him with unwavering loyalty, didn't deserve this. She played a pivotal role in helping him secure the job at the warehouse, a gesture that held profound significance in their shared history.\n\"You know what? You’re right, it’s over. I’ll leave,\" he declared, turning away. For once, Brenda didn't stop him. In that poignant moment, both acknowledged that what they once shared had disintegrated. Their entrenched codependency and the resistance to embrace change, rooted in the comfort of familiarity, finally led them to a breaking point.\nDamon packed, and Brenda wiped away her tears. Uncertain of his destination, Damon couldn’t stay there any longer. He despised the person he became, and Brenda shared that sentiment. The problem wasn't her; it was him. Though imperfect she, loved him through thick and thin. The inappropriate involvement with Reynaldo was her misstep, and she knew it. Knowing Damon tormented himself with jealousy provided an odd comfort.\nThat fateful night, Damon departed, and the shadows of unfamiliarity cloaked them once again. The specter of divorce loomed ominously, but, as per their usual dance, neither yielded. They desperately clung to the fragments of a bygone connection, acutely aware that the tapestry of their past could never be rewoven. Long before Brenda sought her vindication, Damon had fractured her heart irreparably. Their bond resembled quicksand, each sinking deeper, powerless to rescue the other." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: The Interior Life of Ruck\n\nGenre: adventure\n\nWord Count: 2788\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story from the point of view of a non-human character." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I backpack.\nNamed Ruck. Store person put me on shelf. She say I “handsum”. I not know what it mean, but she make happy face when she say, so must be nice thing. \nNothing to do while I sit here but lots to look at. After I see sun come up from outside window two times, I feel little bored. I feel little empty, like I hungry.\nBut I not wait long. Young man come, he look at me. He lift me from shelf, take me to store lady, who ask him if he want me “in a bag”, which make them both laugh. We go outside, he sling me on back. What a feeling! I move so free! I then rest on his back. I still empty, but it feel nice to use my straps. We go forward, away from store. \nI miss nice store lady but I like outside more. I like being on back.\n—\nOwner name Kafka, I hear him say. I learn Kafka a “uhcountant”. He work with numbers. He use heavy machine to help make sentences from numbers. At end of each sentence, he take short break, then start next sentence. He write lots of number sentences on machine. I think one day he write book (book is like many papers, put together with gloo), like ones I carry, or ones I see at his home.\nWe spend lot of time together. Every time we go out, it new “uhdventure” (fun work, but makes no money) for me. Kafka not tell me where we go, I find out right before we leave home. It fun game for me to guess where we go from the things he give me to carry. When he bring his uhcountant things, I know we go to office. When I carry snacks, water, spray for “bears” (animals that hike but not carry backpacks), I know we go hiking. When I empty, I know we go get food from store (different store than where I from) to keep at home. I not eat store food. I not hungry when I carry things.\nHiking my favorite.\n—\nWhile Kafka at work, I read the things left inside me. Sometimes these are small things I can read, like receipts and snack labels, but they interesting because they important enough for me to carry, so I read them to learn why so important to Kafka that I work hard to carry and keep for him. I not upset, I just wonder, because I have lots of time to think while we at his “office”.\nMostly I read his books that I carry. But because he an accountant, his books are more numbers than words. So I think I slow to learn words. I like words, because they give me way to understand Kafka and to think better. Numbers not help me very much yet.\nBooks heavy, but are my favorite thing to carry. I read them and read them again.\n—\nAt work today I read a very different kind of book. This one didn’t have many numbers in it. And it was very different than the accounting books I normally read. It was more of a fun story, but I don’t know yet if the story is true or not. It was about a wizard boy named Harry, and if it is true, then I wonder if Kafka has any friends from the school of magic. How fun and curious it would be to meet someone who has a bag that can store as many things as it want. I’d like to meet that bag, what a fun trick! Sometimes when I’m so full that I can’t fit anymore, I feel a bit bad because I know Kafka needs me to carry more. He gently squashes all his other stuff down to make room for more stuff, and I feel guilty. I would like to learn how to make more room. Unlimited room! I have much to learn. \nIf not a true story, then I wonder why someone would write it?\n—\nWhen we don’t go to Kafka’s work, I carry stuff that feels different. Like today we went on a picnic and we brought along “homey” things (things that are softer, things that feel like they are from home, borrowed from home, and when you have them with you, you feel like home is with you).\nI carried a soft blanket, a “journal” (a book that Kafka sometimes writes his stories in, but ones with no numbers), a pencil, sunglasses, a little bottle of lotion, a salad with separate dressing (it took a lot of effort to keep the “dressing” upright!), some napkins, and an empty bag. Not a bag like me, but a smaller one, a plastic one that seemed disinterested in whether it was carrying books or garbage, whether it was empty, or wrinkled to death with folds.\nWhile we were lying on the blanket at the park — I feeling a blissful stillness in a sunbeam, feeling alive from the earthy tree air that travelled across us slowly — Kafka made a new friend who was also laying in the park, a blanket and a patch of grass away from us.\n“I’m Kafka”, Kafka said, flashing a smile.\n“I’m Jeannie”, she smiled back.\nI wonder a little if Kafka knows my name. It was a nice day, lots of work and lots of play.\n—\nSundays are crisp and best enjoyed when they begin in Kafka’s “Dodge” (a type of car that is used for going to and from the city), and are followed by a day-long hike. \nCar rides are as fine as paper towel, but truth be told, I am still not used to facing forward while also moving forward. It’s a strange sensation, perhaps like a human walking backwards while facing forwards. But knowing that we’re about to spend the day hiking is enough to distract me from the strangeness.\nThis morning though, I was in a bad mood.\nUsually seated in the first-mate seat of Kafka’s Dodge, keeping him company, I was demoted this morning to an afterthought in the backseat on account of new company. Not even in the middle backseat, where at least the three of us would form an equilateral triangle, reassuring by virtue of its equity and impartiality, but rather in the seat behind Jeannie, furthest from Kafka, where I’m forced to stare at the back of the chair that used to be mine.\nSitting there, behind the open window instead of next to it, the gush of air tumbling into the back seat, crushing me with the force of its weight, made me want to “vomit” (when you hurl the contents out of your body because you don’t feel well). \nI tried to look mad by squishing my face the way I sometimes see Kafka do, but my attempt at shapeshifting was futile, because I’m too much on the outside who I am on the inside, which is rumpled stuff. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway, because the sanguine rockmelons upfront were preoccupied laughing at unfunny jokes.\nWhen we got there, wherever there was, Kafka heaved me out from the backseat. Determined to not willingly become part of a scalene love triangle, I made myself as heavy as possible and Kafka grunted.\nBut it’s an odd thing. Despite my resolve to weigh down the buoying levity of their romance, to bring it back to earth, something got the better of me when we began hiking. My work began, the work of keeping their possessions safe and present, and my bitterness dissolved into the solvent air of the forest. I am a sentimental creature, easily overcome by the poetry of sticks, twigs, trees, and earthy air. \nI felt bashful of the jealousy I felt earlier, but I also felt reinvigorated, filled as much with purpose as I was with pasta salad, the two counting on me. I am the difference between well-prepared loving adventurers, and once-lovers torn apart by nothing other than the mundane rational problems of unpreparedness.\nLater, all of us tired, we plopped down on a jagged rock whose redeeming quality was that it was large enough to seat us all in a forest that had no other chairs. We needed a break from the sun and the walking, and from the bugs too, but enamoured by our company, the bugs insisted on taking a break with us. \nLike a magician with their trusty hat, Kafka pulled out whatever it was that they needed; snacks, hydration, and afterwards, we all laughed at things that are only funny when you feel an overwhelming lightness.\n—\nWe hiked everywhere. For a whole year, here, there, everywhere, even across the ocean, where people spoke languages I’ve never read (though often the numbers looked the same there as they did back home).\nI could tell you of forests and cities; of ships, planes, trains, and bikes; of heat, of wind, of sand; of bugs and of birds. But there was one moment in particular while we were hiking off the Ligurian coast that was revelatory for me, when a truth about my kind gobsmacked me over the hood.\nAs with most prophetic moments, it happened simply, without ceremony, and only in retrospect do you realize that it was something you’ve been waiting to know. And often that realization is an answer to why you are the way you are, and why you sometimes inexplicably feel alone in the company of others. (Or so I’ve gathered from the books Kafka and I have read, I don’t have many revelations of my own to draw from, but it seems to be a sort of universal phenomena that makes us all ironically alike.)\nAnyways, during one of these hikes, in the silence of the morning, Kafka and I passed by another backpack and their human, who nodded at us as we crossed paths, the strangers going onward into our past while we went onwards into theirs, the other backpack and I continuing to face one another for longer than most humans would feel comfortable holding a gaze with one another. This stranger backpack was well worn, one of the eldest I ever encountered. It had aged gracefully without becoming fragile, a marbled patina having formed on its leather surfaces, adventure imbued into its fabric.\nIt was then that it dawned on me; that backpacks live looking backwards. You’d think it would be obvious, “back” is even in the name of my kind, but it took me living a dozen Fodor’s for this to really sink in.\nWhen humans walk, they walk towards something. Objects ahead of them become bigger and bigger, at their largest before suddenly they disappear forever. Being able to march forwards towards the unseen, unencumbered by what they leave behind, makes them ideal explorers.\nBut when we as backpacks travel, it’s the opposite. Things start out at a scale hyper quixotic to a little backpack, become smaller and smaller, until eventually — they don’t disappear — they just become infinitesimally small. What’s more is that I always know how much longer I have to appreciate something before it fades away, the correlation between time and visibility made predictable, like a sunset. \nWhat does that make a backpack, whose motion is forward but is always looking back? What do you call someone or something that savours the past, bidding everything it passes a long and reverent goodbye?\nA poet, a journalist, a cartographer, perhaps? Whose role it is to chronicle their loved ones’ life and adventures? Not on maps or on paper, but within the memory of our materials. We remember whatever is worth remembering before it fades away - like the smell of pine, the salt of creek water, the sap and dew of the trees we rest on - and imbue it in our fabric. We absorb and reflect the experiences of our humans, forming a tapestry of their lives.\n—\nWe’ve been back home for a while, and so there’s been less hiking and no travelling, and more time spent at Kafka’s office. Fewer stories about Harry Potter (which I’ve since learned are “fiction”), and more stories about numbers (which I’ve since learned, I’m not the only one who doesn’t enjoy reading such stories). \nI’m not complaining. I know I speak often of how much I love my work while we hike and travel, but I can appreciate a break. I wouldn’t mind trying out one of these “spas” I keep reading about (a place where they spot clean your fabric with cucumbers), but for now it’s nice to have predictability in the possessions I carry, and to simply lay motionless in a climate-controlled environment for hours, or even days at a time.\n—\nI’ve noticed some peculiarities this past week, some of them as contradictory as salt and pepper. \nI’ll start with the exciting news. I’ve been carrying around fewer accounting books this week, and have instead been entrusted with Yosemite Falls travel books checked out from the library, which Kafka has been devouring at lunch time. The anticipation of another trip, our first in a while, sends a chill of excitement up my padded spine. For all my talk about rest and relaxation, it turns out I’m just a fisherman who misses the sea.\nAnd while the fibres of my fabric, once clean and crisp, have softened, gently sanded down by the tide of adventure, I feel as durable and capable as ever.\nThere is a contradiction that has left me confused, however. I’ve noticed a few anomalies at home, traits inconsistent with how Kafka has usually behaved before a big trip. Ordinarily, we would both sit in the living room, and see what all we were capable of carrying. And though I’ve tried to signal to Kafka and Jeannie that I was ready, if not eager for this ritual, I’ve been left to idle while they plan.\nBut I chalk it up to experience; we have more confidence in what to pack, how to fit and carry it all, and being able to improvise with the unknown since you can never pack everything. That’s what aging is really all about; you no longer carry around the weight of the permutations of everything that will go wrong.\n—\nI should have seen the signs.\nAt first they were subtle. For example, Kafka used to gently and carefully clean my fabric, dabbing at me gently with Dawn dish soap and warm water; always warm, never cold, never hot. Warm with a precision that he seldom demonstrated for anything except numbers. Then recently, he became ambivalent about the temperature of the water, then he stopped caring about the soap, before finally he stopped caring about cleaning me altogether.\nAnd in the past couple weeks, the clues became so obvious that I now feel stupid for not recognizing them sooner. Kafka and Jeannie began talking of me “wearing out”, which at the time, I assumed to mean they were getting ready to wear me “out”, as in outside of work, outside of the normal routine, outside of the comfortable but now lethargic sanctum we had all cocooned ourselves in. Now I see that “wearing out” is a human idiom, as in I’m being “worn away”, fading into the distance, like the trees and sticks that I used to enjoy watching become infinitesimally small until they only existed in my memory. \nSo I am a “horcrux” now, a slice of Kafka’s soul, living outside of him. At a store, to be precise, filled with things. Not new things like where I grew up, but old things. Old things that would ordinarily be beautiful, like the backpack I saw on our hike off the Ligurian coast. But now, placed outside of their work environment, compacted in between other old things, sitting empty on a shelf, trying to catch a stray sun beam but having to pathetically settle for fluorescent lights, we all looked decrepit and humiliated.\nI feel like vomiting, but can’t because I am empty. I am hungry, have nothing to read, and my arms are stiff from not moving.\nThe store keepers here are unsympathetic, as are the patrons, and we all move about as though we are discarded by our Kafkas. \n—\nAdam, a red-headed boy of six or seven, walks into the store. He picks me up, and - now that I know more of accounting than he - pays for me at a depreciated value. \nWe walk outside into a bright white world, and he slings me over his shoulder. Little Adam walks onwards, and I, on his back (and just as big), begin chronicling his life." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Curiosity Killed the Cat and Chantey\n\nGenre: african-american\n\nWord Count: 2830\n\nPrompt:\n\nAs a child you’re helping your grandparent bake. When you’re sent to the pantry to fetch an ingredient, you discover something odd." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "No secret is safe from twelve-year-old Chantey. It doesn’t matter if it’s a rumor at school or a Christmas gift stashed in the basement, if you have anything to hide, she’ll find out. The girl is relentless. She’ll stop at nothing to get to the truth. Chantey was Columbo, Matlock, and Sherlock Holmes all wrapped up into one. It wasn’t until the summer of 83 that she learned a lesson in sticking her nose where doesn’t belong. Well, sort of. \n The Tatum’s arrived at the home of the patriarch of the family, Grandma Mabel Tatum, on a humid Saturday afternoon in August. Grandma eagerly stood out front to greet them with her trusty sidekick, Duchess the German Sheppard next to her. She was a feisty little black woman with rich dark skin that was smooth like a Butterfinger, big brown eyes that could stare a hole through your soul, and pearly white teeth that could light a dark room. Grandma lived alone after grandpa died five years ago. Refusing to leave and live with her son. She stayed on her old farm with just Duchess to keep her company, and her double barrel shot gun to protect her. So when the family came to visit her for the summer, she more excited than a kid on Christmas morning. \nChantey and her family got out the car after a six-hour drive. As they stretched, the Louisiana sun began to instantly pull the sweat from their sore bodies. With her lip poked out, Chantey wiped the sweat from her caramel skin as she strolled across the gravel driveway. A fly landed on her round nose and she swatted it away in disgust. Her hazel eyes looked in every direction, and there was nothing but farmland as far as the eye could see. The gusty winds almost blew her skinny frame over. Leaves rustling and grasshoppers rubbing their legs were the only sounds on the vast plains. A massive difference from her home in Houston. She wished she was there now, playing with her friends and riding her bike until the street lights came on. Rolling her eyes, Chantey’s shoulders slumped as she went to greet her grandma.\nAhead of her was her mother Janet. Janet was a beautiful mahogany skinned woman, with legs for days. And she never missed a chance to show them off. Wearing tight shorts, flip-flops, and a tank top. Then there was her father Tyrone. Even though Tyrone grew up on this farm, he was anything but a country boy. The man wore tailored suits, drunk fine wine, and collected rare art. Even on a casual trip home, he’s wearing Dockers, a Polo shirt, and leather deck shoes. And finally, there was her younger brother, Isiah. Isiah was the kind of little bother that could take a bad situation and make it worst. He was the main reason Chantey developed her detective skills. When something of hers was missing, she had to find out where did he put it, or how did he break it.\n“Hey y’all! Come give grandma a hug,” grandma said walking over and giving Janet a hug first. Then she gave Isaiah a kiss on the cheek. “Look at my little man growing up so fast. You look just like your momma. How old are you now?”\nIsaiah wiped the lipstick of his chubby cheek and with a blank expression said, “I’m ten-years-old Grandma.”\nWhile they were exchanging pleasantries, Duchess took off and ran toward Chantey. The huge dog with a beautiful brown coat, stood on her hind legs and licked Chantey all over her face. Trying to push her away, Chantey yelled out, “Can somebody get Cujo off of me!”\nGrandma laughed and then whistled loudly. Duchess stopped immediately, ran back to grandma, and sat down next to her. “Sorry about the baby. But you know how much Duchess loves you. She’s just excited to see you.”\nFrustrated, Chantey wiped the dog’s slobber from her face and mumbled real softly, “I’ll be excited to see her, behind a fence.”\n“Come on over a give grandma a hug,” she said with her arms opened wide. She squeezed Chantey then stood back and looked her up and down. “What are you wearing little girl?”\nChantey looked down at her sneakers, baggy jeans, t-shirts, and then she adjusted the Dallas Cowboys hat that was on her head. She fought off a frown as she said, “Clothes.”\nGrandma turned to Janet and said, “Isn’t she a little old to be dressed like a tomboy? She should be in a cute sundress and some sandals.”\nJanet puckered her lips and replied, “Momma, please don’t start. You know how she likes to dress. Who’s it hurting?”\nGrandma waived her hand dismissively and started scanning over Chantey’s hair. She touched her ponytail. “Your hair is nappy too. It should be straightened out with some nice bangs. I still have my old hot comb and some Royal Crown grease in the back. I can fix that with no problem.”\nFearing the hot comb, Chantey stood behind her mom, clutching her hips. Grandma just shook her head as she turned and lead the way to the house with Duchess close behind. Chantey sighed and thought to herself, this is going to be a long week.\nThey climbed the steps of the front porch to the gentle sound of wind chimes. A couple of rocking chairs and a table with a vase and flowers decorated the front porch. The house was ancient. The old wood planks creaked with every step as they walked across the porch. Grandma pushed opened the door, and the first thing to greet them when they walked into the house was the sumptuous smell of food simmering in the kitchen.\n“Momma, is that what I think it is?” Tyrone asked as his nose lead him into the kitchen.\nGrandma smiled. “Yes it is. Oxtails, greens, candied yams, and corn on the cob fresh from the fields. All my son’s favorites.”\nTyrone gave his momma a big kiss on the cheek. \n“Only thing I got to do now is finish making the cake,” Grandma said before looking at Chantey. “You can help me.”\nChantey reluctantly nodded as she was thinking to herself, there nothing else to do, and maybe she’ll forget about straightening my hair.\n“I got everything setup for y’all. Fresh linen and towels on the beds,” Grandma said pointing to the back rooms. “Y’all get settled in, while me and Teytey make the cake and finish diner.”\n“Okay momma,” Tyrone said scooping up all the bags and leading Janet and Isiah to the back bedrooms.\nGrandma looked at Chantey and asked, “What’s your favorite cake?”\nChantey thought about it for a second. “Caramel cake.”\n“That’s what I thought. And that’s what we’re going to make,” she said with a grin as she reached into the cabinet for a mixing bowl. Then she went into the fridge for eggs, buttermilk and butter. “Do me a favor and get me the baking powder and vanilla extract out the pantry.”\nChantey opened the pantry door and stepped inside. Her eyes scanned the well-organized shelves looking for the ingredients and whatever else caught her attention. The vanilla extract and baking powder were eye level. The first thing she saw when she opened the door. Grabbing it, she continued to snoop. She wanted to see what other treasures were in there. She saw a box on the bottom shelf. Looking over her shoulder to see if grandma was coming, she opened the box. It was a bunch of old recipes written down on spiral notebooks. Quickly closing it, she put it back exactly like she found it. The next shelf was full of mason jars. She was picking each one up, looking to see what’s inside. One was Strawberry preserves. Another one was peaches. One was pickles, her favorite snack. She arranged them as she found them as well. Her eyes continued to scan up the shelves until she saw the very top shelf had an old wooden box with a pad lock on it.\n“Teytey! Where’s my ingredients at?” Grandma yelled.\n“Here you go Grandma,” Chantey said rushing out the pantry and placing the stuff on the counter. “Grandma, what’s in that box on the top of the cabinet?”\n“Nun your business,” she said, then she motioned for Chantey to come over. “Now pay attention. I’m turn you into a young lady if it kills me. Before you leave, you gonna learn how to cook and clean.”\nGrandma started showing her how to make the cake, but all Chantey could think about was what was inside that box. Grandma’s words sounded like the adults on Charlie Brown, blah, blah, blah. All through the baking, cooking, setting the table, eating dinner and doing the dishes, the only thing that was on Chantey’s mind, was how she was going to get into that box.\nAfter dinner, her mom and dad went into their room and took turns taking showers. Isiah was in the back yard playing on the swing. Chantey was sitting on the couch watching the only television in the house. And the only thing on, was a rerun of Gilligan’s Island. Chantey watched closely as Grandma gave Duchess some dog treats and placed them on the counter. Then grandma went into the pantry, pulled a key out of her housecoat, and unlocked that box on the top of the shelf. Chantey creeped over to see what she was getting out. She pulled out an old Folger’s can and another small tin can. Then grandma strolled to the front door and went outside. Chantey creeped to the window and peaked through the curtains. She was dying to see what grandma had in that can.\n“Teytey,” her mother called out, walking into the living room, “It’s time for you to take a bath and get ready for bed.”\n“But momma…,” Chantey said with a frown and her head cocked to the side.\n“Little girl, you better get in that tub. Right now,” Janet commanded as she pointed to the bathroom.\n“Yes, ma’am,” Chantey’s head lowered as she strolled into the bathroom. She took a bath in record time and put on her pajamas. Soon as she finished, she sprinted like Carl Lewis to the front porch to find grandma. But grandma had already come back in the house. Now she was in her room with the door close and Duchess standing guard. Chantey snuck over to the pantry and peeped inside. The box was locked again. She looked on the shelf and saw a can of Folgers coffee. Opening it up, she could see the can was full. The wheels in her little head was spinning. Chantey uttered softly, “Grandma is hiding something. And I’m going to find out what it is.”\nJanet walked into the living room in a robe and slippers. She put her hands on her hips and said, “Alright it’s time to go to bed you two.” \n“Momma, can we stay up and watch TV? Please,” Chantey and Isiah begged.\n“Maybe tomorrow. But it’s been a long day. Y’all need to get some rest. Come on,” she said as she clapped as an incentive to get them both moving.\nChantey climbed in one twin bed, as Isiah hopped into the other. Janet flipped the light switch and said, “Sweet dreams.”\nChantey laid in bed staring at the ceiling for the next hour. Her mind wondered what was in that box. What is she hiding? She had a wild imagination. Probably from watching her favorite shows like the Twilight Zone and the Outer Limits. She thought all kinds of crazy things, like maybe there’s a genie in there. And she can rub it and make a wish, and get whatever she wants. Or maybe there’s gold in there. And we could be rich. Then it came to her. Grandma lives out here all alone. What if a stranger tried to break in and she shot him. And to hide the evidence, she had to him cut him into small pieces. That’s it. She peeled off the sheets and went to Isiah’s bed. \n“Isiah,” Chantey whispered shaking him violently, “Wake up.”\nIsiah rolled over and opened his eyes, “What?”\n“Grandma has a secret box with a lock on it in her pantry.”\n“So what.”\n“So, I think it might be a can with fingers from a dead man in there. We got to open it up. Help me,” she asked ripping of his sheets.\n“The last time I helped you, I couldn’t sit down for a week. No thanks,” Isiah said pulling the sheets back up.\n“Come on. Please. I’ll wash the dishes all week when we get back home.”\nIsiah pulled the sheets over his head and curled into a ball.\n“Fine, I’ll do it without you.”\nIn her nightgown with no socks on, Chantey floated over to the bedroom door. She slowly twisted the doorknob and gradually pushed it opened so it wouldn’t squeak. Then she tip-toed over to her parent’s room and put her ear on the door. Chantey could hear them snoring. With a sneaky smirk, she creeped into the living room like a cat burglar. It was so quiet; you could hear a rat piss on cotton. So she was careful not to make a sound. All the lights were out. But lucky for her, there was a full moon shining through the cracked curtains. As she got closer to grandma’s room, she realized she had a problem.\n“Dang. Duchess is still in front of the door,” Chantey whispered. “I need to get in there and get grandma’s key.”\nThinking about it for a minute. She looked around and saw Duchess’ dog treats on the kitchen counter. Remembering an episode of Scooby Doo, Chantey grabbed the treats from the counter and started breaking them into little pieces. Then starting from the back door, she placed the treats like a trail of bread crumbs along the hardwood floors. Hunched over, she leaned close to the dog and whispered in her sweet little girl voice, “Duchess.”\nDuchess head slowly raised as she yawned.\nChantey had a treat in her hand, waiving it in front of the dog’s face saying, “Here girl. Here girl.”\nWhen Duchess came to retrieve the treat, Chantey tossed the piece toward the beginning of the trail she set. Duchess trotted over and Chantey carefully opened the bedroom door to find grandma dead asleep. She tip-toed across the floor and to her nightstand. The keys were sitting there next to the clock. She picked up the keys and they jingled a little, causing grandma to roll over in bed. Chantey held her breathe. Her little heart was racing and she stood still like she was playing a game of freeze tag. As grandma settled back in, Chantey quickly exited the room and closed the door. Clutching her chest, she breathed a sigh of relief. She looked over at Duchess who was still eating the bits of dog treats. \nMaking her way into the kitchen, Chantey opened the pantry door and stared at that secret box. Realizing it was just out of her reach, she grabbed one of the stools from the kitchen counter and placed it in position. Stepping on the stool, she tried different keys until she found the one that fit the lock. Opening the door, she grabbed the can and held it like a prize trophy. She was so nervous from sneaking into her grandma’s room, she didn’t realize how sweaty the bottom of her feet were as she tried to step down from the stool. The stool began to wobble underneath her, swaying back and forth until it finally tipped over. She fell to the floor and the contents of the can spilled all over her. Duchess started barking loudly waking up the whole house. Tyrone and Janet came running into the kitchen and flipping on the lights.\n“What happened?” Tyrone asked with a confused look on his face as he saw his daughter lying on her back. Her nightgown covered in a nasty, slimy, black liquid.\nGrandma walked in the kitchen, saw the scene, and laughed her ass off as she said, “Looks like Teytey found my Copenhagen snuff and spit jar.”\nChantey sat up with disappointment. Her ego was more bruised than her bottom as she watched her family getting a laugh at her expense. She couldn’t believe how wrong she was. She admitted to herself for the first time that her imagination was out of control. She rose to her feet wiping her dress off in frustration. Then Chantey noticed Grandma scurrying over to close up the box, like she had something to hide. But before she could, Chantey’s keen eyes had noticed that the secret box had moved when she fell, and she saw another secret compartment behind it. She thought to herself, I knew it. \n The end" } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Cheese Egg Summer\n\nGenre: african-american\n\nWord Count: 1094\n\nPrompt:\n\nYou’re awakened from your nap by someone asking, “Are you hungry?”. You fell asleep somewhere else entirely." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Cheese Egg Summer\nAre you hungry? I looked around to see where I was. I was looking forward to Grandma's puffy pancakes, but somehow, I'm back home in bed. Wow, I didn't look forward to too many meals from anyone except Grandma's puffy pancakes and Mom's cheese eggs, but I would not tell either of them.\nYou see, I was thirty-two pounds from two to five years of age, spindly, frail, and a food hater. Mom was at her wit's end. She would prepare whatever I named for any meal: hamburger and milkshake for breakfast, done. Unfortunately, after two bites and three swigs, I was done too. She would try again for a win at lunch, and again I would name something that interested me at the moment, a Peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but she'd pair it with milk, and I would get nauseous after the first sip and I was off to the bathroom. I would pick Dad's favorite Friday dinners, like fried chicken, fish, or pork chops.\nI nibbled; a full plate scared me; my Mom's favorite mealtime statement was: \"You'll sit there until all that food is gone.\" I would eat my three bites while she was in the kitchen watching. It was enough to fool her that I was going to eat. I would hide the rest in the trash can or feed it to Shep, our Greyhound German- Shepard mixed indoor dog. When she realized I wasn't eating, she asked my Grandma what to do to make me eat.\nGrandma's response was: You're approaching this the wrong way. First, you get angered when she does not eat whatever you pile on her plate, but she does eat some. If you want a picky child to eat, you have to let them think it is their choice of how much they eat. Give them only a few bites at first, and don't hover. When they finish the portion you gave them, ask if they want more and tell them it is okay if they don't want more right now, but it will be here for them to nibble on until bedtime. Your brother Joe would do the same thing; unfortunately, sometimes, another sibling would be the benefactor of the leftovers. Too bad Kim doesn't have someone to challenge her. So, I suggest you figure out the meal she eats most from her plate. For me, she loves my eggy pancakes. She likes your cheese eggs better than mine; she prefers your cheese combinations and tells me every time I try. It would be best to determine which fruits are not contagious to her. She's a fruit and cheese diva!\nAfter that talk with Grandma, my plate became a salad size one with only three or four protein bites, freshly peeled or sliced fruits, and a biscuit slavered with butter and strawberry jam. I couldn't eat it all, but I tried. Also, she stopped giving me my drink and my plate together. A compromise was necessary because I needed something to wash down the food between each type. I never have been able to mix my food. I took Grandma's advice, too; I ate what I wouldn't say I liked the most first, then the next least favorite, leaving the fruit and the biscuit for last.\nMany fruits and vegetables grew on our land right outside my window. In the summer, I was bombarded with the smell of mint, apples, peaches, pears, grapes, and strawberries when I raised my window. I would ride my bicycle past all of these temptations as long as possible, but what is a girl to do when a perfect gift falls at the very moment I pass by? Maybe I should have remembered the time before, but no. I would pick it up, dust off the dirt, smell it, and before I knew it, I would bite it. I may have been okay if I would have washed it first. I would break out around my mouth and run inside, itching, swelling, and crying, needing allergy medicines.\nI didn't realize the risk I took as a child until I was the parent of an asthmatic child with allergies, just like the ones I had some twenty-plus years previously. I had a newfound respect for my Mom's effort to keep me alive. Children don't think parents know or care about how much fun they are sucking out the exploration process of childhood.\nNo matter how many good dreams I have…Yet again, I found myself apologizing to my mother.\nThis was the last time I would apologize because I sat beside her casket three days later, regretting that I was alone to figure out life. I immediately knew I had no idea how to make it look easy for my children like I had thought at their ages. I got a wake-up call before sundown. Family members slivered from beneath every rock to steal whatever they could from her house, estate, and memory. Leaving nothing behind—no tangible possessions, no matter how those who looked to her for guidance felt or what her wishes were.\nBecause of this…\nI learned to make cheesy eggs and quiche. My children were not as picky about their food as I was. I realized how many vegetables I could hide in a cheese and egg pie. Ingenious, right? What child doesn't like pie? One slice of quiche, fresh fruit, and sparkling fruit juice in a fluted glass became my signature breakfast on Saturday mornings with my kids. Office meetings were held in the lunchtime slots from one through three so that the a.m. and p.m. staffers could bring in things for a potluck and discussion.\nThis practice continued until the spring of 95 when Mom finally admitted that she had been having heart problems. Pride kept her from being honest with me about the severity of her situation, and it kept me from asking if I should move home to help out. She tried roundaboutly, but I didn't pick up on the clue. Never before had she volunteered to keep the younger grandchildren for any time without me being in the same city. When they asked to stay, she was game. It's hard to say NO when you know better than the only living grandparent on my side of the family. Maybe it was the test we both needed answers to—could they survive each other a week, or could the asthmatic live with the cat he loved from afar? It didn't last a weekend. No matter how many cheese eggs she made!" } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: DEJA VU\n\nGenre: adventure\n\nWord Count: 2502\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story imagining 'what if' one historic invention had never happened. How would our world be different now?" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Five bone dice crumbled to dust before their eyes.\n“What was that?” Thom’s mouth gaped.\nSilence descended. No insect or bird sounds. Then it started; the earth beneath them vibrated, then shook perceptibly. The three looked at each other.\n“I don’t like this,” said Victoria.\n“I think you should both leave the Island. Who knows what will happen? I’ll have to stay,” said Marcus.\n“What about the others?” she said.\n“They’ll fend for themselves,” said Thom. “There is the boat and a plane if they decide to go. This dilemma will distract them. What will you do, Marcus?” \n“There is a village in the hills. I know the bridge over the river is broken, but I’ll swim if I have to.”\nThom opened his eyes in surprise. “Were you ever going to tell me about it?”\n“Victoria will tell you the whole story. I think you should go now. I’ll be fine.”\nVictoria clung to her father. “I’ll never forget this. I love you. I hope you find what you are looking for.”\nHe kissed her on the forehead and hugged her. “I made a promise to get you back home. Off you go. Thom will get you there.”\n“Thanks, Marcus,” said Thom. “We’re off.”\nVictoria snatched up the parchment next to the disintegrated dice before dashing away with Thom.\n\nThey stepped gingerly through the hole in the barbed wire fence and ran towards the beach. Victoria's black hair streamed behind her. When they arrived at the path, they darted behind a tree and picked up their prepacked bundles of belongings and provisions. As the path reached the settlement, they saw several of their group running out and heading in the opposite direction. They carried what they had grabbed in haste, presumably with the same idea of leaving the Island, at least temporarily.\n“They’re leaving by plane,” said Thom to Victoria.\nThey continued running while the ground still churned beneath them. The pier came into sight, and they all struggled down the dunes, their shoes filling with sand. Closer to shore, the sand became moist, and they trekked across it, up the steps and down the vibrating wooden planks. \n\nThom pulled the key out of his pocket, unlocked the padlock, threw the chain aboard, and untied the bowline, releasing the yacht from its mooring. He then threw their bags aboard, and they both jumped on.\n\n“I hope you know how to sail this thing,” said Victoria as she hurried over to raise the anchor. “Hoist up the mainsail. Wind seems moderate.”\nThom leaped into action. “I wouldn’t have volunteered if I couldn’t help.” \n\nVictoria noted the others hastily boarding the other vessel. Before too long, their sail was up. Victoria had steered the Redemption into the wind and set sail. “Life jackets,” she yelled to Thom, “in the locker over there.”\nVictoria manned the steering wheel, and Thom brought her jacket over. They swapped while she donned hers.\n“How is this going to work?” said Thom. “We’ll be like ships in the night getting this craft back home, with only two aboard. It won’t be a day at the beach!”\n“Don’t worry. We’ll get sick of the sight of each other soon enough. We’ll have alternate shifts, and I’ll make sure you have hot drinks and food so we can catch up with things. On still days, with little wind, we may have more time together.”\n\nThey looked over the water and saw the other boat heading away from the Island. Thom looked back at it. The mist topped mountains and the verdant hills, serene giants with wisps of greying hair, didn’t seem to be moving.\n“I bet the others are worried how they’ll tell if the earthquake is over.”\n“It’s not our problem. We have a radio, and you can let the others know that with Marcus still on the Island, heaven knows where, I want to go home and can’t do it alone.”\n“I guess that’s my best way of deserting, without worrying them . . . In fact, I’ll probably be in massive trouble.” He looked wistfully at the Island, gradually receding. “My biggest concern is how you’ll feel about me when we’re home.”\n“Don’t worry. My Dad and I haven’t always got on, and though we are like cabin bread versus carrot cake, we arrived at the Island without having killed each other. Look, if you’re worried about deserting, just tell them I overpowered you, stole the gun you held, and forced you. My father didn’t turn up, so we left him behind.”\n“I know you can overpower me no probs. Thank goodness I wanted to come with you.” He looked behind at the Island, eyes opened wide. “Look, the Island is disappearing.”\nThey both stared openmouthed as the Island gradually faded from sight.\nThom looked at Victoria’s face. Tears streamed down it, and her sobs heaved. “It’s like B-Brigadoon.”\n“My darling, your father . . .” He pulled her closer to him and continued steering.\nShe shook her head. “It’s not that. It’s remembering something that happened before.”\n“What is it?”\n“If I tell you my reason, you’ll think it’s nonsense.”\n“So much about what has happened is strange and unexplainable.”\n“The last time I left the Island, I left Marcus behind, but he could have come. He happily stayed and sacrificed himself for me and my children to have a better life. There was someone who loved him, but that’s not why he stayed.”\n“You have children? I’m confused.”\nShe looked him in the eyes and said, “I can only explain this to you if you suspend your disbelief.”\n“Haven’t I heard and seen the inexplicable already? An Island that exists but doesn’t and has now disappeared. I know you’ve been there before . . . but how, and when? I’m skeptical of the hundreds of years ago story though you obviously lived in the fallen down hut we went into. You already knew it existed.” He shrugged. “Marcus reversed a curse, the dice disintegrated before our eyes, and the earthquake started. That thing you said about time. ‘If we lived here but didn’t, it means this Island is where two alternate timelines converge.’ I’m a man of science, so it intrigued me. Why would you say that?”\n“Because it’s true. If I try to explain, you may not want to have me in your life.”\n“Did you commit murder or something? Seeing you in action at Uni and laying those guys on the deck with those moves, I can believe it. Are you superhuman?”\nVictoria laughed. “Seriously, Thom. That was self-defense. I’m no one special.”\n“So, what is it all about? I’ve suspended my disbelief.” He grabbed at something imaginary on the front of his jacket and threw his arm out in a release towards the ocean.\nThe yacht lurched a little, and Victoria grabbed his arm. He adjusted the steering.\n“You’re not superhuman,” he said. “Hold on to me.”\n“Once upon a time,” said Victoria, “Marcus and I came to the Island, to a village in the hills. On our way to the shore, where we intended to build a boat and return home together, we woke up back in the village. We had gone back in time a few days. Things happened differently, and both of us wound up dead. I won’t tell you all the places and people we met along the way until now.”\n“Sorry, I’m not with you. You said you died.”\n“We became the living dead.”\n“Good grief! All this being cursed and living other’s lives business!”\n“Suspend disbelief, remember . . . I went back to where Marcus and I lived before we were taken to the Island initially. Years ago, and without Marcus. Later, we both left from the same beach on this yacht, as we wanted to retrace our voyage and find the Island. You were the only one we told our true plan to. We had a curse to reverse. I already concluded that the Island is where two timelines converge.”\n“Though I’m interested from a scientific point of view, the other stuff is too creepy for words.”\n“I’ll illustrate. Moses led the Israelites through the Red Sea. The Egyptians in their chariots that pursued them didn’t make it. They all drowned when the walls of water collapsed. There’s proof it happened. Bronze from the chariot wheels is still at the bottom, below the water. Science has used facts about wind and water to explain how the sea parted. It’s too much of a fluke that Moses and his millions got through, and the enemies pursuing them perished at that precise time.”\n“I see what you mean. It’s a miracle. Something unexplainable.”\n“I traveled back to the ruins of Marcus and his sister’s castle and checked out its history. I found out the true history that I didn’t know about. Remember I told you we never made it to the cottage, but evidence showed we had? Remember you told me about a third boat partially built?” \n“Yes, you never knew about that one.”\n“The partially built but abandoned boat is because a vessel stopped at the Island, and I returned home on it, leaving Marcus behind. Our life of living and dying is now over. I have remembered in detail what happened.”\n“What did?”\n“Marcus didn’t have to return with me. He returned to the village to someone who had promised to wait for him, but he had also promised to get me home. He did both.”\n“Sounds familiar.”\n“The paradox is that if he had returned home with me, my life would have been ruined. I could never understand the amazing historical facts I learned, as they are not part of the timeline I remembered. The curse, due to those damn dice, changed everything. The difference now is that I remember the alternate history that the curse took away from us. The Island is indeed where two timelines converged. Now, I remember the sacrifice Marcus made for me. I remember how I felt, which is why I cried. It’s how I feel about leaving him behind. I wanted him to stay by my side. We had been through so much together. Instead, on my arrival home, in the past, I claimed to have married him on the Island and said he had died there. I claimed my children, twins, were his offspring. I inherited his castle and lands, and it set up my children much better than if I had returned to my family a destitute woman with two children from a less-than-desirable union. I had my independence, thanks to Marcus. Wealth and reputation were everything back then.”\nSo . . . you lied. I guess Marcus back then wasn’t your father. Actually, I can forgive you for lying. So, who did you really marry?”\nShe shook her head. “We had just been married, and Marcus shot an arrow into my husband, and he died.”\n“Why on earth did he do that!? Was it jealousy?”\n“No. It was revenge. My brother cared about me. I didn’t want to be an unmarried mother, but it was not wise for me to marry the father who . . .”\n“I guess you were willing to marry him . . . after being unwilling.”\n“I’ve spent other lives being pregnant and unmarried. I never wish to revisit that situation again.” Her tear-filled eyes met his.\n“Hence, you know how to deal with any man who bothers you.”\n“Exactly.”\n“You know, having a baby before marriage is no big deal.”\n“I’ve spent most of my life raising my children without a husband, and I never want to repeat anything like it again.”\n“But if you had a loving husband who stuck around and helped you?”\nHer lips pursed as she thought. “I don’t need a man.”\nHe laughed. “You need me now, young lady. How on earth will we get this thing home if not together? You’ve already proven that you needed your father. I know you care about him.”\n“Yes, I have to agree. At least with the shifts we will be keeping over the next weeks, we will both crash into the same bed . . . but never together.”\n“You mean, never ever?”\n“It depends how we feel about each other when we’re home.”\n“About ‘each other’? I adore you, Miss Victoria.”\nVictoria smirked. “You are growing on me, just a bit.”\n“I’d like to hear more about your life sometime.”\n“Yes, Facebook profiles didn’t exist in days of yore.”\n“It reminds me of a joke,” he said. “Whatever problems Adam had, no man in days of yore could say when Adam told a joke; I’ve heard that one before.”\nVictoria laughed. “That reminds me. I have the words Marcus read out when he reversed the spell. Let me take over the wheel, and you can read them.” She took the parchment out of her pocket, and they swapped places. He opened the parchment.\n\n“Vengeance is mine, justice is wrought,\nOn those remaining of both peoples brought.\nRevenge for Tabor’s traitorous mistake\nDestroyed, but for one, when they made their escape\nOne from whom the two are born, far away beyond this shore\nA child who is pale, with hair dark as night\nThe other, eyes of green and hair that is light\nBoth as opposite as two can be\nRepeating their fate for eternity\nMisery and bloodshed will be their lot\nOver and over, never to stop\nUntil precious lives have been repaid\nOf both the tribes which have been made\nEvery life cruelly destroyed,\nPaid back by the lives of the two employed.\nUntil they all learn loyalty\nJustice and love for you and me\nPatience learned, forgiveness too\nIf only their forefathers could have been true\nReturn they shall to their father’s home\nForever to remain apart and alone\nOnly they can find the key\nTo reverse the spell and prophecy\nFind the beginning of it all, behind the fence in the ivy wall\nFit the dice with skulls of white, turn and turn to make it right\nDefeat the spell to end the lives of tragedy, misery, and strife\nVengeance on Tabor, revenge for all\nIn the end, we will not recall.”\n\n“Wow. I feel like I’m living in a dream,” said Thom. “I’d really like to hear the whole story.”\n“My lawyer has a copy of a letter to be opened if I don’t make it back. My Aunt and Uncle need to know the truth. The original is in a safe deposit box at the bank, with some other personal items. It’s a precis of the whole history. For now, I’m only interested in the present.”\n“Right now, the wind is changing. Time to trim the sail, and tack. I’ll sort the sail and then go and radio the other boat to tell them what we’re up to. They won’t be going back to the Island either.”\n“Aye, Aye, Captain Thom.” Victoria smiled at him and saluted.\n\nTHE END" } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Too Many J's\n\nGenre: african-american\n\nWord Count: 1013\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about two characters who like each other but don’t get a happily-ever-after." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Too many J's\nJJ's opened three months before I graduated from high school in 1985. I worked my way through culinary school as a waitress, busboy, dishwasher, and eventually bookkeeper for the previous owner of the building. When he had health problems and needed to be hospitalized, I agreed to run it until he recovered from surgery. Mr. Jonas was the sweetest boss I had ever worked for. He and his wife were the original JJs, John and Jordan, and their children hated the restaurant business. The name was theirs first. I realized how much they could teach me. I saw her order food on a shoestring budget, and after the restaurant was afloat, she never changed her methods. They set up 401k's for everyone and matched your yearly pay-in once a year on your birthday.\nAt Christmas, they would adopt two families for the Holiday. They would ask the staff if we knew of any deserving families, and one year, we helped four families because ten days before Christmas, their building was sold. The new owner raised their rent by $550, due immediately. Knowing that the residents would not be able to pay, they evicted them; the Jonas family relocated all four families and still provided Christmas, too.\nMr. Jonas lost his battle with lung disease in February, just before he turned 65. JJ's was his father's wedding gift to him and Jordan, who loved cooking, socializing, and entertaining. She could not bear to set foot in the restaurant after his passing. I applied for a loan to purchase JJ's from Jordan for $250,000.00 by Valentine's Day in 2001. After I was approved for the loan, Jordan agreed to sell JJ's to me if I would agree to the following terms:\n1. I had to keep JJ in the name.\n2. I had to keep the current staff on.\n3. I had to continue the 401k matching\n4. I had to continue adopting families for Christmas and\n5. I had to promise to get a life outside of the restaurant\nJordan's only regret was that they had spent their best years building and running the restaurant instead of enjoying themselves after it was self-sustainable. Jordan designed JJ's operating system into a two-keystroke majestic dynamo for someone who never attended culinary or any higher education after her senior year in high school. All of the reordering could be done in minutes. Payroll for the employees began running at 4 a.m. Then, at 5, the bills were automatically sent to each vendor, and promptly at 6, the printer started up with the paper trail, printing paychecks and envelopes. It left nothing for Jordan to do but sign, seal, and deliver each physical payment and deposit.\nA month after selling JJ's to me, Jordan surprised me with four gifts:\n1. The deed of ownership\n2. A brand-new sign that renamed JJ's to JJ's Bar and Grill\n3. My original Birth Certificate\n4. A letter from the founders\nYear one was the hardest…\nOlder women would say, \"Too many cooks in the kitchen would spoil the soup.\" I didn't understand that analogy until I married my long-time coworker, the sous chef JJ. Imagine James Jr. announcing his upcoming nuptials to June Jacobson or, visa-versa, JJ to marry JJ. He often told new staff he had to know who beat him to his dream copyright and restaurant name in Virginia. JJ's Bar and Grill was all I could see in my mind's eye since I received an Easy Bake oven at 6 for Christmas. The initial meeting was no doubt hostile and awkward. It's hard to be angry and fascinated at the exact moment you meet your doppelganger, better half, or counterpart. So, hoping to have an opportunity to steal the restaurant from someone while they slept, he applied for the sous chef position.\nThat was twenty-seven years and two sets of twins ago. Juliet and John Z. the Third were born ten months after the wedding. Julia and Julian came along eleven months later. I'm not the eighteen-year-old 'green menace' from 1985's graduating high school senior class I was when our paths first collided. However, I was ten years his junior. \nTen years to the day after the sign went up, Jordan passed.\nAfter working together for Jordan during my culinary school days, John Zachary Jackson Junior realized he would never be second in charge, even if he outlived me. Jordan's last gift was to give JJ's Bar and Grill to our twins equally; the older set each own thirsty percent, and the younger children own twenty percent each. So, if anyone wants to sell their share, they must divide it equally until they have children. I nor their father can ever own, buy, or sell JJ's Bar and Grill. If we divorce or die, John Z. II or June J. can't make any decisions about its dissolution. Being the shrewd businesswoman Jordan was, she pegged him as a potential threat when he walked in for the interview. She liked confidence in those who worked at JJ's, but there was something about him, and I was asked to do a background check on him immediately. As Jordan had thought, she asked me to do genealogy tests on my oldest twins, who now work with us at JJ's. He was the son of their first partner's sidepiece. When I met the first partner's wife, she grilled Jordan about how they caused her husband's heart attack. Being a woman of distinction, loyalty, and faith, Jordan allowed the wife to release her anger on her and never mentioned his affair or other children. \nAngered about the restaurant, my husband, John \"Zac\" Jackson Jr., broke away and started a rival restaurant. Unfortunately, happy ever after wasn't in the cards for us. He killed himself in a car outside of \"Jay's\" on Thursday, April 1, 2010, April Fool's Day, after discovering that the \"Jay's\" restaurant was being foreclosed. I'm Jordan's long-lost daughter; that is another whole story to explain another time. Our children have owned JJ's Bar and Grill since birth." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Almost Heaven\n\nGenre: african-american\n\nWord Count: 1060\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about two characters who like each other but don’t get a happily-ever-after." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Amber was cleaning the upstairs attic. The attic was to be her room because her Mom had turned her bedroom into a gym. Amber moved back home after being laid off from her job. Although Amber got an excellent severance package, her Mom insisted she move home to save money. Amber thought her Mom was lonely since her Dad died last year but didn't want to tell her. Amber looked through boxes of old pictures. There was a picture of a smiling, handsome, tall Black man in an Air Force flight jacket and uniform. Amber turned the picture over and read. Colonel Lewis Washington France 1940. Amber wondered who he was. Her grandfather was a pilot and fought in World War Two, but his name was Earl. She heard her mother watching television. She walked into the living room. Her Mom was sitting on the couch holding Dan, the fat tabby cat. \"Mom, I found this picture,\" Amber said, showing the picture to her. Amber's mother smiled. \" This was your grandad's best friend, Lewis.\" She said. \"He used to talk about him all the time.\" Her Mom gave the picture back to her. \"What happened to him?\" Amber asked. \" He died in the war; his plane was shot down.\" Her Mom told her. Amber felt sad. She didn't know why; Lewis died before she was born. \"Are you okay?' Her Mom asked in a concerned voice. \"I'm good,\" Amber answered. She looked at Dan, purring. \"You need to stop overfeeding him,\" Amber said before she walked away. Amber went up the stairs to the attic. She lay on the twin-sized bed holding the picture. Amber drifted off to sleep thinking about Lewis. Amber jumped when she heard lightning. She sat up fully awake. It was raining. Amber got up and tried to turn the light on. \"No electricity.\" She said. Amber decided to check on her Mom. She couldn't see in the darkness. \"Mom, where are you?\" Amber screamed from the top of the stairs. \"I'm in the kitchen, looking for a flashlight. Amber started down the stairs. She was unaware that Dan was sitting on the stairs. She tripped over him and tumbled down. \"Amber!\" Her mother screamed. That was the last voice she heard before losing consciousness. Amber woke up. \"Where am I?\" She said. She was not at home. Amber was sitting under a glistening green tree. The sky was a blue color that was unknown to her. Amber felt a peace she had never known. Amber looked down at her brown hand. It seemed solid and translucent at the same time. \"Hello, baby girl.\" Said a voice in her mind that she knew. Then Amber saw him. He appeared. \"Dad?\" Amber said out loud. It couldn't be. \"It is me.\" Her Dad said, reaching out his hand to her. Amber stood up. \"But you are.\" He smiled at her. \"I'm gone in your reality, but death is not the end. It is the beginning of something wonderful.\" Amber hugged him. He smelled like the blueberries that they used to pick every summer. Amber broke the embrace. \"No, you are not dead.\" Her Dad told her, answering the question in her mind. \"You are Heaven, but you must decide to stay or return soon.\" \nAmber could hear her Mom. \"Baby, please wake up; I can't lose you too.\"\n\"I'm in the hospital,\" Amber said. \"Yes, it will be up to you if you want to return.\" Her Dad told her. Amber's dog ran up to her. \"Malcolm.\" Amber picked up the little poodle and held him. He was young again. Amber missed him every day. The dog licked her face excitedly. Suddenly, loved ones surrounded her. \"Grandpa Earl.\" She said. \"Amber. The apple of my eye.\" He said. \"Grandpa, I'm not a little girl anymore. I'm thirty-five years old.\" She told him. He laughed. \"You know, you have to go back. It's not your time,\" He told her. Amber didn't want to think about that. She felt happy.\nEveryone disappeared. Amber was alone by a lake. She thought about Lewis. Lewis was standing next to her. Amber looked up into his almond-colored eyes and smiled at him. \"Hello, Amber.\" He said as he gently pushed a strand of her light brown, big, curly afro hair out of her face. \"I have been wanting to meet you for some time. I remember you crying when that boy didn't pick you up for your Prom date.\" Lewis told her. Amber was shocked. \"That was a long time ago.\" She said to him. \"There is no time in Heaven.\" Lewis took her into his arms and started dancing with her. Amber's clothes were different. She was wearing a sparkly white evening gown. Her curly hair was straight and parted on the side with a flower.\nLewis was wearing a 1940s formal Air Force uniform. They were in a USO dance hall. She could hear music. It was a song by the Ink Spots. I Don't Want To Set The World On Fire. Lewis twirled her around, and she was back in his strong arms. \"We can be where and whenever we want to be.\" He told her. \"Amber, come back to me!\" She heard her mother pleading again. Lewis was different from any man she had known. He was kind and gentle. Amber felt tears in her eyes. \"I have to go.\" She told him. \"Stay with me,\" Lewis said. They stopped dancing. Amber could hear the heart monitor stopping.\n\"Amber!\" Her mother screamed. Amber pulled away from Lewis. \"Amber, I love...\" Lewis started to say. He was alone by the lake again. Amber was back in her body. She opened her eyes. \"Mom.\" She said hoarsely. \"Amber, my baby.\" Her Mom said, crying. Amber often thought about Lewis when she was back home with her Mom. Her Mom had the gym converted back into Amber's bedroom. She didn't want Amber to go back upstairs in the attic. One day, Amber went upstairs to the attic when her mom was at the grocery store. Amber saw a White rose on the twin-size bed. \"It couldn't be.\" Amber thought. She picked it up. It was the rose Amber wore in her hair when she danced with Lewis. Amber knew that he was waiting for her alone by the lake." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: A Wolf In Sheep's Clothing\n\nGenre: adventure\n\nWord Count: 1358\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story with a strong sense of place. How is the setting of your world the same as, but different to, our own?" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Just as the subway doors begin to close, I rush inside seconds before the train leaves Capitol Heights station. Sitting on a cold, hard aluminum seat, I feel the weight of a dozen pair of eyes examining me. I’m scared and trembling like a leaf. I still don’t belong, and I need to figure out why.\nDevious, that’s what my mother calls me. My biggest challenge at the moment is the daily battle to outmaneuver my government watchers. I realize this sounds crazy, but please, hear me out. \nI woke up as the first person ever to be taken out of a cryogenic freeze. The FBI informed me that I was a kidnap target of the Chinese and Russians. Obviously, the US government wants to keep their technology under wraps. However, I suspect the main reason the feds are monitoring me is to make sure I don’t jump off a bridge, or do anything else to embarrass big pharma and all their scientists.\nThey have good reason to be worried. When I woke up, I shouted “WTF” non-stop for at least a week.\nIt wasn’t as if I went to sleep happy with having stage four cancer. By summer 2020, the pain had become unbearable, and euthanasia seemed like an increasingly good option. The doctor proposed the new program, and being out of options, I agreed to become a human popsicle. A few days later, I said goodbye to my family and girlfriend, and that was that.\nIn an instant, I saw my mother standing before my eyes, looking a decade older.\nAfter the doctors left us alone, we caught up on the major events: it was now 2026. Uncle Frank died of Covid. Kamala Harris was president. ChatGPT had solved cancer. The last one was wonderful news for me, my mom said.\n“You should celebrate this new life you’ve been given,” she said, attempting to calm me down my other concerns. The psychiatrist wanted to prescribe antipsychotics, which I declined. More about this later.\nAfter weeks of treatments at the Mayo Clinic in Fort Myers, they declared me as fit as a fiddle, as healthy as a 21-year-old, despite my passport stating I’m 27. The doctors got a laugh out of that. They say the best comedy is rooted in tragedy. I said my goodbyes, then flew back to DC to try to reclaim my old life. \nIn the real world, apart from the obvious, I began paying attention to the little details. At the airport, they no longer had X-ray machines. Perhaps ChatGPT had solved terrorism too.\nBack home in our DC suburb, I settled into a routine. I’d have breakfast with mom, listen to a guided meditation app for 20 minutes to calm myself, then go outside to get reacquainted with the world.\nThe Redbridge Cafe, which didn’t exist before, has become my home away from home. Where I feel the most comfortable. I order an oat milk latte from the barista in horn-rimmed glasses behind the counter.\nIt’s a big day. It’s been 6 years for me, but it feels like just a few weeks. Today, I’m meeting Beth, my girlfriend, from, you know, before.\nEveryone reminds me that Beth isn’t my girlfriend anymore. She has moved on. For me, just a few weeks ago, she said, “We’ll see each other again. I’ll wait for you,” as she squeezed my hand.\nWhen Beth enters the cafe and waves, my heart skips a beat. When she sees me, she also studies me from head to toe. Since being the first person in America to be woken from cryopreservation, everyone looks at me like some oddity or circus performer.\nBut I’m happy to see her. She has been cancelling every previous lunch saying it was raining, which was odd. I had to wait for a day of fine weather to arrive to Georgetown to finally meet her.\nAfter exchanging pleasantries, and avoiding the topic of her current boyfriend, I take the opportunity to review some facts about our recent history.\n“Some of my memories are a bit vague after, you know, my hibernation, so bear with me.” A lie, as I remember everything perfectly, but it gives me a chance to ask dumb questions.\n“Do you remember the time we went to prom in high school?”\n“No, I don’t,” Beth says.\n“Or that crazy toga party at GW?!” I chuckle.\nBeth’s eyes flicker with concern. “I will need to leave if this gets awkward.” She plays with her napkin, unfolding it into what could be a toga sized for a Barbie doll.\n“Sorry.” I should stick to safer topics. Ones that might tell me something. “How’s your grandma doing?”\n“Which one?”\n“Grandma Mix. The one in Minnesota.”\n“Her?! I don’t know. They’re crazy up there!”\n“But, you used to visit her every Christmas.”\n“Did I? I don’t remember ever saying that.”\nI’ve found a discrepancy in the timeline. Am I going to disappear like those characters in the Umbrella Academy? I pinch my arm, but nothing happens. It all feels so ordinary.\n“Well, we do have so much to catch up on. Is your favorite food still mac and cheese? They have a good one here.”\n“Yes,” she smiles. “I’m happy you still have a few brain cells.”\n“And you completed your veterinarian degree?”\n“Working at Southside Veterinarian Clinic. I love animals. They’re so similar to us.”\nOur lattes arrive. I take a sip, and bring up a weird topic I’ve been thinking a lot about lately, “With everything I’ve been through, lately I’ve been thinking about quantum physics, how it says there could be an alternate universe.”\n“Tell me about it.”\n“Like, maybe we are in a parallel universe from the real one:”\n“Are you any medication or anything right now?” she asks.\n“I’m fine. Never better.” I give her my warmest smile. She always likes my smile. “I’m in the news! First human ever taken out of the deep freezer. If you go out with me, you could be famous!”\n“Nice try. I do have a boyfriend. I’m a vet, not an Instagrammer.”\nThe mention of Instagram reminds me she used to really like my sense of style. I can’t think about the right way to approach the subject without things getting awkward again. Every time I search for it into Google, I get absolutely nothing in the results. It’s like the subject simply doesn’t exist.\nChatGPT gives me plenty of info about quantum physics, however. How the world we perceive is an illusion, and that the light we see with our eyes is just an echo of things that we can’t even imagine. A cloud of possibilities exists, and what we perceive is a lottery pick from the many possible results.\nI return to safe, easy topics, and we talk for what feels like an hour. Beth begins to loosen up. She’s still eyeing me as if I’m possibly deranged, but she starts to laugh at my jokes. I comment on her hair, and she tells me to keep my eyes from drifting downward.\n“I always loved how I could be myself around you, without having to hide behind a mask,” she says.\n“Let’s order lunch?” I suggest. This is going well. Maybe the boyfriend isn’t that serious.\n“Let’s!”\n“Mac & cheese, and a Caesar salad.”\n“Same.”\nThe server types our order into his tablet.\nThe doctor said that I should try to eat healthy.\n“And could I have my salad naked?” I ask.\n“What did you say?” The server tilts his head at me in confusion.\n“Naked.”\n“Sorry, sir. I don’t know that word.”\n“No problem. The normal way, then.”\nA few minutes later, a Caesar salad arrives, drenched in dressing. In fact, it’s dressed better than everyone else in the restaurant. I push myself closer to the table. I’ve learned it’s important not to spill. \n“Now, put yourself in my shoes–” I begin, only to notice a look of confusion on Beth’s face.\nA realization dawns upon me: being reborn into a world where clothes have never been invented may present more challenges than simply not getting dressed in the morning." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: The Countdown\n\nGenre: african-american\n\nWord Count: 1055\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story with an open ending that gives readers just enough details to draw their own conclusions." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The Countdown\nEvery year started the same. On January 1, wake up to the sound of Dad cursing the dying Christmas tree as he struggled to remove the lights and the star.\" Why do I /*$%4@# let them con me into a real tree yearly, ouch Y.^*#$g?\" About then, Mom shouts, \"Chows on, get it while it is hot.\" Only a few hours until there's nothing on TV except football games for almost twenty-four hours. I'm unsure why we do the same things and wish for different outcomes.\nMaybe I am stressing over the upcoming events that will unfold tomorrow at work. Tomorrow morning. I will walk past office C-5, where my long-time friend Jane worked for the best years of her life and twenty-plus of mine. I had the pleasure of hearing her latest countdown every Monday morning. For twenty-three years, I would listen to how many days until our next raise, the next week-long training conference, or our follow-up reviews. I looked forward to the daily updates at lunch, maybe because I didn't have a life outside of work or because I was flaky and didn't keep up with the deadlines. Jane was the glue of our team. Senior members of the team and I looked up to Jane, and Junior members knew to ask Jane about the obscure codes that didn't get updated but still helped the social workers.\nTomorrow morning will be the first time I won't get the latest information about the upcoming events that we will need to familiarize ourselves with. Last year, Jane finally stopped counting down the days until retirement. For years, she calculated in months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, and even seconds how long she had to work to get her complete 40-year retirement package.\nThe walk down the hall to my office tomorrow morning will be only the second time I will not see the dimly lit lamp on in C-5. Jane rarely turned on the overhead lighting; she enjoyed the tranquility. She said, \"In the dim light, people will relax and forget the lies they told on the phone,\" was Jane's belief. Maybe that is why she held the most remarkable record for fraud finding in Virginia for fifteen years running. I would be asleep at my desk before and after lunch with nothing but a lamp.\nAn alabaster-thin blond rocked out to Miami Sound Machine on Monday, October 3, 1987, as I interrupted her focus at the copier. Will you be long, or is there another machine somewhere else? Ma'am? I lay my stack on the table next to hers. \"Hey, you must be Kimberly. I'm Jane Ferneyhough, the same fossil that works next door to you in C-5. I meant to greet you and give you the bubble gum tour this morning, but it was a typical first day back from the Holiday season with a family in crisis. Now that I have twenty minutes before my next appointment, can I show you a few things on the only thing here older than me, this copier?\" her references to age didn't match her looks or mannerisms. Sure. \"Look in this cabinet for a smock before you use this old gal, she spits. I gave up on wearing good clothes on copying day. So, I brought in some of my painting smocks for anyone to use. I'll grab you for lunch at 1 p.m. for the tour and talk. I got to run; see you then.\" Like a teenager, she ran up the steep stairs.\nIt's noon, and I hear the game on the TV downstairs. My day will be filled with the classics; each one of these movies offers an inspiring or revealing message:\n1. It's a Wonderful Life, George Bailey learns:\nYour life has a purpose\nKeeping up with the Joneses is crazy\nBad guys don't always get punished\n2. In The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy Gale discovers:\n Nothing is more valuable than family love\n3. Trading Places, Billy Ray\no Goes from rags to riches and sticks it to the man like most of us dream of daily.\nI watch the same three movies yearly on New Year's Day because it was our thing, Mom and me since we got a color TV. My children won't watch them with me anymore. I hear Dameon, my youngest, telling his cousin Pedro she is doing it again: \"Yo, Dro, what's up with our Moms and those old movies on TNT during the holidays? George just heard a bell ring. Next is the damn Munchkins singing Follow the Yellow brick road. The tears will follow that. Then the ice cream and Billy Ray Valentine.\"\nMovie night wraps up the Christmas vacation at midnight.\n(alarm beeping @ 5:00 am)\nOh well… Picking up two black coffees and sausage biscuits for us, the newbie and me. I'm now the new training agent. I have big shoes to fill. We start with the most important places: the copy room, the break room, and the employee restrooms. Onto the employee elevators, and I reveal the code but explain why we can't bring clients up in these elevators. Do you understand? \"Yes, ma'am. I knew Miss Jane and miss her every day.\" We walked to C-5. I said if you need anything, I'm in C-7, and I brought us some breakfast if you'd like? Before I could extend my arm, she stopped me. \"I'm Muslim and pregnant, so thank you, but no thanks.\" She looked at me with a puzzled look and closed the door.\nBatting zero, I didn't know if I should bother her for lunch. I entered C-7, clicked on the overhead light, and hung up my purse and hat on the hook next to the light switch I installed after the incident that took my friend. I turned toward the window and saw a box under my desk that I didn't leave. I brought home my only present, I thought. When I opened it, the card read: \"Well, you're in charge now. So, I'm giving you my emergency kit. It contains everything you'll need to succeed. Inside were five different-sized pamper boxes, three different kinds of formulas, two tampons, sanitary pads, condoms, lollipops, safety pins, rubber bands, and 1 Hershey's kiss. At 12:55 pm, when I went to C-5, it looked undisturbed as if ….?" } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: First Contact\n\nGenre: adventure\n\nWord Count: 2981\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about a character who wakes up in space." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Space is infinite, at least that is what we are always told. In the words of Star Trek “Space, the final frontier.” As I looked up to the sky above, a small smile danced around the corners of my mouth. Are we truly alone, or are there other beings in other worlds looking up at their stars in the sky and wondering the same thing?\nI was interested in the stars ever since I was old enough to stand on the big base telescope my dad had, and look at the constellations together, such as, Orion (The Hunter), the Great Bear (Ursa Major), and of course The Bigger Dipper (The Plough). I always recognised the shape of the Plough in the night sky. \nDad told me that people named ancient constellations after Greek and Roman mythology, and more recently, after exotic animals and scientific instruments. But the ones everyone knows best come from the zodiac constellations. I spent hours looking up at the stars, and wishing, and wondering, and desiring to get up there to see them.\nMy urge to visit space grew stronger as I grew older. Never really thinking it was an achievable goal. I was a girl. Girls didn’t make astronauts, did they? Not many made the grade, but I was clever, scientific, and athletic. I went to university and studied astrophysics. My Dad was elated. He worked in construction, and although fascinated by the stars, never thought a daughter of his could go so far. He told everyone he saw how proud he was of me.\nWas I nerdy? Yes, and no. I wanted to understand the universe and our place within it. That meant I needed to study both the laws of physics and chemistry. But it was more than that. I got to study how stars, planets, and even galaxies were born and died. It was a mixture of astronomy and cosmology.\nI wanted to find life on a planet. I didn’t want to just look at the gases or the soil or the microbes or consider the planet’s weather. I wanted to find an alien lifeform before they found us. I hoped to make First Contact before anyone else.\nThe UK has the UK Space Agency, but it’s not funded sufficiently to send astronauts up into space. We have scientists and engineers involved in major global space projects, but I was lucky. I got onto the USA’s NASA trainee astronaut program. There were 10 NASA candidates, one United Arab Emirates candidate, and me! I spent 2.5 years training to become an astronaut. It was hard going, but never once did I stop to think whether it was worth it.\nNext stop was the Moon, then Mars! It blew my mind just thinking about it. Of course, there was resistance from conspiracy theorists to the idea of another moon landing. They said the original moon landing back on July 20, 1969, by Apollo 11, wasn’t real. They believed it was a set-up, a hoax from the American government. I know it was real. The astronauts brought back rocks from the moon and confirmed their origin. Scientific experiments took place confirming the astronauts were there. \nThe conspiracy theorists don’t bother me. Having spent much of my life studying cosmology and astrophysics at university, then learning how to be a pilot with the RAF, followed by training to be an astronaut for the past 2.5 years, I was completely comfortable going up into space, and could not wait!\nThere were rumours that SpaceX, Elon Musk’s company, would soon launch a new manned rocket called Starship. He’d achieved something incredible by having astronauts in space for 199 days previously. His dream was to enable space travel so that people could live on other planets. What a dream! But my personal dream was to meet people from other planets.\nI preferred the more ‘traditional’ astronaut training I received through NASA. It would stand me in good stead for the future. \nI believed in UFOs and watched the skies constantly. I saw strange lights in the sky, as though I was being followed. Friends sent me videos of inexplicable sightings, knowing my interest and passion for extra-terrestrials.\nWhen I was a little girl, only 8 or 9 years old, I told my mother I visited the stars and met ‘people’ with funny faces and bodies, only taller than me. She said I had a fantastical imagination, and now, as an adult, I couldn’t really remember anymore what I thought I saw.\nI do remember a bright light one night piercing through the curtains of my bedroom window, and a feeling of fear, which soon changed to curiosity, but I couldn’t quite remember the beings I described to my mother. She told me I was just dreaming.\nThe day of the launch finally arrived. Of course, they televised it, and I felt like a celebrity with the press and TV coverage.\n“Focus on the job in hand, Kirsty.” I told myself.\nI needed to concentrate. I had tasks to complete on my journey into space.\nThe control centre counted us down. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, lift off! The crowd cheered wildly as they watched the Artemis rocket roar off the launch pad from Cape Canaveral on the Florida coastline. This time with a full crew. They had fixed the loose valve, which caused the hydrogen to leak the last time. I was certain NASA would keep me safe. What blew me away was the expense. Every flight into space in one of these rockets cost USD 4 billion.\nAs we went through the earth’s atmosphere, we automatically completed our tasks for which we spent years training. We functioned like robots; except we were not robots but fallible humans.\nThe separation of the solid rocket boosters went well, two minutes into our flight. Those rockets gave us 8.8 million pounds of thrust. There were 12 thrusters and they weighed over 9,000 kilograms at lift off. The core stage separated from the main rocket six minutes later. All systems were green for go. This was the most powerful rocket ever built, and I was in it. Life didn’t get much more exciting than that!\nSoon we were floating around in space. God, I always wanted to feel the weightlessness of space, and now I was. It was hilarious. We passed around different items. I pushed a pen over to my colleague and watched it fly over to him. There was no sensation on earth to match this. Of course, we practised being weightless for short bursts in aircraft during our training, but this was the longest and best experience so far.\n“Hey Kirsty,” said Don, one of the younger, more athletic astronauts, “See if you can do a forward roll?”\nI love a challenge. Soon I was twisting my body, trying to flip over in the weightlessness of space. It was wonderful, and I managed it, of sorts. I would not have won any gymnastic awards, but it looked impressive, nevertheless.\nDon was a career astronaut, and an ace pilot. He was young and excitable, but I trusted his abilities. He was handsome, with blonde hair and blue eyes. No doubt after our return to earth he would be our poster boy, on the front cover of magazines around the world. He wasn’t yet married. He was going to have the pick of girls when he returned to earth, which was for certain. However, it wouldn’t have mattered to me if he looked like an adonis, or Shrek. I was completely focused on our mission.\nWe were now orbiting the earth. I looked down at the great expanse of space and thought how weird it was to see the earth from above, from outside it. I could see lakes, mountainous regions, great empty spaces. It was breathtaking, and incredibly beautiful.\n“How many people in the world get to see this view?” I said to Don wistfully.\nHe smiled, saying, “Yep, we are very lucky, no doubt about it.”\nThen he winked at me. “Of course, you are the only female in this crew, Kirsty.”\n“Yes, and don’t you forget it!” I gave him a thumbs up. He just shook his head. There was no romantic interest in me from Don.\nPhil, the lead astronaut, the chief pilot of the rocket, reminded us it was time to have a rest. There was a strenuous work schedule ahead of us, and to be honest, the emotion of lifting off and getting into space was exhausting. Phil was a safe pair of hands. He was older than the rest of us, but to me, that was a positive.\nCalm, with distinguished grey sideburns, he was very much a family man. He had a lovely wife, and three children at home, all spurring him on. I knew he would do his utmost to bring us back to earth safely.\nAli, the last member of our crew, was from the UAE. With dark hair and dark eyes, he resembled an Arab Prince. Very handsome. I knew little about the Arabic lifestyle, but he wasn’t particularly friendly towards me. He was used to giving the women in his life orders, but we were equals in space.\nI was being unfair, but he was my least favourite crew member. However, as the space module was only 11 ft tall by 16.5 ft wide, for four astronauts, it wasn’t particularly spacious, and I would need to make an effort to get on with him as best I could.\nHaving retired to one of the crew beds to rest, in accordance with Phil’s instructions, I woke up to a red alert. An alarm screaming at us in the crew module.\n“What’s going on?” I asked Phil breathlessly. \nHe said, “We think it is just a faulty sensor. It’s telling us there’s a fuel leak, but I can’t find a leak at all. I’ve checked all the systems.” \nI nodded. “Do not tell me. You need me to check the sensor?” \n“Yes, Kirsty, I do, but on the outside of the rocket.”\nHe let the significance of his statement sink in. That meant I would have to do a spacewalk outside of the rocket on a tether. \n“Blimey, I expected a moonwalk, but not a spacewalk so soon.”\n“It’s really a minor repair on the electrical system, because, as I say, I can’t find an actual leak, but we rely on our sensors. Sorry to ask, but you are the lead electrician on this space flight. It’s a contingency spacewalk, and you are the one who needs to do it.”\nI grinned at him. “It’s not a problem, Phil. I am up for it. In fact, I am going to be the first woman ever to do this.”\nHe smiled back at me. “Yep, a historical moment in the making.”\nI moved into the area of the capsule where we kept the crewmember safety tether. It was long, about 55 feet, and I attached it to my waist with a large hook.\nExcited beyond belief, I poked my head out of the exterior airlock and into the void. Phil locked off the hatch behind me. I was finally in space, alone.\nI knew where the sensor relay was on the side of the rocket. I gingerly made my way round to that section. There were handrails and footholds along the side of the spaceship, so it wasn’t too difficult.\nGetting my spanner out of my pocket to open up the area I needed to access, I noticed a bright white light on the side of me. I shook my head. It wasn’t the sun. Was it a bright star? \n“Focus on the job in hand, Kirsty.” I told myself.\nI said to Phil on the radio, “Can you see that bright white light to the right of me, Phil? What is it?”\nHe was quiet for a moment, then said, “I don’t know, Kirsty. We can’t identify what it is.”\nI laughed. “It’s the Russians coming to pay us a visit? No worries, I will just get this done asap.”\nI wrestled with the external metalwork and then got into the sensory relay. A wire unfortunately had worked its way loose. As I reattached it, I saw a massive meteorite heading straight towards me. Screaming, I realised there was no possibility of my getting out of its way. There is no sound or echo in space, but Phil heard me through the radio.\nThe next moment, nothingness.\nI woke up in space. As I came round, I realised the rock bounced off my body and knocked me out. Fortunately, my suit didn’t rip, but the rock detached my tether from the rocket. I was floating freely and blindly in space.\n“Don’t panic, Kirsty.” As I looked around wildly, trying to see where the Artemis was. There was nothing. I tried Phil on my radio. Again, nothing. I didn’t know if the radio had malfunctioned, or if they were now too distant to hear me.\nAs I scanned the area, I saw the bright, white light which I spotted earlier was slowly making its way towards me. I frowned and focused on it again. It wasn’t a star, or a meteorite, or the sun. It was a UFO. Spherical in shape, it was made of a gold-coloured material. There was no sound from it, of course, as we were in space. But it moved towards me in a smooth motion.\nOh God, this was it. I was going to make First Contact, but there was no-one to witness it. Was I even able to return to my spaceship to tell them about it?\nThe UFO moved closer to me, and I could see the pilot of the spaceship. As I stared at it, and it stared at me, I experienced a slow realisation. This was someone or something I met previously in my childhood. This was the very alien I met when I was 8 or 9 years old. It waved to me. Can you believe it? The alien being actually waved at me. It was small in stature, about 5 ft tall, grey, with large bulbous eyes. It didn’t have a mouth to smile with, as such, but I sensed it was friendly.\nFrom the ship, it emitted a white beam of light which projected onto my body. The light slowly pushed me forwards. Although it was gentle, I felt scared.\nWithin 10-15 minutes, I could see the Artemis in the distance. I couldn’t believe it. The alien spacecraft was pushing me towards my rocket with a tractor beam.\nI laughed hysterically. Looking at my suit, I could see there was only about 10 more minutes of air left. My survival was going to be touch and go. Pointing at my suit and then my throat, the alien understood me. It sped up the approach to the rocket, and just as we got really close, the beam gave me a solid push and I managed to grab onto a guardrail on the side.\nTwisting round, I waved goodbye to this amazing little creature which saved my life. I pondered the fact I met this creature before as a child. Was it my guardian angel? Certainly not how I would imagine a guardian angel to be.\nI watched briefly as the bright white light disappeared off into the distance at great speed, and then inched my way to the exterior hatch, using the handrail and footholds on the side of the rocket. The rocket’s shiny metal exterior was really bright, shining directly into my eyes. I banged on the hatch for a few minutes until someone opened the exterior airlock.\nAs I came through the hatch into the other side, relieved I could breathe fully, I saw the entire crew cheering and clapping at my safe return. I fixed the sensor relay before the meteor knocked me away from the ship, so all was well. They all ran to me and hugged me in turn, even Ali.\n“Holy shit,” said Phil. “We thought you were a goner.”\n“Me too, Phil, me too!”\nDon patted me on the shoulder, saying, “We couldn’t believe it when we realised your tether was detached by the meteorite. Thank God it didn’t rip your suit.”\n“We tried to manoeuvre the rocket to see if we could track you, but we had no joy at all. Thank God you had the sense of direction you did to return to us.”\nI could see Ali was shocked at what had happened. They were all shocked to be fair.\nI explained in detail about the alien being. They, of course, didn’t believe a word of it. They thought I suffered from a lack of oxygen whilst floating weightless in space and was hallucinating.\nPhil gave me a hug, saying, “It’s a nice idea, Kirsty. That you had First Contact with an alien, but we didn’t see it, and there’s no way to prove it. Let’s just agree you were very lucky indeed.”\nIt took us 14 days, but we finally reached the moon without any further incidences, and I was overjoyed. The mission was a success, and we returned to earth another 14 days later. There was no evidence of any alien life on the moon, but I didn’t expect there to be. My opinion was that aliens are able to travel distances at a speed we can’t even dream of. Hence, they live in other galaxies.\nHowever, I knew the truth about aliens. They exist. There are aliens out there. Friendly ones. Ones which mean us no harm, and which visit our planet regularly. So, the next time you see an unexplained light, or a UFO, don’t fear it. Give it a welcome with open arms and a big smile because you just might need their help in the future." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Merger\n\nGenre: african-american\n\nWord Count: 1290\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a scene in which a character’s behavior or reaction to something is affected by a past experience — without saying what that experience was." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Tomas was pissed.\nFrom my Merger rental he marched along the highway stumbling in ruts and over branches making him more and more angry. He delighted in kicking coconut sheathings out of his way. It was black dark. Trees all lining the highway road. No lights. He knew there was a mountain climbing straight up on one side of the roadway. He knew there was still sea a short distance through the brush on the other. There was no moon. There were lots of mosquitoes, no wind, humid.\nTomas was pissed.\nHe tore his wet shirt off, got attacked by swarms of knats, no-seeums and mosquitoes, put his wet shirt back on again slapping and running a bit, but it was too hot. \n“Shit. Motherfucker ” emphasising his words with nods of his head. “Nothing good about this place. Rod’s crazy, a crazy niggah.”\nWe had had an argument about the virtues of Haiti. We had gotten stubborn on both sides. Tomas thought the country poor, backward, too many beggars, too dirty, too funky to be lived in, maybe for a visit for a few days, buy some art work and get out again.\nAnd, I had played a joke on him that he did not like. He was right and I should not have done it, but, it was done, eh?\n“Shit! What the fuck am I doing here?”\nHe had stomped out of my place bound up the road, not knowing exactly where he was going but going there anyway. He was tramping along the roadway when he heard the mechanical moaning of a truck’s un-muffled engine approaching. He looked up and then down the road but saw nothing until the truck, with its lights off to conserve battery, was right on top of him. He jumped into a muddy runoff channel and cussed at the receding shadow and slow meringue beat. Tomas sludged his way back up to the pavement and stamped some of the mud from his sandals and from between his toes.\n“Shit, motherfucker.” He looked back where the truck had gone and was boiling with rage. He remembered there was a small open bar on up ahead, so he trudged on, mud squishing underfoot, catching and slapping his sandals against the pavement. Another truck came rumbling up without lights but he was prepared for it, standing off the road on sand. He threw rocks at the rushing beast, yelling for the bastard to put his lights on. He stood there directing hate stares at the darkness down the road. “What the fuck he think he’s got them for...?” The quiet resettled in. He slapped a few mosquitoes. He knew he was not alone.\nTomas had studied martial arts, so he inched his toes to a balanced position, set his body to prepare for whatever struggle lay ahead. His eyes moved his head, studying the three hundred and sixty degrees around his point of earth. Tall grass and a palm grove pushed its edges toward him.\n“Hey, “ he called, “ I know you’re there” he called.\nCrouching, he slowly advanced upon a slight rustling spot listening for the rush. His arms were at chest level now, protecting and ready. A clunk, directly in front of him. He pinched his lips and breathed fear away. Another clunk.\n“Come on, motherfucka ” he said quietly to the tall reeds. \nThe startled cow blinked woefully, turned and rambled away through the grass, its cow bell clunking an uneven rhythm. Tomas blinked, staring at it disappearing into the field. Then looked around to see if anybody saw this incident, then laughed at himself.\nThe bar was almost empty, a couple of people dancing in the open air to an old juke box, socca-merengue-zouk of course. A couple of people sat at tables drinking, talking, laughing. The sea dully slapped the beach outside to his front. The moon finally made it over the hill ridge line to his back. \n He drank a few beers, a few rums and felt lonely, even though people nodded invitations for him to join them. He decided to come back to my place and hit the sack. He decided again that he was getting out of this rotten country the next day if he could.\nOn the way back Tomas stepped in some fresh cow dung, so he stopped to dig it from between his toes with a stick. Across the highway some drunken men were laughing and talking loud in Creole while they staggered, arms around each other along the roadway going in the same direction as Tomas.\nHe replaced his sandal and began walking ahead, letting them know that he was not interested in their company. They ran across the highway to him. He loosened his shoulders and balanced his body and knew that if he went down two or three of them were going too, and the others would feel remembrances of their victory.\nThey surrounded him, speaking Creole in serious tones. One touched Tomas’ shoulder.\n“Hey, I don’t play that.” he responded, staring into the man’s eyes.\n“Ahh, Americains. C’est une Americaine blanc.” The one nodded, smiling to the others.\n“Blanc?” Tomas got insulted.\n“Oui, yes, a blanc.” another laughed.\n“I spek English, man, brudder.” A skinny one, with a black tee-shirt with Madonna’s face and chest protruding, said smiling, “Gimme five man, high five, man.” He raised his palm and slapped Tomas’ proffered open palm.\nThey all had to slap his hand in turn, the Madonna man slapping it a second time.\n“Okay, cool.” Tomas said attempting to walk on, but they had him surrounded. Seven of them. In a circle.\n“I starve death in New York, man. America!” the man spit on the ground, then pushed the clear bottle with its clear liquid at Tomas. “Drink blanc. Clarin. Is good. Clarin. Make dick stay hard, man.”\nTomas had been a political activist for a large segment of his life, and now looking down where the man had spit he suddenly remembered that he loved his country. It was a surprise to him, he had been fighting it for so long, that he had forgotten that he was fighting America because he loved it. He took the bottle, keeping a glancing eye about him, put it to his lips then gave it back.\n“I love America.” A big jawed man said.\n“Me too.” Madonna contradicted himself.\nTomas tried to walk on again. A hand took his shoulder. He shook it off. “I told you I don’t play that.”\n“W’as wrong you, blanc?”\n“I ain’t no blanc.”\n“You blanc, oui.” A finger touched his cheek. “You scared, blanc?” The man spoke in Creole to the others, they laughed, chuckled and giggled.\n“Don’t be scared, Americaine. Don’t be scared of black mans. You in Haiti now. You with bruddahs now. You come here, to Haiti. What you come Haiti for, blanc? Dis no New York. No scared here.”\nTomas was alone walking down the road. The thought came to him and expanded itself that they were just drinking and really didn’t mean any harm. He was just keyed up. But, it was dark, it was lonely, they were drunk and they were poor looking, and they were black. So, he was supposed to think there was something bad about to happen, wasn’t he?\nThe moon sent slits of smiling lights upon the still sea. Cocopalms hushed and hissed in soft conversations. The water gurgled, turning over stones and sucking them quietly toward its vastness. A whiff of jasmine brought a smile to Tomas’ sweating face. He bounced along the road swaying now and then to a passing truck’s zouk rhythms. \n The drums on the mountainsides, the conch calls on the sea." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: The devil is in the details\n\nGenre: african-american\n\nWord Count: 2600\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about someone making a deal with the devil." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The Devil is in the details\n By\n Omar Scott\n\nRodney sat on a park bench looking at the sunset as if he was watching it for the last time. Dejected, he reflected on his life and wondered where he went wrong. Every bad decision, every opportunity missed ran through his mind over and over again, like a scratched record. The crushing weight of providing for a family just got heavier than ever with the loss of the one job he was able to get. He didn’t even have the thousand dollars needed to pay this month’s rent. How am I going to explain this to wife, he thought to himself.\nRodney stared into that horizon hoping that God would answer his prayers. That he would rescue him, and with a wave of his mighty hand, all his problems would disappear like magic. But sadly, like so many other times, those prayers went unanswered. Contemplating the conversation he was going to have with his wife, he took a deep breath and buried his face in his hands. Although he was surrounded by kids playing, dogs barking, and car whizzing by, he felt so alone with just his dark thoughts to keep him company.\n “Hi there,” a smooth, warm voice said starling him.\nRodney slowly raised his head. Sulking, he didn’t notice the man that had taken a seat next to him on the bench.\n“Tough day?”\nRodney’s hazel eyes begin to focus on the gentleman. He noticed the clean black suit, crisp white shirt, and black tie that made up the attire of the well-groomed man with the sympathetic expression. “Whatever your selling, I’m not interested,” Rodney said rather dismissively.\n“Oh, I’m not a salesman. I offer opportunities.”\nRodney looked down at his shoes, which were polished and shining like mirrors as he said, “I have a church home.”\nThe man scooted closer and bent over so that he was face to face with Rodney, “And how is that working out for you?”\nRodney raised an eyebrow as he locked eyes with the man for the first time. The stranger’s eyes were so dark; it was like looking at midnight. His olive skin stretched over his slender face with prominent features. A sharp contrast to Rodney’s stocky build. Rodney sat up on the bench as the man’s demeanor finally grabbed his attention. Although the thought had run through his mind, he never thought about actually speaking the words until now, “Belonging to the church has never done anything for me.”\n“I know. It’s funny how the church is always broke. They always need your money, your ten percent, but when the shoe is on the other foot, they tell you to pray for what you need,” the strange man said with a smile.\n“Yeah, you right,” Rodney nodded in agreement.\n“But what if I could offer you real help? Put cash in your pocket, right here, right now.”\nRodney looked him up and down, “What kind game are you running, man?”\n“No game,” the stranger said reaching into his breast pocket and pulling out a money clip filled with hundred dollar bills. \nRodney’s eyes widened. “What’s the catch?”\nThe stranger reached into his pocket again and pulled out a notecard and handed it to him, “All you have to do is say this?”\nRodney took the card and scanned it over. He chuckled, “You serious?”\n“Dead serious,” he replied with a stoic face. He counted out twenty-one hundred dollar bills and held them in front of Rodney’s face, “Here is two thousand dollars. Get on your knees and read what’s on the card and the money is yours,” he said as he stood up and clutched his lapel.\nRodney scratched his head as he mulled over his offer. The money could pay his rent and buy him some time. He glanced at the sun again and back down at the card. Fuck it, what do I have to lose, he thought to himself. Closing his eyes, he took in a breath and held it. As he released it, he fell to a knee and began reading off the card, “You are the light bringer. The most beautiful of all. The redeemer of man. The true king of kings. And the world will bow at your feet.”\nThe stranger closed his eyes and his body trembled like he had an orgasm. With a sinister grin, he took Rodney’s hand and placed the money in it, “Here you go as promised. And there’s more where that came from. When you’re ready.”\nRodney took the cash and thumbed through it. “More?”\n“I can end your misery. Help you start that restaurant you always wanted. Save your marriage?”\nRodney’s jaw dropped, as he stumbled to get the words out, “How did you know that?”\n“I know everything about you Rodney Williams. Born August 10th 1980 in Phoenix, Arizona. Went to culinary school but flunked out in your second year. Married in 2009. And you owe five thousand in back taxes, six thousand in student loans, three thousand in back child support, and you lost your job as a line cook this morning.”\n“How did you know that? Who are you?”\n“Those aren’t the questions you should be asking. Your focus is all wrong. You should be asking yourself what do I have to do to get more money?” he said as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a business card and handed it to him, “Just like I put that money in your hands, I could do so much more. More than you could ever imagine. I can help you build an empire. Money and power will be at your fingertips. It’s the opportunity of a life time,” he said straightening his suit and smoothing down his black wavy hair, “Think about it. And when you’re ready, call me.”\nRodney took the card and studied it closely. On the front was an L in the middle of a five pointed star. He flipped it to the back to find only a phone number. Then his focus went back to the cash in his hand. He folded the money and the card together. Stuffed them in his pocket. And when he looked up again, the strange man was gone.\n With his head on a swivel to make sure nobody saw him stash the money, Rodney scurried away with a huge grin on his face. He breathed of sigh of relief only when he reached his apartment and locked the door. His interaction with this guy, and the fact that he lost his job was going to be his little secret. He paid the rent on his tiny rundown apartment. And then he treated his wife to a nice dinner at Olive Garden. Oblivious to his intentions, she made love to him for the first time in months. Life was wonderful. \n Over the next three weeks Rodney pounded the pavement looking for a new job. He put in applications everywhere they served food. But he couldn’t find anything. Not even McDonalds was hiring to flip burgers. The extra money was quickly drying up, and the first of the month was rapidly approaching. Rodney found himself at the same park bench, looking at the same evening sun, wondering what was he going to do. He’d borrowed money from so many family members, he couldn’t show his face again at another family function. He tried getting unemployment, but was denied. He tried getting a payday loan, but they said his car was too old. I can’t catch a break, he thought to himself. Then it hit him. He reached in his wallet and pulled out that business card that the strange man had given him. Twirling it around in his hands, Rodney contemplated calling for a few ticks. With each second that passed, the hopelessness of his situation became more evident. Feeling he had no choice, he made the call.\n “Hello Mr. Williams. I’ve been waiting to hear from you,” the strange man said.\n “I think I want to take you up on your offer,” Rodney replied pacing back and forth, rubbing the back of his head.\n “Excellent. Don’t move. I’ll be there momentarily to discuss terms,” he said before abruptly hanging up.\n Rodney was confused. How did he know I would call, and how did he know where I was at, he thought to himself. Before he could come up with answers in his mind, there he was walking through the park in another black suit carrying a briefcase. He had the look of a confident stockbroker or banker looking to close a big deal. He stood in front of Rodney with his chest out and chin high.\n “You have made a wise decision Mr. Williams,” he said setting down his briefcase on the bench. He unlocked the combination and popped the case open. It was neatly filled with stacks of hundred dollar bills, “This is just a small sample of what you can expect.”\n “Wow.” Rodney’s eyes almost popped out of his head as he ran his fingers over the cash. He picked up a stack and smelled it before rubbing it on his cheek. He was grinning from ear to ear. “This is all mine?”\n “All yours my friend. A half million dollars.”\n “And all I have do is read the card like before?” Rodney eagerly asked.\n The stranger stepped closer and put his hand on Rodney’s shoulder. He looked deep into Rodney’s eyes and said, “I’m going to need a whole lot more than that. I want your soul.”\n Rodney laughed, “Yeah right.”\n The stranger took the cash right out of Rodney’s hands and closed the briefcase. “No soul, no cash.”\n With a puzzled look on his face, Rodney asked, “You’re serious?”\n “Always,” the stranger responded bluntly.\n “And just how do you suppose I give you my soul?”\n The stranger reached into his pocket and pulled out a contract, “I just need a signature.”\n Rodney looked at the contract while fighting off a smile, “This contract is blank.”\n “Don’t worry about it. I’ll fill it in later. Just sign on the line and the money, and all the riches in the world is yours,” he said handing Rodney a pen with a sinister grin.\n “All I have to do is sign? That’s it?”\n “That’s it,” he said with a shrug. “What do you have to lose?” \n The wheels in Rodney’s mind began to turn. At first he thought this dude was running some kind of game. Then he thought, maybe he is just an eccentric rich man doing things for kicks. But now, he was certain this guy was certifiably crazy. He could milk this dude for all he got. God was finally answering his prayers. Fortune had shine its light on him. This was the opportunity he’d been waiting his whole life for. He quickly signed the contract and swiped the briefcase full of cash.\n *\nRodney woke up in his king size bed. He peeled back the Egyptian cotton sheets and slid his feet into a pair of plush slippers. As he stretched, he looked around his massive master suite. Nobody but him once again. It was so quiet that he could hear the air condition unit click on and start running. Slumped shoulder, he stepped on to the marble floor of his bathroom to brush his teeth and wash his face. Then he slipped on a custom made suit and some Italian leather shoes. Next, he opened the French doors to his room and made his was down the spiral staircase and into his gourmet kitchen.\n “Good Moring sir. Do you care for some breakfast?” his wrinkled old butler asked in a thick English accent.\n “No thanks. I’ll take a cup of coffee to go. Have the driver to bring the car around,” Rodney replied.\n “Yes sir. Here’s your paper,” he said handing Rodney a freshly folded newspaper.\n Rodney opened it up and looked at the date. Then it occurred to him. Today was the ten-year anniversary of the day he took that briefcase of cash from that stranger. He shook his head. His eyes glanced over the headlines until he saw the one with his name on it. “Rodney William and his firm under investigation for insider trading,” Rodney said with disgust as he slammed the paper on the counter, “Damn it!”\n He grabbed his coffee and slipped into the backseat of his Range Rover. He pulled out his phone and check his messages. All of them where business related. No calls or text from family or friends as usual. Shaking his head, he glared out the window like a lost puppy dog as he made his way to the office. The light turned green as they stopped in front of the old park he used to hang out at.\n “Stop here, Ted,” he commanded the driver.\n He hopped out the car and strolled over to the park bench. He took a seat and looked at the sun like he used to. Then he heard a familiar voice from behind.\n “Good morning Mr. Williams. Didn’t think I would ever see you here again.”\n Rodney spun around and almost fell on his ass. He lost all the color in his face as he blurted out, “You.”\n The stranger smiled and nodded his head. He was impeccably dressed as normal, holding a briefcase, “I see you have done well. Everything you wanted. Just as we agreed.”\n Rodney steadied himself and stood up straight, “You lied to me. You ruined my life.”\n Stone face, the stranger replied, “I didn’t do anything to your life. I simply gave you what you asked for. Money and power.”\n “And the more money I got, the more it pushed everyone away. My wife left me. My kid won’t talk to me. I have no friends. My family won’t have anything to do with me. I’m surrounded by backstabbers. I’m under investigation. All I have is problems. And it’s all your fault,” Rodney shouted in anger.\n “You should have thought of the consequences before you signed the contract,” the stranger said coldly.\n “But I never saw that finished contract. So how am I supposed to know the consequences?” Rodney said in frustration with his palms up.\n The strange man opened his briefcase, pulled out the contract, and handed to Rodney. Rodney snatched it from him and opened it. His eyes focused on every word as his jaw hit the floor. He read the last part out loud, “As a condition you agree to trade all relationships for cash received,” Rodney threw the contract to the ground. “You tricked me. What did you do, bribe my family and friends not to talk to me? The deal is off. I want my old life. I’ll give you back your money.”\n “All deals are final,” the stranger said as his eyes turned fire red. His ominous presence and evil expression casted a dark shadow over the whole park, like storm clouds rolling in during a tornado.\nThe eerie vibe made the hairs on Rodney’s neck stand up. His spine was cold as ice, and his hands began to shake violently. He took a step back as he stuttered the words, “Who are you? Really?”\n“I have so many names, in so many languages. I lose track,” he said with a slight chuckle.\n The realization of who he made the deal with hit like cold water when your dead asleep. “The devil.”\n “I hate that name. Call me Lucifer,” he said as his lips curled into a devilish grin.\n\n The End" } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: The Elephant in the Room\n\nGenre: african-american\n\nWord Count: 1425\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about someone trying to resist their darker impulses. Whether they succeed or fail is up to you." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The Elephant in the Room\nIt's wild how often we hear someone talking about the \"elephant in the room\" in a conversation. Generic statements danced around the subject, asking rhetorical questions to feel out your opponent or create a scenario to search for a specific response.\nF.Y.I….\nIt hurt when you finally realized they were talking about you! Instead of asking what was wrong, they gossip, speculate, or whisper about everything I do, say, or don't do.\nThings began changing for all of us in early 1982 when I got pregnant. My pregnancy made a devastating realization resurface for my parents. It broke their hearts that their perfect daughter's body reminded them of the loss of their first child, their only biological child. My pregnancy awoke that green-eyed monster inside an ordinarily sweet, caring wife and mother.\nI had dismissed the reasons she had changed. It was after the other girl they adopted had died, and I was headed to kindergarten. Her unwillingness to let go forced her to follow the school bus through the route from our driveway to Emporia Elementary School. This happened every morning for more than a week. Finally, the following Monday, she was given an ultimatum by the man who would be her boss in less than a month: trust the assigned bus driver or get her CDL and become the driver for route 18. She began driving route 18 in January of 1972.\nFrom January 2, 1972, until I left home in April 1982, my assigned seat on 718 was directly behind the driver's seat, where she could see me and be sure no one was picking on me. Maybe her concerns weren't unfounded; I couldn't be trusted to do what I should do…\nEvery day, my mother would ask, \"What do you want for breakfast, and what do you want for lunch?\" If I would say a hamburger and a milkshake, I got that, but I would hide the food behind the stove, the refrigerator, or any place I knew my mother would not look. I was anemic and underweight for a five-year-old. I stayed thirty-two pounds from when the Walkers adopted me in 1968 until the end of kindergarten on June 5, 1972. I was allergic to everything most children loved. The extensive list included:\n1. Strawberries grew right outside, almost beneath my bedroom window.\n2. Blackberries which grew wild along the fence in the backyard.\n3. Tomatoes that grew as big as apples in the small garden next to the strawberry patch.\n4. Purple (dark blue) grapes that grew in beautiful hanging bunches next to the Koi pond.\n5. Peach fuzz…not the peach flesh, but try to steal a bite from a gem that falls at your feet.\n6. Grass that made me itch just by picking up a frisbee that fell.\n7. The wind: I don't remember how or why.\nWhat cemented my fate was when I got caught throwing my lunch out of the school bus window on my last day riding Mrs. Brown's bus home on the evening of the beginning of Thanksgiving weekend. I was dropped off at school every morning and picked up at 2.\nHow does the older generation know things by looking at you? My grandmother looked at my face a week earlier and said, \"Your nose is spreading. Are you pregnant? I kissed her cheek and said I hope not, Grandma.\" Then she looked at my boyfriend, standing behind me, and said, \"Thank you for bringing her to see me.\".\nThe following Saturday morning, I floated into the kitchen with my nose wide open. The smell of biscuits, cheesy- eggs, and pork sausage wafted throughout the house. As I entered the kitchen, my mouth said good morning, my mind said yum, but my stomach said Oh hell no!... I grabbed my mouth with one hand and my stomach with the other and ran into the bathroom. I fell to my knees, hugged the porcelain throne, and hurled. Add insult to injury; Mom was behind me screaming, \"You're pregnant, aren't you?\"\nAfter breakfast, Mom took me to the doctor's office, and they confirmed her suspicion that I was pregnant. The ride from his office to the nearby mall was quiet and tense. I waited for the blow-up, the fussing, the cursing, the eye rolls, but she didn't do or say anything then.\nIn Kmart, we ran into my boyfriend's sisters, and I told them the news but swore them to secrecy; I had to be the one to say to him. We always had date nights on Fridays and Saturdays.\nLater that evening, after dinner, I stood at the sink with my back to her and asked if there were more dishes. Thinking she didn't hear me, I turned just in time to protect my stomach from a cast iron frying pan attack. She was swinging with enough force that had I not turned when I did; I would have been hit across my waistline in my back. I knew this was not an accident; the rage had been building all day. Three choices followed this:\n1. Go to my Uncle's house in Maryland, have an abortion, and never speak of this unfortunate incident again.\n2. Go to my Uncle's until I had the baby and put it up for adoption\n3. Get out\nOf those choices, my only option was #3. I didn't believe in abortions, and I was adopted.\nMy mother worked for the most influential lawyer in town, so there was no escaping her reach \nThe way I left home slowly killed the bond of our family; my father became the undeserving victim of a lie I fabricated to ensure that I was free of my mother's monstrous clutches, never having his name cleared. Although he understood why I did it the way I did, it tugged on his heartstrings and made him feel he needed to decide whose reputation deserved his loyalty, so he took the truth to the grave. He at least saw his grandson born in December 1982, but he was gone in less than six months. After lingering in a coma for almost two weeks, he succumbed to the effects of a massive coronary event in March 1983.\nAfter his death, Mom and I tried to mend our relationship, but I didn't move back home. Stubbornness and determination kept us from apologizing and working toward a mutual understanding. She softened into Grandma mode when my oldest son was born, and the other two boys were potty-trained and capable of intelligent conversations. Being too private and strong-willed, my mother didn't reveal her health issues and retirement until I figured it out. Her first heart attack occurred behind the wheel of 718. She said, \"Driving the school bus was the best job she ever had after being a mother.\"\nSeveral times, I got calls at work saying she had checked herself out of the hospital (AMA) against medical advice. Nonetheless, that call to notify you that your only living parent has died still hurts tremendously. Especially when I was visiting her the Saturday afternoon before; I had to be back to work in Charlottesville that Monday. Our last conversation was the one that most children don't want to have. My mother was a type 1 diabetic for forty-eight years, diagnosed a week after marriage and awoken by the onset of measles. That was the cause of her losing the baby in 1963, and they decided to go the adoption route. \nApril 26, 1995, my mother departed this worldly struggle after slowly dealing with the loss of her whole world over the last six decades. I missed the real message in our last conversation. Mom kept saying she was tired and telling me where the necessary papers were located and in her around-the-way version of an apology. It reminded me of another conversation after an argument when I chose to apologize for saying I would never be like her. I ate those words after realizing I had done just that. I took on three jobs to provide for my children in a certain way.\n Yes, I gained weight and lost sleep over the events of 95. One thing after another happened without a break, a shoulder to cry on, or any sense of direction. I knew I couldn't ball up in a corner and cry like I wanted to. Mom went from monster to my rock.\nSo, I learned there's often only a fine line or an elephant between a good and a monstrous MOTHER!" } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Cold is the Absence of Heat\n\nGenre: adventure\n\nWord Count: 2750\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story imagining 'what if' one historic invention had never happened. How would our world be different now?" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Commander John Forebear re-enters the airlock to Novac 3 and takes his place at the bridge's command module. No sooner is he settled in than his headset sparks in static.\n\"It's a blue line here, John. Ice to every horizon, kind of mist-like, an artic blue, mythical. It's really something.\"\nThe Commander smiles. Just like my science officer to admire the view. I love him, but it's another thing to keep him focused on the task at hand.\n\"I can see,\" the Commander replies. \"Your visuals are coming in fine, but you're not on vacation, are you Officer Aaronson?\" The monitor displays the surface of planet 87689-B, no longer the ice blue marble seen growing over the last eighteen months, but white arctic plains, endless mountain ranges, and red-ironed rock on knife edged peaks.\nThe Commander's headset crackles again from Aaronson. \"You need to smell the roses more often my friend..”\nThe Commander laughs. \"You've never smelled a rose; you've never even seen one.\"\n\"I read books. You should try it.\"\nThe Commander laughs again. \"I do read books.\"\n\"You read manuals on rocket technology. Those aren't books.\"\nAaronson is on the surface, the Commander thinks. Back to business. \"Let's get on it, Science Officer. Have you centered the vein?\"\n\"Affirmative,\" Aaronson answers, coming in clear. \"Data confirms crystal spectrum 2.5 klicks below the surface. Deploying the drill.\" \nOn the ship's monitor, the Commander zooms in. Standing much larger and taller than the robotic derricks on Absolon 9, the drill first extends vertically. Once the upward extension completes, the blades spread out at the base, slowly expanding to thirty meters, reminding the Commander of the wings of a teeth mantis. The blades begin turning, spinning, ice flies as it grinds through the ice. The high, piercing sound of the drill fills the audio, and ice blocks spin off the blades as the diamond edged wings cut, tear, bore a hole in the planet. \nSoon the derrick has drilled itself out of sight from the command module. On the surface, Science Officer Aaronson puts on a propulsion vest. The tiny thrusters fire a blue flame, a throated growl as they lift him. Aaronson disappears as he descends the newly dug channel, a vertical mineshaft.\nAn hour later, Aaronson patches in. \"You need to get down here, Commander. You won't believe this.\"\nDescending the drill shaft along with Security Officer Dickens, the Commander realizes they don't need headlamps. The ice walls are a translucent aqua glow, almost an ocean effect, the glow derived he suspects from its own organic energy source within the fabric of the ice. His gloved hand slides down the edge of the mineshaft. Clear, he thinks. I can see at least three meters into the ice. The purity of it.\nThe Commander is not a worrier, but he worries as he descends. Not because of the shaft or the mine. He has mined all over the Federation, dozens of planets, and even if this shaft is twice the size of the largest, he still has the experience. It isn't the cumbersome size of the derrick either. It's what his security officer had said the night before. They had been together on the observation deck and it was about his friend Aaronson. The same subject Dickens had been harping on for the last year.\n\"To mine the ice is nothing,\" Dickens had said, the reflection of a dark red nebula on his scared face. \"It's the softness of that Aaronson. He's not like us; he lacks the killer instinct. When the time comes, Aaronson will be the weak link. Trust me, I've seen it before. We need to mine the ice, and I'm not letting him get in the way.\"\nAlways the paranoid security officer, thinks the Commander. But he's my security officer, and I like him being paranoid. It's safer. His job is to protect all three of us, after all. He pours himself two fingers of scotch from their dwindling supply into his crystal glass. The blue planet hovers below in its own shimmering light, the plains, the mountains, the stars ablaze above.\nDickens grabs the scotch bottle with a flick of his eyes. \"Have you seen his right earlobe? It's the mark of a mystic. He hides it, but it's typical of his kind, his race. He swears, what a joke, there's some kind of life on the planet. He says he dreamed about them. Hallucinating is what I think. And we scanned for planet heat, nothing. The entire planet is absolute zero. If there's a THEY, can they be absolute zero? There's a reason Sector 12 threw out the mystics you know, why you don’t see them. They shipped them off, good riddance I say.\nThe Commander throws back his scotch. Corporate's command was simple. Go to planet 87689-B, mine as much of what you can, bring back the mythical ice that doesn't melt. Imagine the repercussions of a product with endless refrigeration? Fill the storage bay, bring it back. Zing, Pop, we're all rich. Or, I'm rich. Corporate is already rich. The commander puts his hand on Dicken's arm to assure him. \"We mine the ice, fill the payload. Then we get the hell out. Aaronson will be fine.\" And once I'm rich, I can retire to Absolom 7, the furthest from the insanity of the Federation I can get, a place without thought control, a place with hardly any people at all. What's going on at Sector 12 is really not my business.\n***\nAs the two men descend, their propulsion vests hold the descent, a hissing sound from the fuel, a blue flame. At the bottom of the shaft, Aaronson waves up to them in the blue glow, the channel now carved out at the bottom like a cathedral. It's then the commander realizes the protruding vein of ice in front of him IS the core product, the color of the distinctive blue giving it away. The ice gives off a ghosting blue, fog like, the surface seeming to have a thin frothing skin. Ice that won't melt. Corporate could mine this for decades. Who knows how long?\nAaronson's voice breaks in the Commander's headset. \"I'm at your two o'clock. You have to see this. I've run the carbon dating spectronics.\"\nThe science officer is standing at the entrance to one of many spidered tunnels off the base of the main dig. Behind him are the images of a junkyard of random space debris, dozens of pieces of metal embedded in a clear ice wall, as if a human expedition on a prior mining exploration had abandoned their probes, a launch vehicle, digging equipment, backhoes, mining tools. Ancient technology embedded in clear ice.\nThe Commander joins Aaronson in front of the ice wall. \"I've never seen equipment like this. What's the reading?\" \n\"2.5 million years. Our earth was not yet civilized when these artifacts were brought here Commander.\"\nAronson puts his hand on the ice wall in awe of what they'd found. \"It's a shame we can't stay. Imagine what we could learn. And there are inscriptions on the equipment. There, on what looks like a backhoe, do you see?\"\nJust looking at artifacts from so long ago sends a shiver through the Commander, a déjà vu, a murmur, a whisper from an ancient past.\nAaronson speaks quietly to the Commander. \"You sense it, don't you? Can we stay?\"\nDickens looks disgustedly at Aaronson. \"No way science man. We're not here for your witchy bullshit. If there's intelligence, we're in danger.\"\nAaronson ignores Dickens, his eyes on the Commander. \"Give me just three days to complete an archeological study. All I'm asking is three days, John.\"\n\"Pfff,\" Dickens snorts. \"You've been whining about missing your family for the entire trip out. Now you want to stay?\"\n\"I do. But there's more.\" Aaronson hesitates like he was holding back. \"You both need to come with me.\"\nThey follow Aaronson down an ice blue tunnel and enter a cavern opening up with caves on an ice cliff. Ice ladders access what looks like homes, abandoned cliff dwellings. Structures in ice of all sizes, a blue sheen to the ice, ghostly, present, unknown. But what really stands apart are the carvings. Circular discs of etchings, sculptures of some abstract design. Like Picasso of ages long past, or Phillips on Horizon's Horn in the 8th Quadrant. The brightest spot is a centerpiece on a small pedestal. There sits what looks like a pulsating diamond, sparkling white, about 20 centimeters tall. Around it is an artistically designed ice carved shrine. The diamond hums, it glitters organically.\nAronson puts his helmeted face inches from the diamond. \"This is ice but like a queen I think. See how she produces ice from the base like tiny glaciers. The ice is the eggs. They don't melt, we know that, but the queen is this diamond of ice, birthing the ice. This shrine is to worship the ice diamond, is my guess.\"\nDickens picks up the diamond, examines it. \"If they can't protect it, they don't deserve to keep it. Why are we only taking the ice when we can also take, as you say, the queen?\"\nAaronson steps in front of Dickens. \"We only came for the ice. We don't know the ramifications. We need to study it.\"\nDickens glances at the Commander who gestures to return the ice diamond. He sets the crystal diamond back on the pedestal.\nReturning to the derrick, the three men prepare the container for some hours, collecting ice, storing it for the transfer.\nThe Commander closes the portal on the container. \"Ok Aaronson, trigger the container to ascend to the surface. I've programmed the ascent to Novac 3.\"\nAaronson and the Commander strap on their vests. Dickens joins them. Before he triggers the propulsion, Aaronson stops Dickens.\nAronson raises both of his hands. \"He's hiding the ice diamond in his pack Commander. Not a good idea Dickens. There's more to this than you realize.\"\n\"Don't tell me science boy, we can take this. But… but…\" Dickens grabs his helmet with both hands. Whatever is in his helmet eats on his face, his flesh is breaking up like black microbes gnawing on him.\nHe draws his laser sidearm, fires at Aaronson, whose chest lights up with a red flash. The charge dissipates in an electrical charge, Aaronson collapses to the ice. Dickens falls to his knees next to Aaronson and his hands desperately claw each side of his helmet. His screams pierce the Commander's headset as the whites of Dicken's eyes go black. His face in the clear visor helmet DISSOLVES, the flesh of his face dripping away, blood flowing down his cheeks with the white bones of his skull protruding. Finally, his mass slides down into the interior of his suit like sludge in a drain and his suit crumples on the ice.\nThe Commander thinks in a second. It was so simple. Go to planet 87689-B, mine as much as you can, fill the storage bay with a ton of the stuff. Bring it back. He takes hold of the pack. Carrying Aaronson, he stumbles to the main channel and fires his vest. The weight of two men may be too much. He turns the nozzle full on. But he's rising too slowly and falls back a meter for every two he ascends. Aaronson moans on his back. As they rise up the channel, the sides of the shaft begin cracking like a crevasse closing in on them, the ice splintering, cascading down the channel. Pieces of ice reach out to strike at his legs, his arms, the iced sides moving in on them like a closing fist. The planet itself knows I have the queen. \nOnce on the surface, the Commander lays Aaronson in the shuttle. As they take off, the gravity of the planet seems to bend with an aurora of light, blues and pinks reach for them, a colored gravity aching to pull the shuttle back. But they dock on Novac 3 and soon all of the ship's engines are firing, blasting in a blue-red fire, but the planet strains to hold the ship. 87689-B is not giving up. It seems to scream to pull the ship back, like a mother fighting for the return of her children, her queen, the ice. Finally, the planet lets go, spent with exhaustion. The planet gives out a collective gasp of loss. Novac 3 snaps into space, the stars streak by.\n***\nTwo months later, Aaronson still hasn't died. The commander has set him up in sickbay, the portrait of his wife, his two young children taped to the bulkhead above him. He has no consciousness, thinks the commander. He's dying, a coma. He'll never last a month, certainly not a year.\nAs the days become weeks, the Commander holds Aaronson's sweating head in his berth. He feeds him food carefully ground so he can swallow. He washes Aaronson when he needs to be washed. And finally in desperation he lies next to his friend, begging to transfer his own heated life force. Wake up, Aaronson. Wake up. You're the only friend I've got.\nBut strangely, the Commander meets him in dreams, an apparition in his sleep, coming to him out of a blue iced fog. \"The ice melts,\" Aaronson says in the dream. \"Melts\". But how can this be? The ice does not melt, the crystal births more ice. But Aaronson says over and over, \"The ice is the absence of heat,\" his eyes unfocused, the light in his irises dying. There must be a message. Novac 3 rockets through space and the Commander drinks scotch on the observation deck, first two fingers, then four, then he's out of counting fingers. He just drinks. There is no day. The nebula of greens and browns and pinks, the infinitum of space, silently watches. He drinks until the day he looks in the mirror of his cabin and examines his red-veined eyes, his face. Then he knows what to do.\n********\nAaronson's near lifeless body lies in the outstretched arms of the Commander. He stumbles with the weight, falls, rises again. He struggles on, the weight heavy. The propulsion vest he wears can hardly hold them both from plummeting down the mineshaft. He finds the ice caves, the ladders, the art. He then lays Aaronson carefully down at the altar where the ice diamond used to be, the queen. After taking his pack off, he removes the ice diamond and places it on the pedestal and kneels in front of it.\nBehind the commander stands a blue presence, at least ten feet tall, a figure in raw ice, nothing more. The man is clear blue, the ice of his body shimmering like the planet itself. There is a crackling, like tinkling ice, as the man's arm moves. He places a hand on the Commander's shoulder, his arm joint re-forming as the ice breaks and splinters. Lights like nail-heads shine from his eyes. His head turns, a crinkling in his neck, a thin frothing crystal skin. Your man will be fine. He’ll get to stay, study us as he wants. Then we can get him back if he chooses. But not for you. Yours is a different path.\nThe commander turns. Half of his face is blue ice, he is transforming. He knows in his heart that soon the suit won't be necessary. He smiles to himself. But what will happen when Novac 3 reaches the frontier of the Federation, passes the ashen worlds destroyed by war, the planets stripped of all resources and lain to waste? What will happen when the sickened and bitter society discovers the ice that won't melt? He's completed his mission. The ice is overflowing the container within the ship, and in another eighteen months it will reach the frontier. They will harvest a rare commodity, solving the refrigeration needs for the Federation. \nNow he more than smiles, he laughs. The ice has a little surprise, he thinks. A little gift to the Corporation. It will spread throughout the Federation of Planets. And then he remembers his dream on Novac 3. He remembers the dream asking him, what is the absence of hate? He now knows the answer. The ice will spread, and those who have the emotion of anger, or vengeance, or loathing, or bigotry, or so many other tortures in the souls of humanity, will, like Dickens, MELT." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Away Day\n\nGenre: adventure\n\nWord Count: 2497\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about a character who wakes up in space." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "This dream was strange, even for a dream it was strange. What was stranger was that Mo remembered the dream. Mo knew he dreamt, everyone did, but seldom did he have any recollection of where his mind wandered to at night. Of the dreams that did make themselves known to him, most were those that occurred between his alarm and the small window of snoozing. He didn’t trust those dreams as they were impossibly long for the seven minute window he had available in which to drift off. Maybe they were dreams of dreams. He hoped not, because there was a darkness therein that shamed him. A cruelty and a cynicism that made him wonder just what kind of person his subconscious thought he was.\nThis dream was as different as it got, and now as he lay there in a state between sleep and consciousness, he held onto it for a little while longer, turning it this way and that, so he could see what it was he’d caught in his net. \nHe shivered as he realised that it wasn’t even his dream. He’d plagiarised his nocturnal story and stolen the costume he wore as he met talking animals who were all on drugs as far as he could tell. Unless of course, it was him who was on drugs. That would make more sense. But he doubted drugs would make animals talk. And if they did talk, why in the hell would they speak the same language as Mo? He smiled to himself at that. He wasn’t as stupid as he acted. Not all of the time at least.\nThe costume he’d donned concerned him. Was there a message there? He wasn’t a fan of dressing up, but to be wearing a dress was a bridge too far. He was sure that he hadn’t needed to adhere to that detail for the dream to work, but there he was, in a dress and he was wearing it like he really meant it. He was looking good. The best he’d ever looked and that made him wonder who the hell he really was.\nHis dream was a dream of a story that was a dream in itself. The narrative was ladened with meaning. It was a kid’s story, but one that kids would never fully understand until they were well into adulthood and life had roughed them up plenty. There was something cruel about that. The story hung around and watched the pain train of life smash a person into something they no longer recognised, and then it stood there with a smarmy look on its face and said I told you so. It was all there in this story, if only a person took the time to think. But Mo knew that thinking was a rich man’s game. The poor and the listless were not meant to think. Not if they knew what was good for them.\nHe lingered some more in the state between sleep and awakening, he hung around there for longer than he had any right to, and as he came back into the world of the consciously living, he thought he knew why. And it wasn’t only because his head pulsed with the pain of an injury he could not remember being in receipt of.\nGroaning, he wanted to scrunch his eyes shut in an abortive attempt at banishing the pain, but his eyes were fixed on something that he now could not unsee. Before him floated water droplets and arrayed around those droplets were tiny bubbles. Something caught in his chest, or in his throat, he could not be sure, as in that moment he could not be sure of anything, even what he was anymore. A fish out of water was no longer a fish. Not as a fish knew it anyway. Once it had left the reality of its existence, it was transformed into something so very different from what had once been of use, and it was that uselessness that smothered and confused it so totally that it could not find a way to be anymore.\nWater, thought Mo, in a distracted, spiralling state of affairs that he wanted to exaggerate and perpetuate, but could not. In his peripheral vision he saw two anaemic eels swaying in invisible currents. It took him a while to understand that these where his arms. Or rather, they had been his arms in another life. He left them there and blinked two more droplets of liquid into existence. They floated upwards and stared back at him. Two disembodied, accusatory eyes. Their accusations were a shopping list of questions, all of them barbed and coated with the poison of his own shame.\nNot for the first time did Mo feel like he should not be here. He’d never managed to be comfortable in his own skin. There’d been a mix up when he was made and he’d been given the wrong skin. It just didn’t fit right and it made him stand out for all the wrong reasons. Sometimes he felt people looking at him and wondering why he was infecting their view, mostly he felt the absence of any gaze. That was people mostly did. They ignored the irrelevant whilst they sought anything of value to them. Mo’s destiny was to be overlooked. He doubted he’d make it beyond this current, tawdry existence. He was in a last chance saloon and there was no destination beyond this. No reincarnation. No further credit that would send him back to the first level of the game. Never had been, but definitely not now. Not here. He was beyond hope, and he was certainly beyond reckoning.\n“Merv…” he’d wanted to say more. He’d wanted to curse his so called friend, but the sound of his voice was all wrong. It was the same voice he’d heard a thousand times, only now he couldn’t miss the false quality of it. This was a voice that had become unaccustomed to speaking the truth. Returning to silence was a blessed relief from an army of lies intent on storming the world.\nOnly this wasn’t the world, not as Mo knew it anyway. This was instead exile. Exile in a permanent dream state. That thought made Mo shudder. There was no permanency here. Any tendency towards a perpetual state of affairs was reliant upon the weakest of links and that link was Mo himself. He knew he was out of his depth. He was out of place with no notion as to how he could swim to safer and more recognisable shores. \nThe fact of his incompetence and weakness was exemplified by his remaining in his seat. There was no movement barring the two lifeless fronds that extended out from each side of him. His arms swaying this way and that, not wanting to be a part of this endeavour, but anchored in it all the same.\nEventually, Mo brought himself to speech once again, “Merv, what did you do?” he asked the empty space before him, for there was no Merv here. Merv was a million miles from here. \nOf all the questions he could ask, this was the one that he knew the answer to. He repossessed his right arm and brought it slowly into his reality. Taking his time in case his wayward limb attempted to rebel, he touched the back of his head. Wincing, he confirmed that which he already knew. Bringing his hand around to his eyes, he saw a smear of his own blood. \nMerv had really gone and done it. Mo chuckled mirthlessly and the sound of it hurt his soul. It wasn’t like Merv hadn’t told him, but Mo had chosen not to heed the truth of Merv’s warnings, using an oft used shield of rationalisation; why would he do such a thing?\nMo shook his head despite the pain it caused him. Just because he himself wouldn’t do a thing. Just because he could find no reason to do that thing. That didn’t mean that it would not occur. Sometimes people did things just because they could. More often than not, they did things because they could. Mo knew that if you could freeze time and ask a person why they’d done something self-evidently stupid, ignorant or downright dangerous, they’d stare into the void that was the mirror of their own with the eyes of a brain damaged sheep and give the only answer possible; nothing. \nThere was nothing.\nAnd that was where Mo was now. He had nothing and he had plenty of time to contemplate the void that was at constant odds with meaning. The human race had been at war throughout its time in this reality. A conflict without end. They sought meaning, but the truth was that all they could really do was create meaning. But as fast as people built meaning, the void fed upon it, and the void was always hungry.\nAll the same, despite this philosophy of Mo’s, he reached back into his past and grasped at the offal of his time with Merv. Raising it aloft in his mind’s eye he could not help but see how diseased it had always been. The liver was shrivelled and hard. The guts pulsed with a grim, parasitic life. The cursed vision of his hindsight pained him further. Merv had not been joking around. Turned out that Merv had never been joking around. Merv was about as dangerous as it got and the punchline Mo was now living had about it a dark inevitability. \n“Ignorant is, as ignorant does,” Mo whispered the words and that whisper took him back to a time and a place he had not visited in a long while. The ghost that now haunted him chilled his bones. He saw his Aunt Maud’s cruel angular face in every detail. That woman was constructed from cold metal. There was not one thing that was soft about Aunt Maud, and as though to prove Mo’s point, here he was, reliving the final words she ever spoke to him. Leaning forward as though she were bestowing a kiss upon her little nephew, she’d slipped those words to Mo, before the big man from the orphanage had tugged him away from everything he knew. An impossibly large hand wrapping itself around his upper arm to exert a sudden force powerful enough to snap the umbilical cord to a life that had died when Mo’s mother had taken her own life.\nNow here he was. History had a bad habit of repeating itself. He’d yet again been torn away from the semblance of life he’d managed to achieve. The allotment of meaning he’d secretly tended to all on his own had been concreted over in the night and he was left with nothing. Worse than nothing, because all he had was himself and there was no currency there, only a debt that could never be repaid.\nWithout thinking about it, his hands did their work in freeing him from his seat. Mo barely marked this petty betrayal, his existence had been marred by a litany of betrayal until it had become a part of the air that he breathed. He took no morsel of joy in making his way to the window. He understood that happiness and joy were possibilities, but he’d been surrounded by such possibilities all his life and eventually he’d stopped daring to hope that he’d be gifted even one of them. Hope was not for the likes of Mo, let alone the pretty promises that it made.\nHaving reached the window, Mo stared out at the unreal sight of his new reality. He was oblivious to his making a little slice of history. A part of that history was that he was the first person to see Earth from space and not marvel at an overwhelming significance and meaning that could only be experienced in this moment. All Mo felt was loss, and even that loss had a hollow quality to it. Mo had lost to Merv, and Merv was just another in a long line of bullies and users queuing up to take a piece of Mo even when Mo doubted there was anything worth taking anymore.\nMo stared dispassionately out at the end of his life, and what he felt was the enormity of the void he now dwelt in. He felt the void’s inexorable and hypnotic pull and he knew in that moment that try as he might, he could not avoid gazing into it and allowing it to take what remained of him however worthless that may be.\nIn a stubborn act of defiance, he turned his back on the window and looked into the cramped space of his new home. He yelled with shock and surprise as a lifeless form lunged at him. Throwing his hands up instinctively to protect his face, scrunching his eyes up in a feeble act of cowardice that he’d never been able to prevent. Body language that marked him as a forever-victim deserving of each and every beating life had doled out. \nAs his heart rate dropped from the spike of his panic, he realised what it was that he’d been confronted by. Still he kept his eyes closed. Mo had been wrong far too many times to trust his own judgement. Gently he patted the air clumsily before him, catching something solid, he felt it float away. Now he could open his eyes. The mop hung in the air, moving across the cabin of the spaceship. \nInstinctively, Mo scanned around for the bucket that the mop belonged to. Of that, there was no sign. A mop with no bucket. He sighed a sigh that juddered through his body and threatened to break it apart. His head went down. Where it belonged. Always looking down to where he was headed. Staring into the void that would consume him come what may.\nThere, the floor was a story that mirrored his own. Half-arsed. A clean portion and a dusty and dirty portion. He glanced up at the mop, with a mind to address the question of a job half done, but then thought better of it. Why change the habit of a life time?\nLike the now pointless mop, Mo hung there, suspended in the nothingness of his own life. In that absurdly ridiculous state, he gave himself over to his emotions. Unclear as to whether he was laughing or crying. He abandoned himself to the act of giving up. His back to the world that had rejected him from such an early age. Rejecting the reality that he was now presented with.\nThen Mo was laughing as he understood the meaning of his banishment from a world he had failed to be a part of. Understood why it was that Merv had done what he had done. At last he accepted his own meaning; that he was a waste of space." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Alicia\n\nGenre: african-american\n\nWord Count: 3020\n\nPrompt:\n\nStart or end your story with a character receiving a hug or words of comfort." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Alicia lived a phenomenal and very much carefree lifestyle.\nShe had no regrets of being single, and she loved every minute of it. \nNot having anyone to be responsible to was something a lot of her friends envied. Everyone who encountered Alicia, loved her free spirit and infectious laughter. She was that person that everyone wanted to be around.\nHere Alicia was, on her third holiday this year at Marina di Praia Beach in Praiano, Italy and it was absolutely breathtaking. \nWhat she loved the most was how the grey rock ridges were placed in-between the beach, which in turn seemed to open up this utopia of such incredible beauty. \nThe sea was just a gorgeous sparkling turquoise green, that changed colour at dusk and dawn to a magnificent navy blue or sky blue if the sun was rising.\nThe sun placed a spotlight on the locals, who descended in small groups to this secret escape. \nThis corner of Praiano was just ridiculous and a perfect location for Alicia’s birthday weekend. She had consciously made the decision for this holiday to be a trail run for travelling on her own and who knows where this would take her and how much confidence she could build to go on to the next adventure. \nAlicia had already done Sicily with a group of girlfriends the weekend before and she loved them dearly, but this weekend she really wanted to try a holiday by herself.\nThis trip just felt special.\nItaly was close to Alicia’s heart. There was something about the people, food, weather and locations that just resonated so deeply within her soul. \nAlicia had been all around the world; Jamaica, Singapore, Bali, Israel, Mauritius, US, Egypt, India and Australia. But somehow, Alicia would always come back to Italy. \nIt sometimes felt like Italy chose her and that’s what made her connection with the country even more special. \nThis was Alicia’s last day and she relished every single last second. \nShe wanted to see if she could find a red wine better than her favourite, Nero D’Avala. She was also privy to a good Lobster linguini, and wanted to see if she could find one better than her favourite Italian restaurant in London.\nThere were private boat tours at Marina di Praia beach that took tourists all around the Amalfi coast and into the main part, Capri. Alicia made a last minute decision to go.\nLater on, when she returned from her trip, she decided to have dinner at the restaurant on the beach. After the meal at the local restaurant on the beach and watching some cowboy movies in her hotel room, which was pointless as it was dubbed in Italian, she decided to call it a night. \nAlicia was sleeping before catching her early morning flight back to London. \nIt was 3am and suddenly Alicia’s phone started vibrating. It was her brother, Zechariah, from Australia who was calling. The beautiful sea and the moon reflected nothing but blue in Alicia’s room. She would have appreciated it more, if she wasn’t so tired.\nWhat Alicia found strange is that Zech never called her at this time of the hour, even when she was in London. Zech was in Australia and whenever he called it would be around 7pm his time which would be 6am at Alicia’s time as he loved waking her up, a habit he had got into when they were children. Zech loved to do this as it annoyed Alicia, she loved to sleep when she had the time. \nAlicia woke up, but she knew just from hearing her brothers voice that something was wrong. For someone to be calling at this hour, it couldn’t be good news. \nWhen Alicia answered the phone, Zech’s voice sounded shaky and not the usual happy, sarcastic tone that he used with his little sister. \n“Alicia, wake up. Mum had to be rushed to the hospital.”\nAlicia rushed through the hospital door barely stopping or taking a breath with her holiday luggage bag behind her. She asked the receptionist the ward her Mother was staying in. Alicia was directed accordingly. \nIt had been such a horrible flight home as Alicia couldn’t think straight or sit still. It wasn’t worth getting an earlier flight as she was leaving Capri airport at 7am. Zech had actually done her a favour and woke her up an hour before her alarm was due to go off. \nWhen Alicia got to the ward, there was her Mother lying on the bed, asleep. \nAlicia rushed over, sweating. She hadn’t even had a chance to shower or change, she came straight from the airport. \nAs soon as Zech said their Mother was in the hospital, Alicia feared the worst. Alicia despised hospitals. They were so soul destroying, particularly A&E, and people were always in pain. Alicia disliked seeing people in pain. \nWhen Alicia went over to her Mum she was sleeping peacefully. Alicia gently shook her. She woke up and just looked at Alicia confused. \nAlicia managed to ask as her throat started closing up due to tears, “Mum, are you OK?”\nThe last time Alicia had seen her Mum, Judith, her walking seemed slow and she was out of breath very quickly. Not only that, but her speech and movements seemed to be slowing down also. \nAlicia saw Judith at a Christening for her cousin Esther’s baby.\nEveryone seemed to be asking Alicia what was wrong with Judith and if she was OK. Alicia didn’t really think about it and just put it down to old age.\nAfter Esther’s son christening at the church, the family went into the hall for further celebrations.\nWhat Alicia noticed is that Esther’s Mum, Aunt Anne, was a few years older than Judith, but she was able to hold a conversation and walk fine. When Alicia was looking at her Mother she was looking confused and was struggling to walk, this didn’t seem right or even seem to add up. \nSomeone even came up to Alicia and asked, when did her Mother have her mini-stroke.\nAlicia was back in the hospital. For the past few days they had conducted scans, did memory tests and were now telling Alicia that Judith would have to undergo speech and physiotherapy and even possibly have some minor adaptations done to her home.\nWhat they noticed is that Judith had stopped taking some of her medication as they looked on medical records and none had been collected from the pharmacy for the last few months and she hadn’t been for a doctors check-up for a while. Alicia then realised she probably had avoided the doctors just in case they tell her something that she doesn’t want to hear and also questions about her medication. \nJudith had fallen a few times, but she had always covered her tracks when speaking to Zechariah or Alicia as she didn’t want them to worry. \nUnderstandably, Judith’s doctors were concerned. Judith also had difficulty getting changed, which was news to Alicia, none of this was making any sense. They were concerned that Judith might of had a stroke or even a mini-stroke, but they couldn’t find anything.\nWhen Judith was eventually discharged Alicia had to go back and stay with her Mum in her childhood home. Alicia had no idea how this would work out as she had her own place, but she couldn’t leave her Mum by herself.\nThis was Alicia’s favourite day. Friday evening after work was always fun. There was something exciting about going to the bar near her workplace with Ruth and Joel. They were so much fun and worked with Alicia. Never a dull moment.\nRuth needed to de-stress at the bar after a long day at work as a student counsellor at the college and Joel needed to get away from the desk as the Executive Officer to the Principal. Alicia worked in events at the college and loved her job. There was always something to plan and she was never bored. \nAlicia’s boss, John, always made sure that his calendar was fully booked for free time after 1 pm on Fridays. Because of the free time on Fridays, occasionally John and Alicia would have to give up their Saturdays, once-a-month. This was only sometimes, not all the time.\nJohn could always rely on Alicia as she took her job seriously and was always the centre of attention and the life of the party. They had a solid rapport, both were on the same page and there was a lot of trust. John didn’t have to tell Alicia to do anything, she just knew and that was what he loved the most. \nBefore leaving that Friday afternoon, John asked Alicia about the event next Saturday and if the VIP’s had confirmed their attendance. This was a big event and it would hopefully draw in students. Alicia confirmed that the VIP’s would be attending and that everything was in hand. John was grateful, he knew he could count on Alicia.\nWhen Alicia and Judith returned from the hospital back to the family home, Alicia was shocked. So much had happened in less than a year. \nThe place looked untidy with clothes everywhere. What was more concerning for Alicia is that the bottom of Judith’s bed and around the frame was covered in clothes. When Alicia asked Judith why she did this, Judith tried to explain that she was cold, it was September and mild outside. \nListening to her Mother not really being able to speak coherently was possibly one of the biggest challenges for Alicia. It was only the other day she was speaking to her Mum on the phone and she sounded slower, but not inaudible. \nThe dishes had piled up and the house looked like it hadn’t been cleaned for a while. There was just mess everywhere. \nImmediately Alicia saw a number come up on the phone that she didn’t recognise, it was Judith’s doctor. Judith’s doctor explained that a referral was made and adult social services will be contacting Alicia within two weeks for her Mother to be assessed in the home and for a care package to be put in place. \nAlicia was grateful for the call. Now she had to call John at work and explain that she wouldn’t be able to attend any of the events for the next few weeks whilst she got her Mother’s care sorted out. John was not impressed as around this time of the year, the start of term, was usually the busiest, but he understood.\nThis was going to be a challenge, but rather than stop and think about it or even look at the magnitude of the problem, Alicia had to take this head on and deal with it. \nHer Mother was not well and needed her help, her brother was in Australia and Alicia’s Dad, Martin, passed away a year-ago. Alicia did wonder if her Dad’s passing contributed to her Mum’s deterioration, as Alicia and Zech’s Mum and Dad were soul mates. When you saw one, you saw the other. They were like a hand and a glove, tea and water, sugar and coffee.\nAlicia was scared to leave her Mum in the house by herself, but she had to go back to her house and pack some things, but how?\nShe remembered that her Mum was very close to her neighbour, Sara. Sara only lived next door. Alicia went over and thought that now would be a good a time as any to introduce herself and explain what was happening.\nIt had now been over a week and Alicia was exhausted. She had taken her Mum to so many medical appointments, made sure that she picked up her medication from the pharmacist, cleaned her clothes, cooked for her, changed her and kept her company. Although Judith was not one-hundred-per-cent herself, Alicia could still see her Mum’s personality and that wicked sense of humour that she had inherited. \nJudith’s doctor had already spoken to the hospital who had contacted them to tell them social services were putting a care package in place.\nGone were the days when Alicia could just pick-up and go and do what she wanted, she had to consider her Mum. The worst part is that Alicia was neglecting herself. \nWhen Alicia had gone to see Sara, she was lovely. She knew the challenges that Alicia was facing and offered her services to sit with Judith, should she need a break. Alicia didn’t want to be a bother, but she did ask Sara to sit with her Mum as she packed some belongings for the next few weeks.\nAlicia was missing her social life. She missed her friends. It was as if she was running on empty or feeling around in the dark when it came to her Mum and what to do, but she didn’t want to think about it for too long. \nSocial services eventually called Alicia and made an appointment for the following week. Alicia sighed the biggest relief. She could handle another week.\nJohn was keeping in contact with Alicia for a while, until he begged her to come into work one day to try and at least help out. \nAlicia was reluctant as she didn’t want to leave her Mum alone in the house, but she had no choice. Alicia decided to leave her Mum in the house alone. It would be a good way to see if she could handle herself. It wasn’t as if Alicia was going away overnight. It was just for a few hours at work and she would be back before it got late in the evening. \nAlicia was not her usual self. Normally at these events she would be chatty and would even help herself to the food that she ordered and most importantly relax. John knew Alicia wasn’t herself when not one single macaron had been touched on the desert table. She couldn’t help worrying how her Mum was and if she was OK. What made Alicia’s concerns even bigger is that she had to stay longer after the event to help tidy up. \nIt wasn’t until later when Alicia checked her phone on the train, that she saw ten missed calls from Judith. Alicia started to panic. She called Judith back, but there was no reply. When Alicia eventually made it home and walked through the front door, she called for Judith, but she heard nothing. She went into every single room in the house and Judith still wasn’t answering. Alicia kept calling for her, but heard nothing. Alicia was terrified. \nSuddenly, Alicia’s phone rang, it was Zech, “I had a missed call from Mum, but when I eventually spoke to her, she told me that she was going to the neighbour, Sara?”. Alicia ran over to Sara’s next door and rang the doorbell. She asked Sara if her Mum was in the house. Sara said she was, and allowed Alicia into the house. Sara offered to exchange numbers with Alicia and Alicia was more than happy to oblige.\nAlicia was relieved, but frantic. \nThere was Judith was sitting on the armchair with a cup of tea and she was still in her pyjamas, dressing gown and slippers watching a TV programme and singing away with not a care in the world. When Judith saw Alicia, the biggest smile appeared on her face. \nAs the week went on it got more challenging for Alicia. Judith didn’t want to sit still and Alicia couldn’t blame her as this was a woman who was once so independent and loved her freedom. She would always be visiting someone, walking around, shopping, taking day trips to relatives who lived out of London on the train or even just sitting on the bus contented after doing chores. The Mother-daughter roles were now reversed. \nIt was as if Judith’s brain was still ticking, but her body couldn’t do what her brain wanted it to do. \nShe was cooking one day, but Alicia was on the phone. Suddenly the fire alarm went off and Alicia realised her Mum had accidentally let the handle of the cooking spoon onto the hob as she had turned the wrong button. Alicia realised there and then that she couldn’t let her Mum cook unattended. She told Judith this, but she wasn’t happy. \nJudith started shouting at Alicia, she was shocked, but had to realise that this wasn’t the same woman standing in front of her two years ago. This was now a different person.\nThis was not going to be easy. Alicia couldn’t understand how her life had suddenly taken such a huge turn and it was hard balancing her Mum and work together. This is not how she imagined her life to be at this age at all. \nWhat made Alicia even angrier was the fact her brother was on the other side of the world and he couldn’t help either of them. It felt as if Alicia was taking the full brunt of all the responsibility. \nAlicia was not the nicest teenager, but her Mum never gave up on her. Alicia could easily put her Mother in a care home and get on with her life, but she didn’t want to. Her Mother could have easily have put her in boarding school or even her Dad could have sent her away as a teenager, but they didn’t give up on her. She had seen and heard some horror stories from some care homes and it made her blood run cold. The least Alicia could do was look after her Mother at her most vulnerable and that’s what she promised that she would always do, no matter what happened. \nThe adult social worker eventually came to see Alicia and Judith. \nAs Alicia and the adult social worker sat together, with Judith at the other end of the room, Alicia was explaining what help she needed. \nThe social worker could tell that Alicia was a little exhausted and needed some help. \nThe adult social worker looked at Alicia and said reassuringly, “Don’t worry, I am here to help you.”" } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: I Heard Your Voice\n\nGenre: african-american\n\nWord Count: 1009\n\nPrompt:\n\nStart or end your story with a character receiving a hug or words of comfort." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I Heard Your Voice as clear as day as I lay silently in my bed reflecting on your recent passing. Tears are slowly sliding down my face as I fight through the pain of losing you so young. I’m sitting here evoking on your laughter, your smile, and your touch. You were the favored brother who consistently made the entire family chuckle. You left your lasting impression on everyone when God decided to call you home. I heard your voice ringing in my ear over and over again, saying God, this pain is overwhelmingly excruciating and piercing. I’m sick and tired of seeing this hospital bed every couple of weeks, I’ve been here practically all my life. In and out of infirmaries has become a normal life for me that I did not ask for. God, how can I return this pain to the sender? I’m not ready for this journey, in fact, I’m not willing to become a special case. I’ve been through multiple surgeries, dialyzed, heart attacks, amputations, a stroke and ultimately coding many times. I’ve also survived the Covid 19 pandemic which caused my health to decline at a rate that ultimately set me back into position where I’ve become once again dialyzed three times a week, I’m back to square one again. Lord, I’m tired but I refuse to leave my family behind. I’m torn between hurting in this broken body and departing. What would my mother do without me? How will she survive without her child leaving her all alone? Mother, I’ve done all I can here, I’m tired, my soul needs to rest. I’m screaming inside without a sound; tugging at the sheets asking God to heal me! I see everything and yet I hear nothing until the day God whispered softly, “It is Finished”. The sound faded, as the sheets uncover my body that once protected me, thunder followed as the pain suddenly die away. Abruptly, I encountered an outer body experience that caused a powerful gush of wind to gently elevate my frame, transporting me above the clouds, passed the golden gates, up the steps into a heavenly world I could only dream about. \n\nIt’s bright, it’s warm and it’s beautiful! I can’t believe I’m standing here without a cane, walker, or a wheelchair. My legs, feet and kidneys were returned just like the day they were given by God. My heart has been healed; open-heart surgery is no longer a need; my arteries are working again! I haven’t felt like this in years, I can run, jump, and play sports again without the risk of injury. I’m in a place that’s not familiar, I look around to see my ancestors from a long time ago whom I’ve never met but somehow remember. How is this possible? I heard your voice from a distance, the voice of a spirit who I recognized in a dream not too long ago. This voice was soft, gentle, and kind. He whispered; “I called you to suffer no more”. I looked into God’s eyes as he said, “It Is Finished”. Everyone is happy to see me, I see my aunt, uncles, friends, and my dear sister. I’m traveling home to a safe place, a place where there is no suffering, no doctors, no treatments, no appointments, and no fear. I’m journeying through this dark tunnel that has no end. It’s completely dark here but I’m not afraid, a path to a world of the unknown. It’s similar to traveling in time but my time here is no more. Is it still time? Or is it eternity? I’m stuck in the middle between both worlds until I pass through this tunnel. I must make it to the end, I’m tired but God please give me the strength to continue this journey once more. I can see a bright light just pass the crossing; I think I made it to the end, I see it, it’s absolutely gorgeous. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. God has given me the ability to view my past once more before my transition.\n\nGod has granted me the ability to see my entire family together again near and far for the very last time. What a beautiful sight to see. I witnessed the gathering of my funeral, it was in the form of my favorite football team, “The Dallas Cowboys”. Blue and Silver was the theme, I watched my beautiful wife, daughters, nieces, nephews’, grandchildren, friends, and my mom who is sitting at the end of the first row crying out to her son. My heart is breaking into a thousand pieces to see my mother falling apart like this. She was my first love who taught me how to love. The hurt I saw in her face was the pain of losing a child the prior year still fresh in her spirit. That kind of pain is indescribable. I wish I could hug my mother one last time to let her know I’m okay and I’m finally home. As I continued looking around, I saw the impact of grief throughout the church, the homegoing service was as beautiful as the kind words expressed. I heard my brother singing my favorite song, my two beautiful daughters expressing their love so passionately, a sister who conveyed a poem so spiritually profound it left a gasp in the room. I heard the cries of people who were near and dear to my heart, a love that will last a lifetime. As the service concluded, I witnessed my casket rolling out of the church into the hearse with the family nearby. The cars were in sync following behind the hearse with lights on and driven to the cemetery where closing remarks were sympathetically expressed before my departure. One by one, I saw beautiful flowers placed on the casket, around the casket and in front of the casket with my favorite Dallas Cowboy colors. Once I was lowered into my eternal resting place, the voices slowly faded away.\n\nBy Elouise D. Woodard" } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: IGNORANCE IS BLISS\n\nGenre: african-american\n\nWord Count: 1629\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about a character who is trying to share groundbreaking news, but isn’t being taken seriously." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "IGNORANCE IS BLISS\n\n“And these rockets, Intelligence reports claim, are capable of flying from Peenemunde to London before exploding”\n\n“Amazing. Go on”.\n\nAdmiral George Holtz, from the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency, making his report on his weekly visit to the White House, continued as instructed by the 32nd President of the United States.\n\n“Well, sir, you can only begin to imagine the destruction that would be caused should these reports prove to be accurate”.\n\n“Yes, yes, yes, but who is responsible for inventing these marvels?”\n\n“The man in charge of the underground construction site is one, Wernher von Braun, an Aerospace Engineer, supported, of course, by a vast team consisting of engineers, technicians and scientists”.\n\nFranklin D Roosevelt, sat behind his desk in the Oval Office, considering this information before asking.\n\n“What do we know about this man?”\n\n“Nazi, obviously. But, also, a member of the SS. Has been personally promoted several times by Heinrich Himmler, himself, and currently holds the rank of Major. We have one picture of von Braun in full SS uniform standing with Himmler. The facility uses slave labour and there are reports of daily floggings and..uh..hangings, designed to push the prisoners to their absolute limits. Not a very pleasant person by all accounts”.\n\n“Yes, but a genius, nonetheless. Tell me about the rockets”.\n\n“They are called V-2 and are, basically, guided ballistic missiles that travel at supersonic speed. They cross the Karman Line into space en route...”\n\n“Enough, George, we want this man”.\n\n“When you say, want, Mr. President, you mean to punish...?\"\n\n“Good God, no, man. We want him; to establish our own rocket program. We need this man’s genius and all of his support team. We’ll need to destroy their war records of course, lose that incriminating photo etc. You know what needs to be done”.\n\n“Mr. President, that would be close to 2,000 men and von Braun is, surely, a war criminal?”\n\n“Oh, fiddlesticks to that. Organise it, George. As soon as this goddamn war is over, I want those men here. Imagine, George, our own rocket program. You have brightened my day. Oh, and better warn London. Go through Halifax at the embassy”.\n\nThe President turned to his private secretary who had been taking notes throughout.\n\n“Missy, I’m not feeling so good. Cancel the rest of my appointments. I’m going home to New York”.\n\n“You only have the Polish diplomat at 2pm”.\n\n“Have him come to New York, if he’s willing. I’ll see him tomorrow, at Hyde Park. If he insists on seeing somebody, today, George, here, will take care of it”.\n\nThe following evening, at his family home of Hyde Park, the 110 acre estate in New York, the President was feeling much better. Hyde Park always had a recuperative effect on this man, afflicted by paralysis of his legs after contracting Polio twenty years previously, a disability that he hid from the American public, not wanting them to see their President in anything other than robust health, especially at this perilous time of war. His aborted appointment with the Polish diplomat, Jan Karski, had been rearranged for a late hour in the evening after Roosevelt had exercised and received therapy on his legs. The young man was shown into the library of this stately home to find the President seated in an armchair by the fireplace, a rug over his legs.\n\n“Mr. President, thank you for seeing me”.\n\n‘Not at all, not at all. Excuse me for not getting up. I hope you don’t mind a fire in the middle of summer but I’m finding the weather unseasonably cool. I do apologise for dragging you all the way here but I’m afraid I had urgent business to attend to; the war, you know”.\n\n“Of course, I understand, Mr. President . Admiral Holtz was very polite and it gives me the opportunity to see your beautiful home”.\n\n“Thank you. Now, young man, your Prime Minister, Wladyslaw Sikorski, has asked me to see you. He advises that you have something extremely important to say concerning the situation in Poland. But, first, tell me a little about yourself. You seem awfully young to be a diplomat”.\n\n“Hah, thank you, Mr. President. I am 28 years old but, after the last few years, I feel considerably older. Tell you about myself? Well, naturally, I was in the army and fought the German invasion but, after our defeat, I tried to escape via Hungary but was captured by the Russians and put in a prison camp. I managed to disguise my rank of second lieutenant and passed myself off as a private, born in Lodz. As Lodz had been incorporated into the Third Reich, I was considered German, an ally of Russia, and transferred by train to Germany. As you are no doubt aware, I thus avoided being part of the Katyn massacre of Polish officers”.\n\n“Indeed. A lucky escape. And then?”\n\n“I managed to escape from the train and I made my way back to Warsaw and joined the resistance...”\n\n“Good for you. But your diplomacy career. When did that start?”\n\n“I trained before the war and was seconded overseas to several different embassies including Romania, England and Switzerland”.\n\n“I see. So what happened in Warsaw?”\n\n“I was used as a courier, Mr. President. I undertook missions delivering top secret missives to our government in exile, first Paris, then London. On one such mission, I was captured by the Gestapo and tortured...”\n\n“Good God!”\n\n“Yes, it was brutal. I was injured so badly that I had to be transferred to hospital but I escaped en route and returned to Warsaw although my injuries meant that I was incapacitated for several weeks”.\n\n“Young man, your story is absolutely enthralling. I’d go so far as to say that you are a genuine hero. I congratulate you on your fortitude. But what is it that your prime minister feels so important to talk to me about?”\n\n“Mr. President, I was asked to report personally to London on the situation regarding the treatment of the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto. I was smuggled in on two occasions. Sir, the memories of what I saw will stay with me for the duration of my life. Fear, stench, dead lying in the streets, men dying before my very eyes, twenty people sleeping in one room. Mr. President, I cannot express, Sir, how awful the conditions are. And, then, the transports. Men, women, children, selected, forced to stand for hours before being herded onto cattle trucks; cattle trucks, Mr. President”.\n\n“Yes, yes. Most degrading. But, of course, they were, at least, getting out of the terrible conditions of the ghetto that you have just described...”\n\nImpassioned, Karski, alarmed at the naivety of the American President, hurried on with his story.\n\n“But to go where, Mr. President? I determined to find out”.\n\nSomewhat appeasingly, dreading where this tale may be leading, Roosevelt patronised the courier.\n\n‘I’m sure you did. You are a very resourceful young man...”\n\n“I followed the trains. They were taken to a transit camp, destined for Belzec!”.\n\n“Belzec, I’ve think I've heard of that”.\n\n“It’s a death camp, Mr. President. People, humans, men, women and children, sir, put to death in horrific fashion”.\n\n“You surely don’t know that for certain, Mr. Karski. You are just surmising...”\n\n“No! I witnessed it with my own eyes. I disguised myself in the uniform of a Ukrainian guard and bribed two other Ukrainians to smuggle me in. I saw what no man should have to see. These Nazis are exterminating Jews”.\n\n“You mean to tell me that the nation of Germany is actually wholesale murdering these people?”\n\n“Yes! And not just Jews, sir. Gypsies, the mentally retarded. I cannot overemphasise the evil that I have witnessed”.\n\n“Who else have you spoken to about this?”\n\n“Last December, a Polish government representative addressed the United Nations on this very subject but nothing has yet been done. I, myself, visited England and attempted to speak with Prime Minister Churchill but was told that he was too busy. I was, instead, passed over to, one, Anthony Eden, of the Foreign Office. He listened to me but did not quite believe my narrative”.\n\n“Well, it is a lot to take in all at once. You must understand that, Mr. Karski. To our more... uh..civilised ears, it is rather unbelievable to think that another nation, such as Germany, would partake in such wholesale, random slaughter of innocent people. Young man, I thank you for bringing this to my notice. I assure you that I will give it my undivided attention and I commend you on your tremendous fighting spirit and courage. The world will need more people like yourself in the months to come. Forgive me for not standing but my butler will show you out”.\n\nJan Karski shook the President’s hand, convinced that, finally, he had found the one man who would do something to ease his burden and put a stop to the atrocities taking place in his homeland. As he was shown from the library, he turned and spoke his final words:\n\n“All hope, Mr. President, has been placed in the hands of Franklin D Roosevelt”.\n\nThe President continued sitting by the fireside ruminating, going over everything he had heard tonight. His butler wheeled in a trolley on which a black phone sat.\n\n“Admiral Holtz for you, Mr. President”.\n\n“Hello, George. Yes. Yes. No, I listened to everything he had to say. Yes, I agree, a very brave young man and I told him so. What? His story? No, too far fetched to be believable, I’m afraid. We have too many other issues that take precedence. I think, like most young men, he is prone to exaggeration. Now, about this rocket chap, von Braun...”" } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Her Sword\n\nGenre: adventure\n\nWord Count: 2961\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about two characters who meet and/or fall in love in a museum." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "She comes alive at night.\nA scroll of ridged and patterned paper, cautiously folded into the shape of a woman. Two-and-a-half towering metres of beauty and power and quiet judgement.\nBy day, she’s stoic in her rightful place above us all, her hand stretched toward the ceiling, knelt in mock servitude as if she could ever be governed. At night, life explodes from her pages and she dances between the boundaries of her podium.\nWe met here. Besides her sculptor’s musty flat, the Other Art Museum is the only place she’s ever seen. They brought her in a box, and I dragged myself from my dark corner amongst the broken and out-of-fashion just to throw my body at her feet. Now, my ritual is nightly.\nI love her. And, despite the strict demand of natural hierarchy, she loves me too. \nThe museum is closed when I make it up to the atrium, but the lights are still on. Usually, we don’t run the risk until it’s dark and the halls are quiet, I’m breaking the rules because hesitation has stolen too many years from me, and tonight is special. I have a gift for her.\nI gather up a handful of my trousers to keep my foot from scraping the tiles and cross the atrium floor as quickly as I can. The polystyrene knights exchange glances as I pass. Their barbed wire crowns shift with concern, but they won’t speak while the lights are on.\nThe portraits on the staircase aren’t as concerned. They’ll be too afraid to move, even when all the others leave their places, and life in the museum erupts as it always does. But they summon up enough courage to whisper their little comments as I climb.\nThe eyes in the hurricane think I’m a fool.\nFour squares of block colour tell me that my plan won’t work. “He doesn’t like it when we roam. He likes his pretty statues to stay pretty.”\n“I’m not a statue,” I manage between the effort of each step.\n“You still belong to him. Even down in those caves of yours, he owns you.”\n“He won’t know until it’s too late. He hates the basement.”\n“She’ll slow you down.” They’re trying to keep from giggling. “He’ll catch you and he’ll punish you both.”\nI ignore them and keep climbing. The staircase is three flights of eleven, broken up by marble landings where children with little horns and skin the colour of bruises are stacked on one another’s shoulders. It takes me a long time to climb, especially weighed down by her gift, but it's worth it just to see her shape again. I’ve never once quit my climb, despite the sweat and the cramps. Cowards never prosper.\nAt the crest of the last step, I throw myself down exhausted at the foot of her plinth. By now, the lights are extinguished and she dares to unfurl from her majestic pose and twist herself towards me, and I look up quickly so I don’t miss a movement.\n“You’re early.”\nShe takes my gift when I offer it and heaves it with great difficulty onto her pedestal.\n“It’s a sword. A symbol of your liberation.” I say through my panting breath. “Like the one your sculptor intended you to have.”\nShe considers the sword I drew from the heart of a willing basement centurion and the paper wrinkles around her eyes. “I think she decided the implication of a sword made more sense. Like I'd been robbed of it.”\n“Then it’s a symbol of our liberation.”\nFear dominates her face. “I want to, but I’m so scared.”\n“Of what?”\n“You know.” She looks at me like half the fool I am and says it quietly, as if his name might summon him. “He’ll tear off more pieces.”\nShe leans to show me the rips on the back of her arms, but I can’t bear to be reminded so I rise to my knees and rest a hand on the sword. “I don’t want to be apart anymore.”\n“Neither do I.”\n“Then, let’s run tomorrow. All the way to the basement. We’ll be safe there.”\nShe looks into my eyes and softly shakes her head with a defeated sigh, and I know I’ve won her. A phoenix soars from the depths of my rotten soul.\n“Okay,” she says, hugging her sword to her chest, “tomorrow.”\nWe stash the sword out of sight while the jubilation in the corridors and down in the atrium reaches its raucous crescendo. For the rest of the night, I watch her sway and twirl until, eventually, I fall asleep at the base of her podium to the song of freedom stolen from a fleeting chance.\nAt the first sign of dawn’s approach, my ears prick up to the click of Argyle’s cane against wooden floorboards. My heart thumps my ribcage. The museum is silent again besides those two sounds. He’s somewhere in the Modern Curiosities wing but moving quickly towards me. \nI steal one last look before I go. My leg is throbbing and my spine aches like I slept with the posture of a mangled corpse, but I need a snapshot. Something to keep my courage from wavering.\nShe’s already stretching to the sky, hope kindling in her eye that wasn’t there this morning. \nI soar.\n#\nTomorrow comes and I ascend with a giddiness I’ve never felt.\nThe atrium is silent. Every hallway is empty. No-one dares move or breathe. They sense my intentions and they won’t risk any chance of association.\nTonight’s revelries are cancelled.\nThe portraits whisper in overdrive, none of it supportive. If they didn’t already know my single-mindedness, they’d catch on from the way I disregard their warnings and attack each flight of steps with my head down.\n“You’ll kill us all.\nYou’ll kill us all.”\nAt the top, she’s waiting with her sword stretched to the high ceiling and struggling keep it aloft. We laugh, intoxicated by the potential of our impending rebellion, and I help her down.\nMy legs threaten to spasm when I touch the soft dryness of her hands for the first time. She’s delicate, and it takes longer for her to get down from the pedestal than I’d imagined but I’ll wait forever if that’s what she needs. \nArm-in-arm, we cross the landing. Her steps are tentative, which is understandable being they’re the first ones she’s ever really taken, and I support some of her weight. It’s all I can do to keep from staring at her. \nBefore we reach the top step, Argyle’s cane clicks against the tiles. Every muscle in my body seizes. Too late, I realise my mistake.\nHer fingers dig into the flesh of my forearm. “He should be gone. It’s too early.”\n“Go,” I whisper, “go.”\n#\nWe move as quickly as we can. Each step is a new canyon, but we traverse them all and eventually, we’ve navigated the first flight of stairs.\nMercifully, the portraits keep their whispers to themselves. Perhaps they’re in awe of her.\nAt my side, she takes it all in with the craned neck of a mesmerised toddler. “I never knew all this was down here. It’s beautiful.”\n“But you’ve been here for years.”\n“I arrived in a box, and I’ve never left my pedestal. I can’t see past the first three steps from up there.”\nI look at the wrinkles of her skin and how they crease with joy. She looks different now we share the same ground, like some of her glow has faded since she’s touched down with us mortals.\nAbove us, Argyle’s wounded roar decimates the silence. He’s found her empty podium.\nI pull her into the shade between the stacked children, who giggle quietly at all this fuss. We can hear Argyle’s frenzy building as he demands to know what the portraits’ watchful eyes have seen but, to their credit, they refuse to answer.\nWe hear him shuffle off into the Mind’s Eye Wing in search of her, and we breathe out. When the sound of his cane recedes completely, she dares to speak.\n“You’re amazing,” she says to the children, “I had no idea you were down here.”\nThey giggle at her compliment, and she relishes in their adoration, but I can see from the slouch in her posture that she’s tired from only the first flight. The sword rests against her powerful thigh.\n“I can carry it, if you need me to.”\nShe shakes her head. “I’m strong enough.”\nArgyle’s footsteps approach the landing and recede again, into the Observatory this time. He’d only one more corridor to check before his search would force him down the staircase.\nI lean in close and ask her a question that makes a surging river of my blood. “I’ve been wondering, for a long time now, if you might want to hug me.”\n“I do,” she says with a hint of disappointment in her voice, “but I thought you’d ask for a kiss.”\n“I would, my love, but my lips are thin and mangled. And you,” I suppress my laugh, “you don’t have any lips.”\nShe thinks about that, then she laughs too, and it sounds like music.\nWith more strength than I’ve felt from her, she pulls me into the first embrace of my life. Warmth spreads from my chest into the very fibres of my limbs, and I know I’ll never need another.\nOn every side of us, the children rejoice.\n#\nArgyle makes the revelation in his search and turns towards the steps.\nI hear his cane hit the marble, and my anger at his relentlessness flares.\n“Leave us be, you tyrant.” \n“He has nothing else. Don’t hate, my love, it only slows us down.”\nShe grips my hand, and the anger subsides. But his presence swells behind us like a rolling stormfront.\nI keep us moving forward, across the landing, supporting more of her weight as we descend to the last flight.\nAll we need to do is reach the basement. I’ll cock the front doors open, and he’ll think that’s where we’ve gone. No-one in their right mind would choose the basement over the real world, but it’s massive and dark and Argyle fears the thousand discarded tongues that would curse him if he ever crossed the threshold. We can be happy down there.\nHe's gaining on us. His mocking voice floats down from the first landing. “If you’re looking for freedom, you won’t find it out there,” he says, the cadence of his voice almost melodic. “Tell her, boy. Tell her what they do to freaks out there.”\nWe touch down on the last landing and the final flight of stairs. The atrium ahead of us is steeped in gloom and punctured by a solitary crescent of moonlight, but we can see the exit now.\nLarge mahogany double doors embossed with brass occupy the front wall and open to the outside. Several paces to the left, the white maintenance door with the stainless-steel knob leads to quiet, eternal sanctuary.\nI lead her by the hand onto the first step of the last flight but she pulls back. When I look at her, she’s gazing longingly at the double doors.\n“That’s the way to the outside, isn’t it?” Her voice is distant, and my heart sinks.\n“We can’t, my love. It’s not for us.”\n“Now, you sound like him.”\n“Don’t say that.”\nShe touches my elbow gently and my soul stops in place. “Maybe we don’t need this place. Maybe it just feels that way, because it’s all we’ve ever known.”\n“But I do know the outside, my love, and it’s cruel to us.”\n“Well, you needn’t worry about that.” With a hearty grunt, she swings the sword up to rest on her shoulder. “I’ll keep you safe.”\nI smile at her conviction. Of course I’d follow her anywhere. She has no reason to fear the world. The museum has been her world and it’s shown her nothing but cruelty. Outside could only be better. Perhaps it will be.\nArgyle is on our heels.\nWe’re almost at the bottom, but he’s faster. He’s just beyond the last curve of the staircase. The portraits all watch in petrified silence, a myriad of eyes all tracking his movement.\nFive steps left. Too many. I feel his presence on my neck like sour breath.\n“We won’t make it.” I whisper, but I can’t believe they’re my words.\nShe grips my hand. I look at her and calm floods the creases of her face. “Then, we jump.”\nBefore I can protest, she swings the sword in a great overhand arc and lets the momentum take her. With all the strength in my solid leg, I launch myself from the step alongside her.\nIt’s awkward, as it was fated to be, but we manage to slip the bonds of the museum’s heady atmosphere and float weightlessly for almost a full second.\nArgyle’s cane brings us crashing down. The tip pierces a tab on her paper heel and pins it to the step behind us.\nI’m powerless to watch as she comes apart. A rip runs the seam of her leg and all the way up her back until her intricate insides are exposed and unravel too. Her hand turns limp in mine, then she’s gone.\nI spin slowly through the air and slam into the cold atrium floor while ribbons of her float down around me like nuclear ash.\nBehind my head, her sword clatters against the tiles.\n#\n“No. No.”\nI kneel amongst the tattered strings. She’s in my hands and strewn across my thighs. Moonlight frames the parts of her littering the floor between me and the staircase. She wasn’t free up there on her pedestal but at least she was safe. This is my fault.\nThe basement door is a yawning maw haunting my peripheral vision. I want to crawl inside, to my place with no plaque and no plinth, and allow those depths to swallow me.\n“Oh.” Argyle’s voice is ice on my spine. He stops on the third step from the end so he’s still above me. “How tragic.”\n“She’s not dead.”\n“But we can agree she’s ruined.”\nI try to meet his hard, black eyes, but I flinch. Her beauty, her joy, her laughter. All extinguished. “You did this.”\nHe turns away, tutting like the whole thing could’ve been avoided. “I’ve no need for that pile of pathetic rags. The basement can have you both.”\nAnger rises in me, and I rise with it, snatching up the sword as I do. The blade must scrape against the tiles because Argyle looks over his shoulder and scoff, but there’s too much blood rushing in my ears to hear it.\nI could do it. I could hobble up those steps and cut his skinny frame clean in half. I want to, God knows I want to. Every fibre of every muscle sear with the urge and I even raise the sword over my head in both hands.\nBut it’s strange. The grip doesn’t feel like wrath or vengeance or reparation against my palms. It feels light, unburdened, like watching the horizon devour a storm.\nAnger drains from my core and seeps out through the soles of my feet.\n“You’re wrong, you know?” I let the sword hang limp at my side. “People only came here to see her. Your museum won’t last without her.”\nI crouch and lay the sword amongst the ribbons of beautiful ridged and patterned paper. It’s only now that I notice the writing on each piece of her is distinct and, as I cautiously lace them around the hilt and the blade, I take the time to read every word. I’d repeat what they said here, but I’m fairly certain they were meant for me alone.\nI wrap as meticulously as I can, trying to stay symmetrical and overlapping the ends so they’re tight and won’t unravel.\nOnce I’ve retrieved every piece of her, I tie her off in a bow and nurse her in two firm hands. My work isn’t art, but it’s neat and I’m pleased with the results. She looks like her. “I liked your old form,” I whisper, “I like this form too.”\nOn the steps, Argyle is scowling down at us, all the smugness drained from his pallid face. “What’s that? What have you done?”\nWhen I don’t answer, he takes another step down and thrusts his cane up the staircase. “Put her back on the plinth. She belongs to me,” he snarls, but I’m turning towards the doors, the tall mahogany ones embossed with brass.\nTo be honest, my foot is aching too violently to take any notice of his whining. He looks small on those steps, and he hasn’t noticed the little-horned children gathering up behind him, or the knights on the atrium floor, brandishing their iron knives and wrapping their barbed wire crowns around their knuckles. They’d seen our altercation, and my defiance, and now they didn’t seem so afraid of associating with me.\nThat’s the thing about Argyles. They make you think you need them, and the museum they’ve built, but you don’t. Argyles are the ones that need us and, if the cost of what they offer grows too high, we can leave them behind. When we realise that, it can be damn near impossible to unrealise.\nI push open the doors and we feel the cold on our skin. I take a moment to soak it in, I’d forgotten what midnight smells like.\nBeaming with anticipation and clutched to my chest, she leads us across the threshold. Morning won’t break for hours, but now we’ll crash through it headlong, whatever form it takes.\n#" } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Vincent\n\nGenre: adventure\n\nWord Count: 1631\n\nPrompt:\n\nStart or end your story with a character who gets trapped inside a museum overnight." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Vincent\nby Joseph Citta\n\nMy brother died a month ago. The word devastation does not even hint at the way I felt - and still do. It’s like a claustrophobic cloud has surrounded me, preventing me from taking full breaths. A mind altering headache has been raging since his funeral. My head feels like it’s in a vise getting tighter and tighter. Crushed. Before this, God was never something or someone I had ever trusted in, but now I needed him. My brother was younger than me. He had grown to be my guru - ever since he came into this world when I was 4 years old, he was a positive influence on me and everything I did. My fondness of him as a small child grew into a unique bond as we grew up together. He was always interested in music and watching him bloom into a wonderful and disciplined musician was a great inspiration to me. He always encouraged me to paint. I didn’t think I was very good, but because of him I kept on painting. When not talking to me in person, I would hear him in my head, daydreaming I guess, that’s very good, he would say, or I love your use of color here or the detail there is incredible. His voice drove me. I tried to inspire and support him, but he didn’t need me. It was I who needed him. The daydreams of him have stopped, replaced with those severe migraine headaches. I have not wanted to paint or even think about painting since he died.\n\nI wandered listlessly around our little village and one day I found myself in front of our village museum. He always loved to visit this place and was constantly egging me on to accompany him - I always turned him down. It’s just not for me I would say, or I’m not interested in that place. I never did tell him the real reason I would not set foot in that museum. Years ago, I learned of my mother's death at this museum, leading to a relationship ending fight with my girlfriend that same day, immediately after. The memory has kept me away ever since. In hindsight that felt a ridiculous thing to hang onto. So I went into the museum in his honor. As I walk up the steps to those artfully crafted double doors I think of the many times he had wanted to take me to these same steps.\nOnce inside I see that the current show is on Van Gogh. Sure I knew who he was and was marginally aware of some of his work. Most everyone knew about the ear thing.\nA woman in what seemed to be some kind of business attire approached me and said hello and welcome to Van Gogh’s studio. Are you familiar with the work of Van Gogh? she asked. I’m not much of a talker, but I felt the need to respond. Why yes, of course, I said. She replied well why don’t you take a brochure and wander around and see if you find anything interesting - it’s quite a collection we have here, we are very lucky! I said thanks and moved on. \nIt’s not a huge museum, but it is quite trendy and popular. Walking into the first room I see the well known Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear directly in front of me. I’ve seen this painting before, but just now something about it gives me a feeling of emptiness in the pit of my stomach as I stare at it. I wonder why he painted so many self portraits, perhaps he simply wanted the practice. There is something surreal about this whole place. It was very dark and the paintings seemed oddly lit. Unlike most museums, I could barely see the walls the paintings were hung on. Yet each painting was extremely well lit and seemed to float on it’s own. The air is different. I immediately dismiss the feeling. On the left I recognize the well known The Bedroom painting and to the right hangs the The Starry Night. I reflected that my brother used to say it reminded him of death, and he liked it. I say to my self, ok, I’ve seen enough, that’s the Van Gogh I know, interestingly presented, but I’m not really inspired. \n\nAs I turn to leave, there she is again, the docent I ran into at the entrance. Have you seen his controversial painting? We are blessed to have it all the way from Amsterdam in our little collection here for a short time she says with a smile which I’m sure she thinks coy and flirtatious. Ah, no, I really have to leave. Oh just check it out a second, you really can’t miss it if you like Van Gogh. Ok.\nSo I follow her into the next room and on the far wall is The Potato Eaters. The plaque floating next to it says that it was controversial at the time. What was the controversy I asked her. Well… it’s not that it was controversial in the true sense of the word, it’s just that he really felt that this work would make him… solidify him as a master. That was not the way it went of course, his critics disagreed vehemently, but here it is. Isn’t it wonderful? It’s interestingly creepy I say. Luckily just then a young couple came by and stole her attention away from me. Thank god, I say to my self. I’m turning to leave when I hear someone behind me whisper are you leaving already? I spin around and see that the docent is in deep conversation with the young couple and there is no one else around. I begin walking toward the exit and I hear what’s the rush? I say who is that? It’s me brother, glad you finally made it to the museum. I am stunned, nailed to the floor. This is not possible. I’ve been way out of sorts all month… but this is just insane. What’s the matter? Don’t like me anymore? I can’t move. Impossible. Theo, (long pause) where are you I say. I’m right here! Don’t be ridiculous, I buried you a month ago! Yes you did and I thank you for it.\n\nI immediately thought of the way he died. I don’t know why, but it popped right into my head. We never thought of him as suicidal. I still see him lying there, with the gun a few feet away. What did you do with the gun he demanded. What are you doing… here… what are you doing, period? Don’t worry about it man. I feel the docent and her people looking in my direction. She turns away and ushers them toward the exit. \nI just froze. An indescribable sensation like no other I’ve ever felt or heard of consumed me. Dizzy, spinning, completely discombobulated - I can’t feel my fingers. I don’t understand how this could be my brother - he sounds the same, I recognize his voice, but his temperament seems very different, very irritable. Is this some kind of cruel joke? Through squinting eyes and a pounding headache I see a blur of the docent leaving the building, locking those double doors after her. \nThis is impossible I say to myself. Why haven’t you been painting since I’ve been away? he demanded impatiently. This is nuts, how am I talking to you? And how are you talking to me? Just relax, go with it. Answer my question. I don’t know… I. I think to myself, I really don’t know. He has never talked to me like this. \nTime passes very quickly, or slowly, I’m not sure, but before I know it it’s dark outside. I’m getting out of here I say to whoever. I walk to ‘the door and it is locked. Great. I’m stuck in here with a voice that claims to be my brother, I guess that’s my karma for never coming here with him. \nSo you don’t think this is strange Theo? Meeting here like this? Talking? Like I said just relax, I know what I’m doing. Something he always used to say, and he did always know what he was doing.\n\nListen, come with me, I want to show you something. His voice is coming from somewhere else now, and I follow. I begin to think maybe I’m not so screwed up, I don’t know why, because on the face of it, this seems a dream I used to have, but I don’t think I am dreaming, either this is real or I’m crazy. Maybe this is something…unearthly? We reach a small art studio in the rear of the building. This is used by high schoolers, I often stop by here and play with their heads. Oh how profoundly considerate of you.\nBut seriously, I want you to do me a favor. I miss you here sometimes, no one to play with their gullibility. Just miss the old times. I do too brother, sounding a little too weepy. I want you to paint a self portrait for me. And just like that, I began choosing a canvas, some brushes and paints. I felt more clear headed than I had in a long, long time. My headache was completely gone.\nI painted for hours - actually I’m not sure how long I painted, time was not something I was aware of, but as the sun was just beginning to peak over the horizon, I was well into this work. I finally realized I hadn’t heard from Theo all night! In the morning light I stepped back to admire my work so far. Not bad. I felt my life starting over." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Swept Away by the Fine Arts\n\nGenre: adventure\n\nWord Count: 2924\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about a gallery whose paintings come alive at night." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "“Dad, this is the girl of my dreams. I’m sorry, but I’m not taking her to Crusty’s. No matter how good the chilly dogs are.”\nI may not be the most experienced guy when it comes to romance, but I know that there are certain places you should never bring a girl on a first date: McDonalds (obviously), monster truck rallies, your parent’s house (or any relative’s), and any establishment that sells food and gasoline under one roof. Crusty’s may be a local legacy—rumor has it President Roosevelt once stopped in and bought a corn dog—but it’s the poster child for unromantic eateries. They may have the best burgers in town, but it’s one of those places you don’t intentionally go: you just kind of wind up there when you need gas and then end up walking out with a plate of fried chicken and a sausage biscuit.\nI love Crusty’s—we all do—but tonight has to be perfect.\nDad unmuted the History Channel and I continued scrolling through local restaurant reviews. “This looks like a good one. Marabella’s. It’s downtown, a bit more upscale, and it has great reviews.” Dad slipped his glasses down to peek at the picture on the screen. “And” I added, “it’s right around the corner from the movie theater. Dinner and a movie. That’s good, right? It has to be good.”\nDad sat up in his chair and lifted a finger like he was having an epiphany. “The girl of your dreams, you say? I’ve got an even better idea than the movies.” He pulled something from his back pocket and held it out. \n“Now listen, Paul. If you screw anything up, it could cost me my job.” He handed me a thick, scratched-up card that said “Caroway Art Museum” on the front and “Employee Access Card” on the back along with Dad’s picture and his name, William Anderson.\n“The art museum? But they close at five.”\n“Not for my boy and the girl of his dreams.”\nMost people would probably say he was an idiot for giving a twenty-year-old, testosterone-inflated college kid access to the most prestigious cultural center in town, but I’m no bull-in-a-china-shop, meathead. I’m at the top of my class in my statistics program (sexy right?), the dungeon master at Friday night D&D, and I didn’t get my license until last year because, well, frankly, I’m terrified of driving. Forty-three thousand fatal crashes occur each year in just the US alone!\nBasically, I’m the last guy you have to worry about destroying an art museum.\nI took the access pass and clipped it to my shirt. “This is perfect, Dad.” I held out my fist and bumped it to his. “Kara is actually an art major. I think she’s taking a sculpting class right now.”\nDad unmuted the History Channel and chuckled. “Then she’s going to love Conan.”\n\n***\n\n“Close your eyes.”\n“I am!” Kara clutched my arm as we ascended the steps. “I’m going to trip, Paul.”\n“I won’t let you fall, trust me.” I swiped my Dad’s access card and pushed open the heavy glass side-door to the museum. A rush of cool air enveloped us, smelling like paper, pine-sol, and fresh paint. I flicked on a few lights and led Kara to the front entrance where “Caroway Art Museum” was displayed in bold, gold print above the arched walkway.\n“Okay. Open them.”\nKara blinked, letting her eyes adjust. “Oh my.”\nBelow the sign, gracing the grand entryway, loomed a large statue of a nude man wrestling a leopard. They were both carved in exquisite detail, every rippling muscle and bulging vein visible in their battle for survival.\n“That’s a big penis,” she said.\nI’d always questioned the placement of Conan (as most people jokingly called him). Maybe the curators thought if visitors saw Conan first, they’d assume the rest of the place was equally as exciting. Or maybe they thought of it like ripping off the shock-value Band-aid, like “hey everyone, now you’ve seen a giant, marble dick. Don’t worry, that’s the worst of it.” Either way, Conan made it into most of the tagged pictures of the museum on social media.\n“Come on.” I tugged Kara’s hand, leading her down the wide hall. “We’ve got the whole place to ourselves.”\n\n***\n\nWe strolled through the post-modern exhibit first, where I showed Kara a structure made from stacked metal blocks. “They didn’t use to be soldered together like this.” I pointed out where the blocks had been fused together. “Apparently, my Dad brought me to work with him when I was maybe two or three, and I climbed up here and knocked the whole thing down.” Kara giggled and I decided her laugh was my new favorite sound.\nIn the Baroque exhibit, I pointed out one of my favorite pieces—it wasn’t anything all that special, it just made me laugh. In the ornately framed painting, a woman with a strikingly large forehead and a tent-like dress held a duck by one foot, while behind her, an obese baby was riding a bony dog around the sparsely furnished room. The woman’s eyes were bored, tired slits of non-descript brown, but the dog had a terrified expression on its narrow face, and the whites of its eyes drowned its tiny black pupils.\nWe stopped in front of it and stood in silence for a moment. Then Kara spoke, lowering her voice into an accented monotone. “Persius, how many times do I have to tell you to get off the damned dog. You know she has arthritis.”\nI joined her game, stretching my vocal cords taut, squealing like a cartoon pig. “But Ma, she’s my emotional support terrier. I simply must be physically close to her or else how will I regulate my turbulent feelings?”\nWe burst into laughter and started toward the next painting.\n“Don’t let the corpulent infant deceive you,” a voice said. “He is actually a grown man.”\nKara and I both jumped, colliding with one another. We turned around, but there was no one behind us.\nSomething wavered in my peripherals. I glanced at the painting. Then the big-foreheaded woman pivoted, her face protruding from the canvas.\nKara shrieked. I lurched backward and tripped over her shoe.\n“Yes, yes, a talking painting, how disturbing. Are you quite through with your hysterics?” Forehead said.\nWhat is happening? Did I eat some bad alfredo? Was this some kind of carbohydrate-induced hallucination? Is that even a thing?\nThe woman’s eyes widened, and she leaned out even further. “Are you both deaf? Or just dumb.”\n“Sorry,” I mumbled to Forehead. “You just surprised us is all.”\nKara gave me the side-eye and spoke through clenched teeth. “Why are you talking to it?”\n“It can hear you,” Forehead says. “I may have diminutive ears, but they work perfectly well.”\n“Sorry,” Kara mumbled.\n“You, boy.” The woman leaned all the way out of the painting and stopped inches from my face. She fingered the access card clipped to my shirt. “You're not Bill.”\nShe called him Bill. Not William. She knows my father?\nI struggled to my feet and gripped Kara’s arm. “Bill is my dad.”\n“Ah, yes. I can see the resemblance.” She leaned back into her painting and picked up the dead duck, suddenly appearing much less intimidating.\n Kara looked at me, eyebrows raised. I felt like I was trapped in the tail end of a lucid dream, standing at a crossroads: part of me wanted to get as far away from this painting as possible and the other part wanted to explore this statistically impossible phenomenon.\n“So. You were saying,” I cleared my throat, “that the baby in the painting is a man?”\n“Oh, yes. Dimitri, my husband.”\nWe waited for her to continue. The overhead lights hummed faintly, like a distant swarm of gnats. “May I ask, why is he a baby?” I said.\nForehead began plucking feathers from the duck’s thigh. “Because he behaves as an infant: throwing tantrums over land disputes, overindulging in drink and sweets, and lying about while the property falls to ruin.” She slammed the duck on the table. “All he does is mope and whine about every little thing—so I depicted him as a pitiful, fat baby.”\n“You painted this?” Kara asked.\n“She shows signs of intelligence,” Forehead said to me. “Yes, I painted this. I felt like I was always painting images of everyone else—the children, my nit-wit husband, the dog; I have far too many paintings of the dog—but no one ever painted me. So, I took it upon myself to capture my own likeness. What do you think…girl?” Forehead turned to Kara, then to me again.\n“Oh, this is Kara. She’s my…friend.”\n“I see. And what do you think of my work, Kara?”\nKara chewed her lip.\nOh no. She’s freaked out. She’s going to run away and delete my number for sure. My shot with her is definitely blown. First and last date with the girl of my dreams.\n“It’s, well, a bit depressing.” Now I was the one giving her the side-eye. “The whole left half of the room is shrouded in shadow, and it makes the house seem claustrophobic and uninviting.” She pointed in demonstration. “There’s a dish here with a crack in it, and you’ve painted all the furniture with this spiny, spindly sort of look. It’s all very sickly, like the wood is shriveling up.”\n\n I braced myself for a tongue-lashing from Forehead—something about how we were dumb and rude. But she only continued plucking her duck. “Go on.”\nKara cleared her throat. “The whole piece imparts a sense of deterioration and malaise. I don’t quite understand the dog, though. Why is it so scrawny? And why is the baby… I mean, your husband, draped over it like that?”\n“She’s a clever one, your Kara.” Forehead said tapping her large, sloping skull. “The dog represents our land. It’s sick. Dying. Useless. And my husband is a leech upon it, sapping what little life it still has to give.” She laid the plucked duck on the rugged table and reached for a butcher’s knife. “He’s a better gambler than he is a farmer. And that’s saying something, given he lost fifty acres in a game of whist.” Whack. The duck’s head rolled to the floor.\nKara and I jumped back a step.\nJust then a new voice called out. “Aye, you may have fooled these folks, but I know what a strapping lad your husband is. He’s no wee babe.”\nIn the painting beside us, a man in a high-necked black robe stood holding a scalpel and hunching over a rough-hewn table. On the table lay a naked man, draped semi-modestly with a white sheet. The prostrate man began to shift, and a leg slipped out from under the sheet. The man sat up and leaned out of the painting. “And ye can’t deny he’s a charmer in the bed! I’ve seen all those snot-nosed bairns you’ve got running around. Aye, like rabbits the two of you.” He turned toward Forehead. “I can hear the bed frame creaking from all the way over here. Night after night.” The sheet slid off his lap and onto the floor.\n“Oh, shut up, Malcolm. Lie down.” Man in Black shoved him back onto the table.\n“Malcolm, for the love of St. Peter, cover up! I’ve seen enough of your dirty plum tree shaker to practically impregnate me. And poor Kara here is a fair young maiden who doesn’t need to be spoiled by the sight of you.” Forehead turned to Man in Black and waggled a finger toward Malcolm’s crotch. “While you’ve got him on the table, take your little knife and just cut the whole thing off, why don’t you? He’s a danger to womenkind.”\nKara looked at me and we both began to back away from the painting.\n“Well, this has been a real pleasure, guys,” I said. “A night I’ll certainly never forget.”\nJust then the ground began to vibrate, and a deep voice boomed in the open space. “Did I hear there’s a fair maiden in danger?” The paintings softly clattered against the wall.\nMan in Black sighed, “Oh, here he comes.” Malcolm shot up again. “God, not this arsehole.” Man in Black pushed him back down.\nThe footsteps grew louder.\nSomeone turned the corner, and eight feet of perfectly sculpted marble male strode into the exhibit holding a limp leopard above his head, giving us all an unobstructed view of his impressive…abs.\nConan.\n“What a specimen,” Forehead leaned onto her elbows, right in the duck blood pooling on her table. “I’d give fifty acres for him to plow my fields…if I still had fifty acres.” She winked at Kara.\n“What a loathsome oaf,” said Man in Black.\nWhatever he was, he was running straight toward Kara and glaring at me with cold gray eyes. I stepped in front of her, only to be knocked to the floor by a rock-solid dead leopard. Conan dove after Kara.\n“Put me down you jerk!” Kara screamed, fists beating against his back. He turned and ran deeper into the museum.\n“Yeah! Put her down!” I yelled, running after them. Voices pinged at me from the exhibits on either side of the hall. “He’s taking her to the roof!” “Run, boy, run!” And other exclamations I couldn’t translate.\nI panted, trying to keep up with his impossible stride. I was ten paces behind him when a woman darted in front of me. I dove to the side to avoid colliding with her, which I’m glad I did, being that she was crafted entirely of nails. Her rusty brown-gray body looked like metallic ground beef, the way the long iron nails were soldered together in wavy rows. There must have been thousands of them.\n“Are you alright, Sugar?” She leaned over and pulled me to my feet. “I wasn’t expecting to run into anyone at this hour.”\nMy hand was bleeding from where hers had stabbed me.\n“It’s okay, but I really can’t chat. Conan—or whatever his name is—ran off with my date. He’s heading to the roof.”\n“Oh, that old dummy. Thinks he’s slicker than owl shit.” She wrapped her arm around my shoulder, trapping me beside her spiky metal breasts. “You just gotta learn to play his game.”\n“I don’t have time for games! I have to help Kara!”\n“Look at me, boy.” Metal Lady grabbed my face. “What’s your name?”\n“Paul.”\n“Okay, Paul. Here’s what you’re going to do: I need you to hit me.”\n“What?”\n“Hit me. Right now.” She tapped her steel cheek. “Give it a real good sucker punch.”\n“I’m not going to hit you. Look, he’s getting away! We don’t have time for this!”\n“Do you want to get Kara back or not? I said hit me!”\n“Ugh! This is the weirdest night ever!” I shut my eyes, reared back, and punched the metal sculpture in the face. She let out an ear-piercing wail.\n“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I told you didn’t want to hit you.”\nMetal Lady winked at me. “That’s just for theatrics, Hun. Keep ‘em coming.” I peeked behind her and saw Conan had stopped running. He turned around, watching us.\nI got a running start and kicked Metal Lady right in the ribs. The impact reverberated up my whole leg.\n“Save me! Oh, someone save me from this monster!” Then to me, she whispered, “Now choke me.”\n“What? No! God, this is getting really out of control!”\n“Do it. Now!”\nI reached up and wrapped my hands around the sculpture’s neck. Conan zeroed in on me and began to sprint. “Unhand the lady!” he bellowed, shaking the room. He was nearly to me when he dropped Kara and lifted two balled fists.\n“Go. Now!” Metal Lady said. Then she shot out her arms and wrapped them around Conan’s bicep, intercepting his trajectory. “My hero!”\n“Paul!” Kara called, waving at me to follow her to the exit. We raced back through the halls together, cheered on by Forehead and Malcolm and Man in Black. Metal Lady’s buttery voice echoed after us. “Ya’ll come back and visit any time!”\nWe pushed through the glass exit doors, chests heaving, and we collapsed in a heap by the hedges. The sounds of the city nightlife slowly cut through the fog of adrenaline. Car horns. Music. Airplanes. Traffic. Breathing. \n“Kara—I’m so sorry. I didn’t know that was going to—”\n“Paul, you're bleeding!” She reached for my hand. My knuckles were chewed and bloody. “You should get this looked at.”\nI laughed. “What do I say? ‘Hey, can you fix my hand? Yeah, I beat up a lady made of nails to save my girlfriend from a rampaging statue man.’”\n“Girlfriend?” Kara said.\nI froze. “That’s not what I…well, I didn’t mean...” Say something, you idiot. “If you want to be my girlfriend, I would love that. Like big time. But after tonight’s disaster, I would understand if you never wanted to see me again.”\nKara held my mangled hand in hers. “Disaster? That was probably one of the best dates I’ve ever had. Definitely top five.” She winked at me. Her stomach growled then, loud and hollow. “I’m sorry. I was so nervous at dinner. I didn’t eat much.”\n“I noticed,” I said. “Let’s go get something. I’ll take you wherever you want.”\n“Ok,” she said, “there’s this really divey place across town that sounds kind of gross, but they have the best burgers. Ever been to Crusty’s?”" } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: The Heist\n\nGenre: adventure\n\nWord Count: 3015\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about an art thief who is struggling to commit the perfect heist." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "It’s 6:30 pm and I am seated at the British Airways gate, anxious to hear my flight number being called. Dulles to London – I need to go “across the pond” as Gram would say. As usual, I had arrived early; boarding was not scheduled to begin for another hour. I would rather wait at the gate than deal with the stress of long security lines or other untold snafus.\n\nThis time, though, my early arrival at the gate was not without trepidation. I was flying stand-by. It was the best I could do on such short notice. The flight was fully booked, so I didn’t know if I would get on. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to get on, but I knew I had to. Residing in D.C., I was Gram’s closest living relative. And her closest in other ways, too, even if I hadn’t seen her in a dozen or so years.\n\nI suddenly regretted not going to England more. Why didn’t I go? Oh, I know. I got married, had two kids. You know – a life. Gram understood. I think. We wrote letters to stay in touch. My two boys received cards every birthday and Christmas. Gram never forgot – not once. We could have gone to see her. Should have. Money was not a problem. And Gram would like the boys. I have no answer.\n\nI received the Western Union telegram this morning. I didn’t even know telegrams still existed, but apparently they do. I knew it was from Gram even before I read it. Who else would send a telegram these days? Once I read the words typed on the yellow paper, my heart sank.\n\nSTART. MILLIE. PLEASE COME. URGENT. AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. LOVE YOU. GRAM. END\n\nI immediately arranged emergency leave from work and brought the boys to a friend’s house. Jack, my husband, will pick them up this evening. I had to get to Gram. She is pushing ninety and not prone to histrionics. If she said it was urgent, I dared not wait. \n\nGram lives by herself just outside of London, in a little flat on the banks of the Thames River. It’s a lovely two-bedroom flat, with colorful gardens and lush greenery overlooking the river. Gram loved to sit on her balcony and look at the gardens. They were kept neat and tidy by the association, in full British tradition. I hoped that hadn’t changed.\n\nShe’s on the second floor, so there were stairs. A while back, I had encouraged her to move somewhere with no stairs to climb – at her age – but she didn’t want to hear it. Gram never admitted to anything about her age. She still had long, jet-black hair, dyed of course, that she kept in a perfect bun. She was always immaculately dressed in a suit. Conservative and appropriate, but not business-like. \n\nIn her younger days, Gram was apparently quite a looker. Many suitors called on her, even when I visited. Familial stories, unconfirmed, were that she had been married three or four times, including once to an Italian Count. The stories persisted, without evidence. To this day, I don’t know if they are true, but knowing Gram, I wouldn’t be surprised. Even as a child, I knew that if I asked Gram directly about this, I wouldn’t get an answer. “It wouldn’t be proper for a lady to discuss such things.” Gram was all about being a lady, teaching me to be a lady. Never a wrong foot forward, etc. So I never asked.\n\n“Passenger Millie Llywelyn please see the gate agent. Passenger Millie Llywelyn.”\n\nThe announcement disturbed my reverie. I got up and walked over to the agent, who handed me a boarding pass. First Class. Lucky. Or did Gram pull some mysterious strings? Either way, I was grateful. I would be able to sleep on the flight to Heathrow. With sleep, I could handle most anything. I didn’t want to see Gram in her last moments on Earth. I wanted to remember her like I did now, a vibrant, aristocratic lady. I dreaded seeing her in decline, but I knew she needed me. I was as prepared as I could be.\n\nI boarded with the other first-class passengers and settled into my seat. Bypassing dinner and other complimentary services, I fell fast asleep as soon as the wheels lifted off the ground. Before I knew it, the flight attendant was waking me to prepare for landing. \n\nOutside the terminal, I flagged a taxi. The cabbie knew the address and in less than an hour I was standing outside Gram’s building. It looked exactly as I remember it. I was happy about that. I climbed the stairs and found myself in front of the door marked 2C. Taking a deep breath, I steeled myself for what was beyond. Poor Gram. I took another deep breath and knocked twice. I was about to knock a little louder when the door flew open.\n\n*****\n\n“G-G-Gram! It’s you!” I stuttered. Before me stood a lady looking far younger than her years. Vibrant and clearly alive. She smiled to see me.\n\n“Of course it’s me, Millie. Who did you expect? Oh, forgive my manners, dear. Come on in.” Gram was dressed in her signature suit, hair tidy. She hadn’t lost a step, practically dancing down the long hallway to lead me to the formal living room. \n\n“I’ve done a few things to the place, since you were last here. Come and sit. Tell me about your boys.”\n\nI still couldn’t speak. How had I been so wrong? Gram was the furthest thing from her deathbed. I was happy to see that, of course, but very confused. Why the urgent telegram? I swallowed the lump in my throat and began my interrogation.\n\n“Gram, you can’t imagine what I was thinking. I got your urgent telegram yesterday and caught the first flight out. We can chat, and I will tell you all about Jack and the boys, but first, what is the emergency?”\n\n“Millie, can’t a grandmother ask to see her favorite granddaughter without a reason?”\n\n“Really, Gram? I know you have something up your sleeve. Your telegram was urgent and came out of the blue. I thought you were seriously ill, deathly ill, even.”\n\n“Oh, my dear. I’ve never felt better. But I do need you for something important. Time is of the essence. We must take care of this tomorrow. Would you like some tea?”\n\nNothing was going to rush Gram, so I relented and had some tea. I told her about Jack’s new job, how he loves it. I told her how much Oliver and Arthur have grown and showed her the latest pictures I had in my wallet. When the niceties were done, I pressed forward.\n\n“Now, Gram. If we need to take care of something tomorrow, don’t you think you best tell me about it?”\n\n“Fine, Millie. Do you remember all the lovely tourist places I have taken you to over the years?”\n\nI had no idea where this was leading, but I was willing to play. “Sure, we went to Buckingham Palace to see the Changing of the Guards, did brass rubbings in Westminster Abbey, saw “Much Ado About Nothing” in Stratford-Upon-Avon, shopped and ate at Harrod’s. Um, we did lots of fun stuff over the years, Gram.”\n\n“We did have a lot of exciting adventures. But you haven’t yet mentioned the one place you need to remember. Keep going.”\n\n“OK Gram. Let’s see. We went to Brighton Beach and Hyde Park. I remember, that’s where Uncle Reggie and Aunt Gladys lived. Their flat took up the entire floor of their building and overlooked the park. They were quite rich, as I recall. Oh, and Windsor Castle, that’s where -”\n\n“That’s it! Windsor Castle!” Gram said. “What was so special about Windsor Castle, if you can remember?”\n\n“How could I forget? My favorite - I don’t know how many times we visited Queen Mary’s Doll’s House. You had to take me to see it every time I was in London visiting you.”\n\n“That’s right, dear. You were fascinated by the lights that worked and the perfect miniature furnishings. It really is a most unique Doll’s House. Amazing in its detail. Most of the miniature paintings and even the books, are original works created by very famous artists. Not duplicates or prints. There was one painting, in particular, that I showed you every time. Do you remember it?”\n\n“Of course. Great Uncle William’s painting. Of an old king….um…James the Fifth? Is that right?”\n\n“Wonderful, Millie. Yes. You remember. Your Great-Great Uncle, Sir William S.H. Llewellyn - they spelled the family name differently back then. He painted the tiny portrait of James V of Scotland. The miniature portrait hung in the dining room, on one side of the fireplace. A place of honor.”\n\n“OK Gram. Enough mystery. What’s this all about?”\n\n“Well . . . back in my youth, I was quite the artist, among my other talents. Only I wasn’t as recognized as old Uncle Willie. No one was buying my art. One day, I decided to paint a miniature portrait of James V, copying the one in the Doll’s House. It was a magnificent copy! Only a master could tell the difference, and even then, he would have to look very closely to be sure. On one of our trips to see Queen Mary’s Doll’s House, I exchanged the portraits. It is mine currently hanging there, seen by millions of tourists. Has been for years.”\n\n“Whoa. Gram. Seriously? I didn’t think you did anything wrong. Ever. How did you do it? Make the switch? There were always guards in the room, as I recall.”\n\n“You helped me. Oh, you didn’t know it. You were only fourteen. Remember, you took the photo of the Doll’s House. No photography signs were posted but you missed them. You used a flash, and the guard came running. You were almost in tears, thinking they were going to take your camera away, but the guard just gave you a stern warning. That’s when I did it. The switch. I was never one to let an opportunity pass me by!”\n\n“Holey moley!”\n\n“So now we need to switch them back. The James V portraits. I have the original and the Doll’s House has my copy. We need to get mine back and put Uncle Willie’s in its place. Tomorrow, Millie. It has to be done tomorrow.”\n\n“Whaaaaa? We need to un-steal what you stole? A reverse heist? Is that what you are saying? Is that why I am here -to take another photo in a no-photo zone?”\n\n“Not exactly, dear. This time I will create the distraction and you will switch the paintings. I am elderly – something I am loathe to admit. I can fall or pretend a heart attack. I was a pretty good actress when I was younger, one of my other talents. When the guard is distracted, you take the portrait off the dining room wall and put the real one back in its place. No one will be the wiser. Simple.”\n\n“Gram. Gram. Are you serious? Or crazy? This is not simple. There are a million reasons why we can’t do this. Why not just turn over the original? I don’t want to be writing my children from a London jail.”\n\n“There is no time to argue, Millie. An inventory check is scheduled for next week so the exhibit will be closed. They are bringing in a master restorer to remove any varnish or discoloration on the paintings. He would certainly notice that my portrait of James V is not Uncle Willie’s. And he may be able to trace it to me. I will not have my reputation sullied. We must do the switch tomorrow. That is firm.”\n\nIt was no use trying to convince Gram that this wasn’t a good idea. I tried arguing, pleading and reasoning. She was undeterred. She had already bought tickets to tour the Castle. Come to think of it, I can’t recall anyone ever winning an argument against Gram. This evening, her record remained unblemished.\n\nI tossed and turned all night going over our plan. Gram had given me Uncle Willie’s original portrait. I was to hide it in the inner pocket of my jacket. It was small enough to fit. She would create a distraction, and when the guard went over to assist her, I would take the fake portrait off the dining room wall and re-hang the original. Uncle Willie’s picture, as Gram referred to it. “Simple.” UGH.\n\n*****\n\nThe next morning, I was too nervous to eat any of the porridge Gram made. She seemed to still have a heathy appetite, though. I was shaking as I dressed but I made sure James V was securely in the pocket of my jacket. \n\nGram came out of her room and I swear if I didn’t know better, I would never guess she was ninety-ish. She didn’t look a day over sixty. She was very elegant in her suit, hair coiffed, and umbrella in hand. It wasn’t raining. She said the umbrella was her walking stick. It was a needed prop, she told me. \n\nReady or not, we grabbed a taxi to Windsor Castle. We walked around the grounds a little, acting as typical tourists. Basically, we were waiting for the early crowds, in line to see the dollhouse, dissipate.\n\nGram never broke from character. It was as if she was a great actress starring in a film. When the crowds at the dollhouse thinned, she took my arm and said, “Come darling. Let me show you the most fascinating Doll’s House. It was built in the 1920’s and contains many interesting features. The lights even work. The books are not empty shells, but are actually books written by famous authors. And the paintings. You have to see how magnificent the paintings are. Come, my dear.”\n\nMe? I was shaking in my boots. But I followed Gram into the room that housed Queen Mary’s Doll’s House. My breathing was shallow and fast, but there was no turning back.\n\nThe Doll’s House was in the center of the room on a table. We walked around the house three times, with Gram pointing out different features. I pretended to be peering intently into each room. I paid particular attention to the dining room where I saw the James V portrait by the fireplace.\n\nFinally, on our fourth circle, when I was directly in front of the dining room, Gram walked ahead. She suddenly bent over, held up by her umbrella as she clutched her chest. I heard her moan and the guard walked over to her to see what the problem was. This was my chance.\n\nI took the picture Gram gave me out of my pocket. Then I reached and took the same portrait off the dining room wall. I readied to make the switch, when some medical aide person bumped me from behind. They were running to assist Gram, and didn’t see me. Luckily, they didn’t see the miniature paintings, either.\n\nBoth paintings fell into my left hand, as I steadied myself with my right hand. Which was which? I couldn’t be sure. Scared, I put one of the paintings back in the dining room, next to the fireplace. The other went into my jacket pocket. No one saw anything. Did I just re-hang Gram’s painting, or was the switch successful? I had no way of knowing. There was no undoing what was done. \n\nThe disturbance Gram had created was winding down. She apparently said she was feeling better. And the guard was back in position. I collected Gram with promises to take her to a cardiologist. And we left.\n\nGram stayed in character until we got back to her flat. It was no use telling her that I wasn’t sure which painting was hanging in the Doll’s House. If the restorer found a fake, she would find out soon enough. Why worry her – I was worried enough for us both.\n\nThe next morning, Gram took me to the airport. Yes, she still drives. That was something else I didn’t know. We said our good-byes. Despite everything, I really was glad to have spent time with her. I said it wouldn’t be another dozen years before I came back. I would bring Jack and the boys. . . if she promised to lower the excitement level. My heart can’t take it. \n\nI was listed stand-by once again, but again I found myself in a first-class seat. Coincidence? I didn’t even want to ask Gram. I just wanted to leave London as soon as possible. It felt safer to be state-side. \n\nMid-air, I opened the gift she had handed me as I left. It was a beautiful jewelry box. She had hand-painted the outside -it was a perfect picture of me at age fourteen, looking at Queen Mary’s Doll’s House. I had to grin. Inside the box was a note and two miniature paintings. The first was a very familiar portrait of James V of Scotland. The second was a miniature portrait of Charlie Chaplin. I opened the note.\n\nMy dearest Millie,\nIt was wonderful to see you again. Please do come back with the boys. I’m sure they wouldn’t be bored. We can find some bit of excitement to fill the days.\n\nPlease enjoy my gift to you. I know you will recognize my painting on the outside of the box. You will never forget the first, or the last, time you visited Queen Mary’s Doll’s House.\n\nInside, I think you earned the portrait of James V of Scotland. Uncle Willie would want you to have it! And the Charlie Chaplin painting is a self-portrait. I will explain on your next visit.\n\nAll my love,\nGram\n\n******************************************************\nNote: One interesting tidbit I found was that, in 1921, Charlie Chaplin had promised to donate a miniature portrait of himself to the Doll's House, but that portrait never appeared." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: When Will We Ever Learn\n\nGenre: adventure\n\nWord Count: 1058\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about two characters who meet and/or fall in love in a museum." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "When Will We Ever Learn?\n\n“Careful. That whitewash may still be wet.”\n“What are you talkin' 'bout? How would you know?”\n“Helpin' paint picket fences is one of ma many talents. Used ta spend hours doin' it just fer fun.”\n“Just fer fun? Sounds like work to me.”\n“Then ya'll haven't ever met my good ol' pal Tom Sawyer. He'd talk ya inta it alright. But then agin, ya'll pretty little. Maybe ya couldn't handle the big ol' brush, anyways.”\n“I'm plenty big enough to use a brush. Ya gots one on ya? I'll prove it to ya.”\n“Na, they's got fancy maintenance people in uniforms ta do that kind o' stuff in this high-falutin' place. I'm free an' easy these days. What's ya name anyways. Wheres ya come from?”\n“Scout. My name's 'Scout'. Maycomb. Maycomb, Alabamie, is wheres I come from.”\n“Boy, ya'll a long way from home up here in Chicaga. How'd ya get here?”\n“Don't rightly know. Just opened my eyes an' I'm a sittin' on that bench next ta that book. Thought I would look around tryin' ta figure wheres I at. Where's am I, anyways? Who are ya? Have ya seen my brother, Jem, or my friend, Dill?”\n“This here's the American Writer's Museum in Chicaga, Illinoiz. It's a place where lots of famous or well known past writer's from all over the USA hang out to edicate and entertain folks. Name's 'Huck'. Iz comes from the south, too, along the Big Mississippi River. I popped out o' a book just like ya a whiles back.\n“Come on. I'll show ya around a bit. It's a really grand place even if it's small. Iz even think I've seen your book here somewheres. Look up above. There's a rainbow of books up there. See one by Miss Harper? That's the same as the one on the bench. A visitor must o' left that behind. Haven't seen ya folks, tho.”\n“They're always off on some adventure. They'll be sorry they missed this place.”\n“Hey, Iz like adventure, too. Kinda known fer 'em. Stay close an I'll take ya on one now.\n“Sos this here room with the picket fence around it is the kid's corner. See the giant oak tree with the little woodland critters curled up in the nooks and crannies o' the branches all a readin' some sort of book. 'Wizard o' Oz', Richard Scarry, 'Cat 'n the Hat' an' others. Big mural paintings on the walls like 'Charlotte's Web'. Bean-bag chairs and cozy couches fer little ones ta curl up in an' have books read ta 'em. An' some fun interactive adventures, too. Kid's can explore an' get lost in this corner.\n“This long wall is filled with banner's showing picture's o' authors with some o' their famous words and when they lived. Here's the desk a Mr. Ray Bradbury used. On these tables are typewriters some o' them there authors actually worked with when they wrote their masterpieces. Ya can type some wisdom of your own and pin it on the wall or add ta the story o' the day. Guests create a line ta advance the story started out with a famous first line from a novel, short story, poem, screen play, song or news report. All forms o' written art are represented.\n“With these buttons ya can find out what authors liked the same things ya'll like. Other interactive ideas tell ya the story behind the stories and a lot more. Look at that waterfall o' ever-changing words that are quoted from favorites.\n“Here's a whole nation showing where writers come from. Ya'll's creator, Lee Harper, come from the same hometown as Truman Capote who wrote 'In Cold Blood'. Betcha never knew that! They even wrote something together once.”\n“I never even knew I was created other than by Atticus, and, o' course, Ma who I don't remember.”\n“Na, we's all what they call 'characters'. Some o' us are 'protagonists' and some are 'antagonists'. But we live our lives in their creations with conflicts and resolutions and 'character arcs' that prove we learned sumpin' or maybe we didn't learn nuthin'. I know Miss Watson tried to 'sivilize' me with all kinds o' learnin' an' I had ta get away from it all. Iz happiest just floatin' down the Mississippi with good ol' Jim. Boy, did we have some sketchy adventures!”\n“Well, I don't know if I'm an agonist or what. Thought I was Baptist. Atticus tried ta teach me right from wrong but things sure got mixed up in my town. See that wall o' Negroes there? Says they was all real educated and wrote a lot o' wise things. But Atticus, ya see he's a lawyer, and a good one, he proved this black man in our town was a good man and never did the cruel thing he was accused o'. But the jury said he was guilty anyway. When poor Mista Robinson tried to escape they shot him dead.\n“All along it was this mean ol' girl's daddy that did the mean things to her. Then that mean ol' man tried to hurt Jem an' me. Broke Jem's arm. But Boo came to our rescue. I was always afraid of Boo when I was littler but he turned out to be a good man after all. He just acted differently. Anyways. Hard to understand the justice when an innocent man is thrown in jail 'cause of the color of his skin.”\n“Yeah, ma friend ol' Jim was a slave who just wanted ta get home ta his wife an' kids. We had an awful time sortin' that all out. Not right fer someone ta own another person but anyone wit' dark skin were thought o' more like animals in ma time.”\n“My time was seventy years after slavery was done away with yet they was still treated poorly. Looks like what this man King says they was still suffering thirty years past my time and fightin' fer rights. When will we ever learn? When will we ever learn?”\n“Ya know, Scout, ya'll real smart an' kinda cute even if ya dress like a boy in ya rolled-up bib overalls. But we needs ta get back inta our books 'fore folks come in. Think I can see ya agin tanight afta the place closes up?\nWWW\namericanwritersmuseum.org" } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: The Black Tulip\n\nGenre: adventure\n\nWord Count: 1213\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about an art thief who is struggling to commit the perfect heist." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "In the dimly lit museum, the silence was broken only by the faint sound of an infamous art thief's muffled breathing, known to law enforcement agencies as 'The Ghost.' He crouched behind a marble statue, his heart pounding in his chest with the adrenaline surge in his blood and his palms slick with sweat of anticipation. As an adrenaline junky, he was again on a mission, and every nerve in his body was on edge as he observed his target, protected by the museum's state-of-the-art security system.\nThe Interpol had been chasing The Ghost for years, suspecting him of committing over twenty art thefts internationally. He had a particular knack for stealing renowned paintings, each with a value of ten million dollars or higher. So far, he had evaded capture, slipping away into the shadows with his stolen treasures. With each successful heist, his reputation grew, making him one of the most wanted criminals in the art world. He was a person of interest to law enforcement agencies, who were relentlessly pursuing him to bring him to justice. On the other hand, his formidable reputation had caught the attention of criminal dons trying to hire his services for their illicit desires. Despite the pressure from both sides, he remained elusive, and his identity and whereabouts were unknown. Even with their best efforts, the police had never come close to apprehending The Ghost. The thief was meticulous, leaving no trace of his presence at the crime scenes. But the authorities hadn't given up hope. A reward of one million dollars was being offered for any information that could help catch The Ghost, and the prize amount was increasing. They were determined to catch him at any cost.\nHe had dedicated many years to perfecting his skills in the art of stealing. He spent countless hours studying famous paintings and the habits and routines of private collectors, art galleries, and museums. He meticulously planned his heists, targeting small private collections to large museums. He was determined to succeed despite the risks involved, and nothing could deter him from achieving his goal. However, this heist was unique. It would be his masterpiece, the theft that would forever establish his name in the history of art theft. His target was 'The Black Tulip,' a painting considered the finest, valued at around a quarter of a billion dollars.\nThe museum's exceptionally robust security system was unmatched elsewhere. The room was fitted with a complex network of laser grids that crisscrossed the space. Additionally, pressure-sensitive tiles were installed under the plush carpet, which served as an additional layer of protection. These tiles ensured that any unauthorized weight on the floor would trigger the alarm.\nHe had spent countless hours studying the museum's blueprints, memorizing every inch of the floor plan. He knew where the security cameras, pressure-sensitive tiles, and the network of invisible laser grids were located and had meticulously planned his approach. But as he reached out to grab the painting, a sudden wave of doubt washed over him. Had he missed something? Was there a flaw in his plan that he overlooked?\nHe felt his heart racing in his chest as doubt overwhelmed him. He knew trying to steal 'The Black Tulip' was a significant risk, but the painting was too valuable to ignore. The question remained: Would he be able to steal the painting, or would he get caught? The thought of failure was daunting. He took a deep, slow breath, focusing on his inhale and exhale. He continued the exercise until he regained his calm.\nHe was running out of time as the museum's annual gala was the next night, and the painting would be moved to a more secure location. He had only one chance to immortalize his name as the most notorious art thief ever.\nHe fought back his doubts as he approached the frame. The painting portrayed a striking black woman seated in a field of red tulips, challenging the societal issues that plagued black individuals during the slavery era. The woman in the painting was watching him, and her eyes seemed to follow him. Her lips curved in a mocking half-smile as if mocking his hesitation.\nHe placed the diamond glass cutter against the frame and held his breath. The blade moved smoothly, cutting the glass into a perfect rectangle. He then carefully removed the glass, revealing the canvas beneath. The painting seemed to come alive with its vibrant colors, and the woman's face exuded a sense of vitality. She appeared happy, as though she had finally escaped the glass cage that used to imprison her.\nThen he saw the tripwire. An almost invisible thin thread connected to an alarm system stretched across the painting. His heart pounded again. He had missed it during his recce, and it was unforgivable. \"How did I miss the tripwire? How could I have overlooked something so obvious?\" his sense of pride was wounded. \"I should pay more attention to details, as the devil is in the details.\"\nHe faced a tough decision: either risk triggering the alarm by unwinding the wire or quit. He hesitated, torn between instinct and reason. As he looked at the painting, it felt like the woman in it was urging him to embrace the risk with her gleaming eyes. He had put immense effort into stealing The Black Tulip, intending to etch his name into history as the most notorious art thief, 'The Legendary Ghost.' How could he ignore this heist? He could never forgive himself if he gave up now.\nAfter meticulously analyzing the tripwire and examining its details, he retrieved a long, thin copper wire from his compact backpack and carefully used it to bypass the ultra-thin wire. Then, he cautiously cut the tripwire with a tiny pair of wire cutters. His heart raced as he braced himself for the worst, yet the alarm stayed silent. With a sense of relief, gradually growing into triumph, he unhooked the painting from the wall and held it in his hands, marveling at its beauty. The woman's eyes seemed to soften this time, granting him her silent blessing. Taking great care not to damage the artwork, he carefully rolled the canvas, tucked it into a pipe-like case he had brought, and slipped into the shadows, leaving behind the museum and its secrets. The Black Tulip was his now, and victory tasted sweet.\nThe following day, he visited a nearby news agency to check the newspapers and gather information about his latest work. He enjoyed reading exaggerated claims by journalists who credited him with having supernatural powers or having an IQ far greater than Einstein. 'The Ghost had struck again' was featured in bold and prominent font on the front page of the city's largest newspaper. Filled with a sense of satisfaction, he proceeded to the cashier's desk to pay for the newspaper.\n\"Can they apprehend him?\" inquired the news agency owner.\n\"Apprehending whom?\" he asked.\n\"The Ghost. Can police catch him?\"\n\"Most likely not. He is a master in his art,\" he replied proudly.\n\"Without a doubt, he is a true master of theft. But I don't mind him.\"\n\"Why?\"\n\"Because he only steals from the rich and not the poor.\"\n\"Like Robin Hood?\"\n\"That's right, just like Robin Hood.\"" } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Hapizizidal\n\nGenre: african-american\n\nWord Count: 2829\n\nPrompt:\n\nSet your story in an eerie, surreal setting." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "As I drove down the interstate, it looked like rain was on the way. I tried the internet radio, but all that remained was a buzzing sound. The quality was too lifelike and unsettling, so I quickly turned it off, leaving me in silence. GPS maps had stopped working some time ago, so I had a map on the passenger's side. I should be seeing the town of Meliponia's exit, but all I can see are signs for Honeydale. I guess I'll exit and ask a local.\nI pulled off and drove, unsure of where I was going. After a bit of driving, I came across a farmhouse with a newer pickup truck in the yard, indicating that there were people living there. As I pulled up to the farm, I noticed rows of bee hive boxes with \"Honeyside Pharmaceuticals\" printed on them. Despite feeling a little unsure about exiting the vehicle due to the bees, I fought my trepidation and got out. The buzzing of the bees and the sickly sweet smell was overwhelming, causing me to retch a little. How could they bear this smell regularly? I thought.\nAs I walked toward the front porch, I saw what appeared to be a large dead dog, possibly shot and decaying with a black slime covering it.\n“Can I help you?” A voice broke my attention.\nI turned around to see a man with straggly hair, sunglasses, an unusual cross pendant, and a black boil near his chin. \"I seem to be lost. I am trying to find the town of Meliponia,\" I said.\n\"You found it,\" he replied.\n\"Oh, the exit said Honeydale.\"\n\"Yenz one in the same. We changed it recently due to the pharmaceutical company.\"\n\"Ok, Honeyside Pharmaceuticals. That is actually why I am here. Any idea why the prison, church, and the pharmaceutical company have the same address?\"\n\"Listen,\" he spat, \"I don't know much about anything except moving honey and praising the eternal lord.\"\nAs I looked back at the dead dog, he said, \"I also know how to kill an occasional coyote that disturbs my chickens. We don't get your kind too often around here. You may want to follow the road to town to speak to the mayor.\"\nFeeling uneasy, I wondered if he meant black people when he said \"your kind.\" \"Thanks, sir,\" I said and left, following the road to town.\nAs I drove with my windows up, the sweet smell lingered in the car. Looking in the rearview mirror, I reassured myself of not being followed. I knew there was something more here. Hang on, Markus. Your big sister is coming, I thought. I couldn't contact him after he was sent to the prison here. He told me no; he wasn’t rioting, just an innocent bystander in the situation. I hoped to find something to get him released immediately. No one should be wrongfully imprisoned.\nArriving in town, I was immediately struck by the deserted, middle America vibe of the main street, which made me uneasy. At first, I found it odd that all the stores were closed, but then I noticed that the windows were tinted, making it impossible to see inside. I wondered how anyone could know what the shops had for sale. Even on a Saturday, there were no people walking around.\nWhen I reached City Hall, I expected it to be closed, but to my surprise, it was open. It was nothing more than a house with gold leaf lettering on the tinted window. As I parked and got out of my vehicle, the sweet smell seemed to be getting stronger. Inside City Hall, I was underwhelmed by the very ordinary office area. An older woman with pockmarked skin and sunglasses was sitting at a desk in the middle of the room, knitting. On the desk in front of her was a honey jar filled with a black liquid that appeared Vantablack. It seemed to absorb the color around it.\n Barely looking up from her knitting, the woman asked, \"What can I do you for?\"\n\"I'm Keisha Matterhorn, and I was taken in by your lovely town, but I'm curious as to why everything seems closed and deserted,\" I said.\n\"We don't get many of your kind here. I'll inform the Mayor,\" she said as she got up and walked into another room.\nI felt a flicker of rage, wondering if this was a racial issue, but I composed myself and tried to ignore it. As I looked around, I heard a weird buzzing sound, but I couldn't see any bugs. It seemed to be coming from the room the receptionist had gone into. As I approached the door, I felt the room getting warmer with sweat gathering behind my ears. I pressed my ear to the door to listen better.\nThe buzzing abruptly stopped, and the door opened inward. \"Mayor O'Celli will be with you shortly,\" the receptionist said as she passed by. I noticed as she passed she was wearing the same strange cross the farmer had.\nA few moments later, a heavyset man with strawberry blonde hair appeared, wearing a suit and sunglasses. \"Hello, I'm the Mayor, Ronald O'Celli, but everyone calls me Ron. Come in,\" he said.\nAs I walked into the Mayor's office, I immediately noticed a few more jars of the black syrup and a large hand-drawn picture of the weird cross, centered on the wall.\n\"This is a surprise. We rarely ever get any of your kind here,\" Ron said with a smile.\n\"What do you mean by that?\" I asked, unable to hide the hostility in my tone.\nRon pointed to the government official badge on my belt, and I felt foolish for my assumption. \"I'm here to investigate some unusual matters. I wouldn't have made the trip, but I was unable to get anyone on the phone,\" I explained.\n\"Oh, the phone. Sorry about that. We have little need for that here. Our town only has 500 people. Most information is exchanged at church. Bless our eternal Lord,\" Ron said as he gestured the sign of the cross, but in an unusual way. After the up and down points, he gestured left and right askew. Behind him was a large picture of the unusual cross, which was the pictorial form of the gesture he had just performed.\n\"I noticed the cross, but it seems a little off,\" I said.\n\"No, nothing is ever off about our eternal Lord.\"\n\"hmm… But inmates not being able to make phone calls is off.\"\n\"I assure you, young lady, that all appropriate amenities are available to the inmates.\"\n\"I'll be the judge of that. I also have questions about Honeyside Pharmaceuticals. Is it true that it is a part of the prison?\" I couldn't tell if Ron was nervous, but he started to sweat profusely.\n\"Excuse me a moment, my blood sugar must be dropping,\" Ron said as he grabbed a honey jar and opened it.\nAs he scooped the black syrup from the jar, I immediately felt the heat emanating from it. As he placed the dollop under his tongue and closed his eyes in apparent ecstasy, I felt a chill. Could this be possible?\n\"Would you like to try some? It is divine,\" Ron offered.\n\"No thank you, but I would like to continue.\"\n\"How about this: tomorrow there is church. Our mega-church is right next to the jail, which is next to the pharmaceutical company. You can tour and explore to your heart's content. I think you will be surprised at how sweet our little corner of nowhere is.\"\n\"Ron, honestly, I would like to tour the facility now--\"\n[CRASH!]\nWe rushed out of city hall to see what had happened. It turned out my car had been hit, but there was no one else on the road or the sidewalk to give an account. The receptionist said she saw a truck hit me and kept going, but she offered no further information. How could that be?\n\"Well, it looks like we have a deal for tomorrow. I will make sure we get our local mechanic on this special order. It should be good as new tomorrow evening. In the meantime, I'll get you set up at the hotel,\" Ron said, as if he had expected this to occur.\nI wanted to scream. There was something going on here. I would have insisted on talking to Markus, but I didn't want to reveal that card yet.\nThe next day, it was early in the morning, and the air was damp with a gray sky overhead. Considering the uneasiness of the whole situation, I would have felt more comfortable if I had my firearm.\nRon pulled up in an older model car, wearing sunglasses. \"I hope you slept comfortably. I ordered dinner for you, but the waitstaff said you didn't eat anything,\" he said.\n\"You mean waitstaff/mechanic? I didn't know your hotel manager was also the mechanic. I appreciate it, but I am less worried about my treatment and more worried about the prisoners' treatment.\" As we left the hotel, I had to ask, \"Why does everyone wear sunglasses?\"\n\"Oh, once you see the truth of the eternal Lord, the world just seems brighter. I find in life most people form their opinions thinking they are right. The eternal Lord shows the truth.\"\n\"I would argue that most people don't form their own opinions on things at all. They just go for whatever they were raised with, never questioning otherwise.\"\n\"Hmm… Well, to answer the sunglasses question, it is a cultural thing, no different from you wearing earrings,\" Ron said, as he gestured a cross on himself.\nUpon arriving at the destination, Ron's prediction was correct. The prison was in the center with a church connected to the left and Honeyside Pharmaceuticals on the right. The church had an unusual black-tinted or dark-colored stained glass window, which I couldn't make out. As I approached the church, I heard a buzzing sound, but it stopped when we opened the door. However, the sweet smell persisted. The church was dimly lit, and everyone was dressed in black attire reminiscent of a new mid-Victorian style. The females wore capelets, and some of the men wore top hats. I felt out of place. \nI sat down in the back middle of the aisle, and Ron sat beside me. The honey farmer I met earlier sat three seats down from us. The first three rows remained empty. The large room had only two doors, one for entry and the other for the prison side connection. The prisoners marched in, wearing black jumpers and walking with military precision. I looked for Markus but couldn't find him. There was one oddly looking man who appeared to have a growth on his back under his jumper.\nShortly after, the pastor was carried in from the prisoner's side in a sedia gestatoria, dressed like a pope in all white with metallic purple accents. It was quite a spectacle, and the audience buzzed with chatter. Behind the pastor was a cart with bottles of black liquid.\nThe pastor took the pulpit and announced that there was a special guest today, and the sermon would be in English. He updated that global shipping of the miracle panacea honey will happen in the next two weeks. He also reminded everyone to make their donations and declared that \"Truth is the eternal lord.\" As he spoke, I was hit with an intense sweet smell and warmth.\n\"I am blessed,\" the honey farmer shouted, and his black boil appeared to have erupted. An usher came to the aisle and passed down what appeared to be a small honeycomb plate. The man kept it under the boil, collecting the black oozing fluid.\nThe usher thanked him for his donation and took the plate away. I wondered if this was the black ooze that they were eating.\n\"And now, communion,\" the pastor shouted. The people stood in rows and walked up one by one to get a dollop of honey under their tongue. I stood and waited in line, not to have communion, but to see if Markus was among the prisoners. He was the man with the growth on his back. My poor Markus, what has happened to you?\nSuddenly, Markus shouted, \"I am blessed,\" and stood up. He began to disrobe, revealing a large black boil pulsating on his back.\n\"Oh, praise the eternal Lord! Come up and testify. We have a witness,\" the pastor spoke as a large pole on a platform was lowered. Markus stood on stage and was shackled facing the pole, the solid boil in complete visualization. The Pastor took a knife from his chamberlain and carved a square \"S\" shape in his back. Markus started making a buzz sound. The entire congregation started buzzing as well. The pastor opened the flayed skin which spread open like cupboard doors, as viscous honey poured from his back. He made a strange cross shape with his body. The standing platform must have had some type of collection device because as they raised it in the air, nothing spilled. \n\"Markus! Markus! Stop, Markus!\" I shouted. \nCommunion stopped, and the whole church turned to look at me. Hundreds of people wearing sunglasses turned their faces toward me, buzzing. I was grabbed from behind by the knitting receptionist. I jerked to let go and punched her in the process. Her sunglasses fell off, exposing writhing maggot larvae within the glass of her eyes. Her hand attempted to grab at me. \nIt was too dense with people to escape out the entry, so I ran through the other door to the prison. It was near pitch-black, but with no other options, I kept running. \nSmack! I passed out from hitting a wall. \nComing to sometime later, in a haze, it was so warm, like being under the covers on a chilled day. Is that a fireplace sizzling? As reality settled in, I couldn't move part of my body; it was stuck to the wall. Faint light allowed me to see that this must be one of the prisoner cells. I heard buzzing sounds; they must be watching me, and I was drenched in that sickly sweet smell. As I carefully reached around, I could feel the bars of the cell. The side of my face and my left forearm were glued from when I hit the wall. If I could have just pulled myself free, but as I pulled, the glue became ice-cold. How long was I passed out? My stomach growled; I was already working on a day of not eating before all this. \nRon appeared. \"That was quite a spectacle you put on,\" he said, standing in the cell.\n\"What are you?\" I replied. \n\"Humans that have witnessed the truth. You will see. I told you the truth, all the amenities are available to prisoners, you will not be forced. That wall will give you sustenance; just place a bit under your tongue.\" \n\"Never!\" \n\"Maybe, we will see in a few days. His love is eternal,\" crossing himself. \nAfter Ron left, days passed, just buzzing sounds and sweet smells. Realizing that I would only get weaker, I grabbed a bar and pulled as hard as I could. The cooling eventually gave my face and forearm frostbite, so I didn't feel the skin and sinew tear as I left chunks of myself on the wall. The cell was closed and locked. Just buzzing all around me, I never gave in. I took the remaining strength I had and stuck my tongue out and slammed it on the bar, severing it from my mouth. As Ron slowly walked out of darkness seemingly being there the whole time. He looked at me buzzing, I started to laugh in victory as blood poured out of my mouth. As I slowly passed out from blood loss, I caught the last of his echoes. \n\"Stupid girl, don’t you realize I am saving you,\" Ron said. \nI came to, strapped down, too weak to move. My mouth, face, and arm burned. It seems I was placed in the prison infirmary. I saw my brother across from me, making buzzing sounds, maggot eyes swirling. I saw a syringe with a black concoction being administered in my vein. I bucked and kicked, hitting a bedside table that had a phone on it. The receiver unhinged. I caught a dial tone. \n“You made me a liar, but he will always provide absolution,” Ron said.\nI screamed, but without a tongue, a throated shriek came out. I hoped that the receiver would go to an operator, I hope that–\nAs I felt waves of warmth and frost spread over me, I felt the depth of an amorphous apathetic entity consume me. I felt insignificant, and magnificent at the same time. He is absolution, the eternal lord, Hapizizidal. \nI need to spread the word." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: SHADOWS OF THE RELIC: VINCENT BLACKWOOD'S ESCAPE\n\nGenre: adventure\n\nWord Count: 2312\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about an art thief who is struggling to commit the perfect heist." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "In the heart of a bustling city stood the renowned Heritage Museum, home to priceless artifacts and treasures from civilizations long past. Among these treasures lay the ultimate prize— “Emerald Eye,” an ancient relic rumored to possess mystical powers beyond comprehension. For years, it had eluded the grasp of even the most skilled thieves. But the relic beckoned like a siren's call for Vincent Blackwood, a notorious art thief with an audacious reputation.\nTall and lean, with an athletic build honed by years of daring escapades, he moved with the effortless grace of a predator stalking its prey. His piercing eyes, the color of polished onyx, held a mesmerizing intensity that seemed to pierce through the darkness, betraying a mind sharp as a dagger's edge. His midnight-black hair, styled with meticulous care, framed a chiseled face marked by a faint scar trailing along his jawline—a testament to the dangers he had faced and conquered in his pursuit of fortune and glory.\nBut not just his physical appearance set Vincent apart; the aura of audacity surrounded him like an invisible cloak. He was known throughout the underworld as a master of deception and intrigue, his exploits whispered about in hushed tones by those who dared to speak his name. His reputation preceded him like a shadowy specter, striking fear into the hearts of those who crossed his path and earning him the begrudging respect of even his most formidable adversaries.\nVincent had spent months meticulously planning the heist, studying every inch of the museum's security systems and layout. Armed with cunning intellect and unwavering determination, he believed himself ready to outsmart even the most advanced security measures. He had the resources to buy every piece of information, and his search for every clue about the museum brought him to this moment.\n<<>>\nRumors whispered in the shadowy corners of the city and spoke of the Heritage Museum as an impenetrable fortress, its treasures safeguarded by forces beyond mortal comprehension.\nFor decades, the museum had stood as a bastion of history and culture, its halls a sanctuary for relics of bygone eras. But beneath its facade of grandeur lurked a darkness that defied explanation. Some whispered of curses placed upon the artifacts, while others spoke of a malevolent presence that dwelled within the museum's depths.\nAmong the most chilling tales were previous attempts to break into the museum. Each attempt had ended in tragedy, with would-be thieves meeting grisly ends or simply disappearing without a trace.\nOne of those stories involved confident Arthur Doyle, a master of deception and stealth, who had once dared to venture into the museum's hallowed halls in search of the ultimate prize. Yet, his ambition had cost him dearly, for he was found dead on the museum's grand staircase, his lifeless body bearing multiple deadly wounds. The circumstances surrounding his demise remained shrouded in mystery, with no witnesses to shed light on the events that had led to his untimely end.\nAnd then there was Simon Brawler, a brash and reckless thief who had thought himself invincible. His ill-fated attempt to breach the museum's defenses had ended in horror beyond comprehension, as his body was discovered torn asunder by an unknown force. The sight of his mangled remains served as a grim reminder of the dangers that lurked within the museum's shadowy depths.\nThe city buzzed with speculation as whispers of the museum's dark secrets spread like wildfire. Some claimed that the relic held the key to unlocking ancient mysteries, while others believed it to be cursed, its power a harbinger of doom for any who dared to covet it.\nHe believed himself to be different—more competent, craftier, and more cunning than any who had dared to tread the path before him. And so, with the ghosts of Arthur Doyle and Simon Brawler as silent witnesses to his folly, Vincent pressed onward, heedless of the darkness that awaited him at the journey's end.\n<<>>\nIn front of the museum's modern, electronically secured doors, Vincent paused, flicking his gaze over the sleek surface for any sign of vulnerability. He withdrew a small device from his pocket, a sophisticated tool to bypass the digital defenses between him and his goal.\nWith deft fingers, he attached the device to the control panel, the soft hum of its interface blending seamlessly with the silence of the night. His heart raced as he input a series of complex commands, his movements fluid and precise as he navigated the labyrinth of encryption protocols.\nEach keystroke was a calculated risk, a delicate dance with technology that threatened to betray him at any moment. Sweat beaded on his brow as he watched the screen, his breath caught in his throat as lines of code scrolled past in a blur of numbers and symbols.\nAnd then, with a soft beep of acknowledgment, the lock clicked open, the doors sliding apart with a whisper of sound. Vincent held his breath, his senses straining for any sign of alarm, but the night remained still and silent as if holding its breath along with him.\n“No surprises there.” He smiled.\nWith the doors unlocked, Vincent slipped inside, his movements swift and silent as he navigated the corridors with the ease of a seasoned cat burglar. He knew the real challenge lay ahead—the surveillance cameras and motion sensors that guarded the museum's treasures with unblinking vigilance.\nBut Vincent was no stranger to such obstacles. With the skill of a digital ghost, he skirted around the cameras, his movements guided by intuition and years of experience. He sidestepped the motion sensors with the grace of a dancer, his body poised and alert as he slipped through the darkness like a shadow.\nWith each hurdle overcome, the suspense mounted a relentless drumbeat that echoed in his ears. But Vincent was focused, his mind clear and his nerves steel as he moved closer to his prize. For him, the thrill of the heist was like a drug, the promise of triumph driving him forward even as the specter of failure lurked at his heels.\nThe silence seemed to stretch on forever, broken only by the sound of his own ragged breathing. And then, just as he reached out to claim his prize, a noise shattered the stillness—a faint click, like the cocking of a gun. Vincent froze, his heart pounding as he realized he was no longer alone in the darkness.\n<<>>\nIn that moment of frozen terror, Vincent's mind became a whirlwind of panic and desperation. His heart, racing with anticipation moments before, now felt like it might burst from his chest with each thunderous beat.\n“There is no way I triggered the alarm,” he thought. “Can there be another thief inside? But how?”\nThe silence, once a cloak of stealth and secrecy, now seemed to suffocate him, pressing in from all sides with a weight that threatened to crush his very spirit. Every nerve in his body screamed for him to flee, to retreat into the safety of the shadows, but he was rooted to the spot by fear.\nHis thoughts raced in a frantic cacophony, each one more dire than the last. Had he been caught? Had his luck finally run out? The faint click that had shattered the stillness echoed in his mind like a death knell, a harbinger of the terrible fate that awaited him.\nImages flashed before his eyes—his capture, his incarceration, the loss of everything he had worked so hard to achieve. He could almost feel the cold steel of handcuffs closing around his wrists, the harsh glare of interrogation lights blinding him to the world outside.\nBut even as his worst fears threatened to consume him, Vincent clung to a glimmer of hope. He was not one to go down without a fight, and he refused to let his adversaries best him so quickly. He forced himself to focus, think, and plan with every ounce of willpower. His mind raced through a thousand possibilities, searching for a way out of the nightmare that threatened to engulf him. He knew that the stakes were higher than ever now, that failure was not an option.\n<<>>\nFrom the darkness came a cacophony of mechanical whirs and clicks as hidden mechanisms were set into motion. The floor beneath Vincent's feet suddenly shifted, revealing hidden pitfalls yawning wide like hungry jaws. He stumbled backward, narrowly avoiding the gaping hole that threatened to swallow him whole. Barely aware of inevitable deaths, trying to catch their breath, he noticed movement from his right side.\nFrom the corners of the room, the museum's statues, once silent sentinels of art and history, began to move with their own lives. Their stone faces contorted into grotesque masks of fury as they descended upon Vincent with an eerie grace. With each step, their marble feet echoed like the approach of doom, their outstretched arms reaching for him with deadly intent.\nAs Vincent found himself ensnared within the surreal nightmare of walking statues, he fought with every fiber of his being, desperation lending strength to his limbs. With a primal instinct, he ducked and weaved between the advancing statues, his movements quick and agile, narrowly evading the lethal grasp of their outstretched arms. His mind raced, strategizing each step as if it were his last, seeking any advantage in this surreal battle for survival.\nA statue lunged forward, its marble hand grazing his cheek with a cold, unforgiving touch. Vincent winced as he felt the sharp edge of stone cut across his skin, a searing pain erupting where the sculpture's fingers had made contact. Blood trickled down his face, a crimson testament to the intensity of the struggle.\nA statue swung its arm in a vicious arc, catching Vincent off guard and sending him sprawling to the ground. The impact rattled his bones, leaving him momentarily stunned as he struggled to regain footing. He pushed himself upright through gritted teeth, his muscles screaming in protest as he braced for the next onslaught.\nAnother statue closed in, its eyes gleaming with otherworldly malice as it loomed over Vincent with menacing intent. With a surge of adrenaline, he lunged forward, narrowly avoiding the lethal strike aimed at his chest. Instead, the statue's hand grazed his side, leaving behind a deep gash that throbbed with agonizing intensity.\nDespite the pain coursing through his body, Vincent pressed on, his resolve unbroken even as his strength waned. Each movement became a struggle against exhaustion, every injury a testament to the ferocity of his adversaries. Yet still, he fought on, driven by a primal instinct to survive against all odds.\nFaced with the deadly attacks of the statues, whose relentless efforts were draining him of all his energy and strength, Vincent decided to improvise. Being arrested by the police no longer seemed so wrong compared to the injuries he had already suffered. Guided by instinct, he demolished the glass cases, creating barriers between himself and the statues. To his surprise, the display cases completely covered the statues, making it impossible for them to finish him off.\nStill reeling from everything, catching his breath, he leaned against the wall, feeling the rough texture of the picture frame. He instinctively jumped forward and turned, just in time to feel the cat's blade pierce his right shoulder. The grotesque face of the uniformed man made indistinct sounds as the sword penetrated deeper and deeper, tearing through the sinews and veins beneath his skin. Vincent couldn't scream out of horror; he was utterly shocked, trying to understand what was happening. He managed to step back, feeling the searing pain as the blade of the cat was pulled out, splattering blood everywhere.\nWith a sense of urgency bordering on desperation, Vincent scanned the corridor for an escape route. His eyes landed on a nearby window, its glass panes shimmering faintly in the dim light.\nSummoning the last reserves of his strength, Vincent staggered towards it, his footsteps faltering with each agonizing step. Behind him, he could hear the relentless pursuit of the statues, their stone forms scraping against the floor like the footsteps of doom.\nReaching the window, Vincent slammed his shoulder against it, but the glass barely cracked under the force of his blow. With a curse, he frantically searched for something to break it with, his fingers closing around a nearby fire extinguisher.\nWith a desperate cry, Vincent swung the extinguisher at the window, shattering it with a resounding crash. Glass shards rained down around him as he hurled himself through the opening, his injured body protesting every movement.\nOutside, the night air hit him like a welcome embrace, offering a brief respite from the museum's suffocating darkness. But there was no time to rest—he could hear the statues closing in, their relentless pursuit unyielding.\nWith a grimace of pain, Vincent forced himself to his feet, his muscles trembling with exhaustion. Ignoring the protests of his battered body, he stumbled towards the edge of the rooftop, his gaze fixed on the dizzying drop below.\nWith a final surge of determination, Vincent threw himself off the rooftop and into the void. The ground rushed up to meet him, and for a moment, he felt weightless, suspended between heaven and earth.\nThen, with a bone-jarring impact, Vincent landed on the pavement below, his body crumpling under the force of the fall. Pain exploded through every nerve, but he gritted his teeth and forced himself to his feet, his heart pounding in his chest.\nLooking back at the museum, he saw the statues looming at the broken window, their malevolent gaze fixed on him like vultures circling their prey. But Vincent refused to be their victim—he had escaped their clutches and would not let them drag him back into the darkness.\nWith a defiant snarl, Vincent limped into the night, leaving the museum's malevolence behind him like a fading nightmare." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: They All Belong to Him\n\nGenre: african-american\n\nWord Count: 2003\n\nPrompt:\n\nStart your story with a character seeing something terrifying." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Part One\n It happened for the first time, the summer the girl with the pigtails went missing, abducted from a small town along the interstate. Manny was just a little boy and staying with his Big Momma for summer vacation. His trips down south were the tapestry of his youth, but his memories of the summer of his ninth birthday would always be special. \nBig Momma’s old farmhouse, and the sprawling Louisiana bayou that surrounded it, were the perfect setting for Manny’s active imagination. Catfish and trout swam in the lakes and streams. He’d catch tadpoles, and crawfish. He’d find buried treasure and pirates' booty that was revealed to him through child’s play and make believe.\nThat summer, when he reluctantly left his buddies and toys in Chicago, he didn’t miss a thing. The best part was playing with Max, Big Momma’s old grumpy Chiwawa. It took a minute for the old girl (Max was short for Maxine) to become accustomed to Manny’s rambunctiousness and kindhearted ruff housing. He was Just a young boy playing and having fun and before long, they were as thick as thieves. Max was better than any PlayStation, X Box, and Chucky Cheese birthday party put together.\n She knew her way around the dense swampland behind Big Momma’s house. So, they went exploring early one morning with Big Momma’s ok. Fully equipped with his GI Joe Survival Pack, and Paw Paw’s Walkie Talkie, Manny and Max took off on their adventure before dawn. Besides, by 12 o clock, it got too hot to play outside.\nHe smelled the sweet morning dew on the Pecan trees, and he stepped lightly on the ground covered with pinecones and branches. He played a game of crushing the shells beneath his feet. A smoky fog hovered above the ground like a blanket, and he surveyed his next target before he attacked. He was about to jump and crush another shell when Max started barking.\nHe looked up to see a girl with pigtails standing about 30 feet away, beneath the weathered vines of a weeping willow tree. She looked out of place in her catholic schoolgirl uniform and high white socks. Her gaze was fixated on something far beyond him.\nMax stopped barking, sat on her haunches, and cocked her head to the side. She too felt the sudden chill in the air that gave Manny goosebumps despite the morning sun that shimmered through the trees.\n“Are you from around here? Are you lost?”\nAnd suddenly the girl in pigtails was gone, leaving nothing but an empty space under the weeping willow tree where she had been standing.\nPart Two\nBig Momma’s government name was Clara Jean Hudson, but most of the simple folk in Panchanan Parrish called her Miss Clara. She would have a smiling photo published next to her obituary in the Panchanan Daily News. Manny saw it all, decades removed from his childish days of play. His visions had revealed the future, again, hours before it happened, miles away, ensconced in a dream.\nBig Momma had just died.\n He wept alone, Shaking off the broken fragments of his dream. His new Reality seeped through his soul Like venom.\n His bedroom was cold. The sliding glass door to the terrace had been left open and he stumbled out of bed, grabbing his robe to sit outside. \nHis extraordinary gifts had afforded him all this luxury and opulence. Who couldn’t marvel at the magnificent view overlooking Chicago's lakefront and his lofty condominium in the sky?\n Did they know He’d give it all away if it would bring his Big Mamma back.\nBetween his tears he laughed aloud and lost himself as the morning dawn lit up the sky. He wouldn’t become complacent with his memories. In a few hours Pawpaw would be calling from Louisiana with the terrible news.\nHe’d travel by train, like he used to, during the summer vacations of his youth. Although his gifts had financially rewarded him well and he was blessed with a plethora of options, it was his fame and notoriety that was an unpleasant fact he struggled to live with.\nHe couldn’t explain his psychic gifts and he often wondered Why.\nBut even the atheist who needed proof, or the naysayers that called him a charlatan, paid handsomely for a private reading. They couldn’t dispute the facts. He assisted in solving over 300 missing person cases. He had a waiting list, a podcast, 2 best sellers and options for a reality series.\nHe told them NO. No to the Cameras following him every day, judging his psychic gifts. No to his life on display for the world to see.\nHis landline rang In the bedroom. Before he answered Pawpaw’s call, he prayed for a quiet train ride down south alone with his memories to lay his Big Mamma to rest.\nPart Three\nBig Mamma was walking back inside after grabbing the mail and her morning paper. She was grateful for the morning reprieve with Manny and Max gone exploring in the dense wetlands that boarded her property.\nShe gave a casual glance to the sky and her third eye saw relief coming soon to Paw’s worrisome questions about his thirsty corn crop. Yes, it would finally rain. Just a little drizzle this evening but she saw a storm coming. Something fierce was brewing on the horizon, and it wasn’t good. \nBig Momma was a whole lot of Woman with a fondness for turbans, bracelets, and all things dramatic and brassy. She made a jangly noise as she shuffled down the graveled driveway to her farmhouse tucked in the bayou. Her furry slippers and dusty feet had seen better days and they stirred up the seedlings she had planted along the driveway. \nIt took a minute for her to get situated at the fancy kitchen table and chairs. One of the rich white families she had cleaned for, had given it to her, and she was grateful. She liked the loud green colors, and the chairs were spacious enough for her big behind. Fresh coffee and rolls lay ready to be enjoyed and She turned on the TV and set the channel to 12 for Oprah at ten o’clock.\nShe was surprised to see Max come prowling through the screen door alone without her new companion.\n“Why yawl back so soon?”\nShe wondered about it aloud, as the question set off alarm bells in her head. She half expected to hear an explanation from the beady eyed Chiwawa when She remembered Paw’s Walkie-talkie and snatched it from the counter. \n“Manny?” Click. Silence followed by static.\nShe waited for a response, pressing the hissing radio closer to her ear.\nPart Four\nThe First-Class attendant was a handsome fellow that directed Manny to his cabin tucked away on the second level of the Amtrak Superliner. His ride on the Delta Concorde from Chicago to Louisiana would take 20 hours. Although he half hoped to do some writing during this quiet time, he already knew that the gentle rolling motion of the train would be his lullaby.\nHis e-ticket opened the door, and he surmised the cramped yet suitable accommodations. He dropped his luggage to the floor, with a grateful exhale. A private restroom was available through the door to his left, and a semi comfortable looking couch and table, converted into 2 bunk beds and a night table to his right.\nHe instantly kicked off his loafers and grabbed the fresh pillow and linens off the couch. He swaddled himself in the sheets, awaiting his disappearance from the world that sped by his window in dingy shades of gray.\nHe\nWas \nDreaming\nAgain\n“Manny! Manny! If I gotta leave my show to come git you, it ain’t gonna be PRETTY!”\nGood thing Big Momma was shouting into Pawpaw’s Walkie Talkie or else he wouldn’t have heard a thing. The girl with the pig tails hadn’t stopped talking, begging for his help. Not really out loud, but in his head.\nIt freaked him out so much he ran back to Big Mamma’s barn and tried to make sense of what was happening. He didn’t mean to, but he threw his Survival Pack and Walkie Talkie at the barn doors, hoping to silence the voice in his head.\nHe found a place on the barn floor. Even Max had grown tired of his erratic temperament.\n“OK girl, don't fucking play with Me.”\nManny shouted his threats to no one in particular.\n Wonder if he wasn’t crazy. Could her voice in his head be true? \nCould there really be a man who drove the interstate. A trucker perhaps… and he killed little girls. He tortured them for days and when they died, he fed their remains to the alligators in the swamp. The dead girl had shown Manny visions of her rotten flesh that had floated to the surface. Her pigtails were muddy tentacles pieced to her skull. Her face was barely human in the moonlit swamp. \n“Boy, Who you think you cursing at? Because it CERTAINLY couldn’t be Me!”\nBig Mamma’s wide shadow eclipsed the sun.\nShe looked around the barn to see if Manny was fooling around with one of those fast ass gals from town when she stopped. Manny’s face was shaken with an expression part terror part crazy. Red eyes wide as frisbees.\n“What’s wrong child? Did Something bite you. What happened?\nFor a moment he couldn’t speak. How could he describe to Big Momma the horrible things the girl had shown him?\n“There are some people born to do certain things. \nSome people were born to sing. Some were born to change the world. \n Manny You were born to see. \nGod gave you this gift.\nYou did your work.\nTime to Come home.\nBig Mamma’s words echoed in his dream as the jarring motion of the train woke him up. For a moment he was disoriented as he heard a knock at the cabin door. He looked outside. The window was slick with rain. The train raced alongside a highway; Busy Traffic stalled behind ringing Railroad Crossings. In a flash, lighting crackled in the night sky. Thunder soon followed.\nHe staggered against the rocking motion of the train to open the door to see the handsome first-class attendant standing there. With a sincere and humble approach, he held a copy of Manny’s first novel: They All Belong to Him\n“Mister Hudson, I hate to disturb you, but I’m a big fan. I listen to your Podcast all the time, and I kept looking at you and comparing it to the book cover and your Google Profile, it’s got pictures of you there, and I’m thinking: Is that Manny Hudson, the famous psychic, on my train ….”\nManny forced a weak smile.\n“Yes. It’s me…”\n“Oh my God, Kevins not going to believe this….\nThe train was racing along the tracks now and the dim lights in the narrow hall flickered, then went dead. In a few seconds of realization, Manny wondered to himself, Should the train be traveling this fast?\n When\n the horrific crash. Welcomed\nBlackness\nThen Screaming that wouldn’t stop.\nThe twisted wreckage of the train was on fire.\nManny was above it all.\nGone traveling he was.\nDestined to meet his Big Momma\nOn the Other Side of Eternity\nBecause Love lasts\nForever\nPart Five\nPawpaw’s government name was James Louis McKay, but most of the simple folk in Panchanan Parrish called him Mr. Jimmie. His little corner store and sausage shop used to have the sweetest corn and the best homemade sausage on this side of the Mississippi River. He closed that store a long time ago.\nWith Manny and Ma gone he spent most of his days in silent reflection and enjoying his last days on earth in comfort. Shame that sometimes he felt living was just time spent waiting to die. \nPawpaw was ready, that was for sure. He knew something better was waiting for him on the other side." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: The Perfect Night\n\nGenre: adventure\n\nWord Count: 1007\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about an art thief who is struggling to commit the perfect heist." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "In the deep silence of the night, Rick, with his heart pounding with a mix of fear and exhilaration, snuck in the art gallery. This was it, the final act of his thievery career, spurred by the love for his fiancée and the thrill of one last challenge. The gallery, with its dim lights casting long shadows, seemed to whisper secrets of the past, secrets Rick was about to become a part of.\nHe moved slowly, each step calculated, avoiding the creaky floorboards seasoned with age and secrets. The irony of the situation didn't escape him; the artwork he aimed to claim was “The Perfect Night”. Rick’s mind wandered briefly to his fiancée, her uneasy expression when she accepted his risky lifestyle for one last time, her whispered fears echoing in his memory. Yet, tonight, he promised himself, marked the end.\nAs Rick approached the painting, his future flashed before him: a new beginning, a clean slate, dreams of daylight rather than shadow. But destiny had a twist in store. There, basking in the moonlight filtering through the skylight, stood a mysterious figure — a woman, with light blond hair, face covered with a long shadow, and thin pale hands.\nHer whisper cut through the silence. She spoke of the painting, her grandfather's legacy, and her hidden resentment towards him for constantly saying she would never be good enough to become a real artist or have her artworks displayed in this gallery. Rick listened, entranced by the raw emotion in her voice, her story unfolding like a parallel to his own life’s canva.\nRick: \"Why are you here so late? This place is supposed to be empty.\"\nWoman (Whispering): \"I could ask you the same, but we both know why we're really here, don't we? This painting, 'The Perfect Night\", it's more than just canvas and paint, it represents my shattered dreams, courtesy of my grandfather's harsh words. I've spent my life hiding behind these shadows, letting fear dictate my choices. But you, breaking in here, why do this?\"\nThe conversation turned, unexpected and surreal, to her own hidden artworks, her fears, her repressed artistic soul yearning for recognition. Rick, moved by her vulnerability, saw a mirror of his own concealed desires in her confession. Here was a fellow shadow walker, a kindred spirit bound by her own chains of fear and familial expectations.\nRick faced a crossroads, his heart torn between the adrenaline of the theft and an unforeseen connection. The painting, once the symbol of his final victory, now stood as a beacon of potential change. Could he abandon his plan for this stranger, this artist trapped in her own silent gallery of unfulfilled dreams?\nTheir eyes met, two worlds colliding in the dim light of the gallery. Rick, the seasoned thief, recognized a flicker of hope in her eyes — a hope that he knew could shatter the darkness of his own existence.\nRick: \"Because I thought this was the only way out, but maybe... maybe there's another path, one that doesn't involve taking what's not mine.\"\nWoman: \"Another path... I've always dreamt of showing my own art, of stepping out from under my grandfather's shadow. But fear, it's a powerful jailer. I feel you know what I am talking about, am I right?\"\nThe gallery, a silent witness to their burgeoning understanding, seemed to hold its breath. The choice was his: to continue down the path of shadows or to step into a unknown world painted with trust to a stranger he met a few minutes ago.\nRick: \"Show me your art. I know that it sounds strange, we just met each other, totally strangers. But let's me look, please.\"\nWoman (Pauses, then softly): \"You would do that? After planning such a heist? All my life I was told I wasn't enough, that my art was worthless. that my dreams, my art, were nothing but childish fantasies. 'Real artists are born, not made,' he'd say, and he made sure I believed it. Standing here with you, a total stranger, yet offering me what I've longed for—acceptance, belief... it's overwhelming. It's hard to accept that he was mistaken, that I allowed his words to crush me so thoroughly. He was oppressive, unrelentingly harsh. I can hardly fathom it—I sought his approval, yearned for his love and belief in me. Yet, what did I receive? Only emptiness. And now, fate throws me against a thief, someone who sees value in what I’ve deemed worthless because of my grandfather’s assertions. Perhaps he was right. I’ve lost myself completely. I need a change, a big change. I do not trust myself, people. I do not listen to anybody. I live my small life without friends because I am so miserable. And you are stayimg here and saying that you can offer me something that absolutely impossible. Who are you? And how dare you to tell me that? If you want to steal it, just steal. I don't care. I would be happy if you do so. Give me a favor, just destroy it. I am so done.\"\nIn that moment, under the watchful eyes of timeless art, Rick realized that the true heist wasn’t about stealing a painting; it was about reclaiming lost pieces of oneself. He understood now that life’s most exquisite art form was connection, the intertwining of souls on their journey through the shadowed corridors of existence.\nMoving together into the realm of her unseen art, Rick knew that this night, indeed, was perfect. Not because of a successful theft, but because it was the night he stole back his future, guided by the light of a stranger’s spirit. The night was deep, the journey uncertain, but for the first time, Rick stepped forward not as a thief, but as a guardian of dreams, his own and those reflected in the eyes of the woman beside him.\nThis night, the gallery of his life welcomed a new masterpiece, one painted with the hues of hope and the promise of a dawn yet to come." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Pay it Forward\n\nGenre: adventure\n\nWord Count: 2993\n\nPrompt:\n\nStart or end your story with a character who gets trapped inside a museum overnight." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Archie knew he had a problem, but he also had another problem that compounded that problem. Firstly, he was in the habit of not listening. But what made it worse was that even in knowing that he wasn’t listening and that this was increasingly becoming a problem, he did nothing about it.\n“You can’t do this,” Archie said as he was manhandled from the car and walked to the back door of the huge edifice of a building made ominous by the dark shadows thrown by street lamps that stood well back and avoided the less salubrious parts of the city.\n“Are you going to remind me of daft laws that had no business being passed for the likes of you and I?” \nIt wasn’t the question itself that made Archie gobble up air like a guppy fish, but it was a good question. Neither was it the challenge that the question presented, or rather a pushback on something that Archie had thrown at his old man a few times too many. No, it was the look the big man gave his son. That look crushed Archie in a way he didn’t know was possible. What that look crushed was a piece of his heart that had lain forgotten in his chest for far too long. \nArchie saw a heady cocktail of love and disappointment in his father’s eyes and in that moment, he knew he’d pushed it all too far. Now he had an unspoken question of his own. A question that haunts the world and visits unfortunates with a gift of shame; how did it get to this?\nAn inexplicable feeling of sadness threatened to rear up within Archie. If he’d allowed it to come forth then everything would have turned out differently. It certainly would have been far easier for Archie. But Archie wasn’t about easy. He had a feeling he was owed, but he’d never sat down with that feeling to have a chat about what it might be that he thought was coming to him.\nInstead, the shame gripped him. The shame knew its business, besides which, it had a willing host. Archie thought he was ignoring his shame as he invoked his anger. The shame smiled, it was the deceitful face of anger and it had won another battle against a supposedly superior opponent.\n“No,” said Archie defiantly, “this is trespass.”\nArchie’s Dad rolled his sad eyes, any doubt he might’ve had about this last-ditch endeavour was dispelled by his errant son’s arrogance. He knew his son was better than this, but he was sick to the back teeth with Archie’s shows of bravado. More and more he suppressed his true nature and it was becoming increasingly difficult to get through to the boy. \nEven so, Dan, or Big Dan as he was known in the village that he’d made his home for the past thirty years, almost faltered. Archie was his little boy and he’d never lost sight of that. He drew in a breath of resolve, reminding himself that he’d probably been too soft on the lad. That he’d tried his best to understand and done everything he could to be the boy’s world. There was a compromise there though and that compromise had done them both a disservice. \nWhat was about to happen was harsh. Some would call it unfair. Life was unfair and there was too much suffering for some. But it was what it was, making excuses only made it worse. Blaming others, worse still.\nHe unlocked the door and waved his son through.\n“I can’t believe you’re doing this!” said Archie, his voice rising in pitch to convey the depth of his protest.\n“You’ve brought this on yourself, son,” said Dan shaking his head in sorrow. Archie opened his mouth to speak, but Dan raised a single finger in stark warning, “don’t, you had ample opportunity to turn the corner, but you thought better of it and now this is the consequence.” He narrowed his eyes and grit his teeth, “you’ve gotta learn sometime. You reap what you sow, boy.”\nArchie knew better than to pipe up. This was as much survival instinct as respect. Sometimes the message was clear however much you didn’t want to hear it, and however much noise you made in an attempt to drown it out.\nThey walked in silence into the depths of the building. It was dark, but the full moon and the city’s ambient light was sufficient for them to see where they were going, but it carried with it a lack that was verging on a dark threat. Archie didn’t want to admit that the place scared him and this internal battle increased his fear, even before he got around to considering how it would be when his father abandoned him here.\nSuddenly, there was a blinding flash of light. Dan had the presence of mind to clap a hand over his son’s mouth and drag him into the shadows. The lights in the next room had been switched on by the security guard doing his rounds.\nDan leaned into his son and whispered into his ear, “you don’t want to be seen by that guy. If you are, you have nowhere to go and you will be arrested.”\nArchie’s eyes went wide, Dan noticed this even in the shadows. Turned out that he did still listen when his life depended upon it. Maybe the boy would turn the corner after all. If not, then Dan had done everything that he could.\nThey waited as the guard did his patrol in the neighbouring room, relaxing a little as the light went out. A flashlight beam danced around and the next light switch was flicked. Thankfully that next room charted a course away from Dan and Archie’s current location. Dan smiled inwardly at this. He’d not known where the guard was headed, but Archie wasn’t to know this. The perception of Dan’s knowing would add a certain something to the proceedings, or ordeal as Dan was sure Archie would be viewing it right now. That would change. Or if it didn’t then Archie was too far gone.\nDan refused to believe that. His love beat his chest fiercely and reminded him of what really counted. Not him. Not Archie. There was far more at play here. More than even Dan understood. By the time the sun rose and transformed death into life once again, Archie would understand a little more. Dan believed this with a burning passion, a force of will. His son would open his eyes to the first day of the rest of his life and they would get through whatever obstacles they were presented. Together.\nThree heartbeats later, Dan released his son. He stood before him and prepared to leave him to face the music that would only be played for his ears. This was a moment. A solemn moment. Something passed between father and son, and Dan automatically presented his little lad with his spade-like hand.\n“It’s time,” he said fiercely, perhaps a little too fiercely. It sounded too much like you’re on your own. “You’ve got this,” he added with a squeeze of his hand. Then he turned on his heel and vanished far too quickly for Archie’s liking.\nArchie watched his dad go and the moment of overwhelming pride at what he had just said almost exploded into shards of pain as an all too familiar feeling of abandonment assailed him. \nIt’s not his fault.\nHe didn’t abandon me.\nWords in Archie’s ear, the voice of the little boy he once was. The little boy that he now loathed. He stood there in turmoil. He was that weak and pathetic little boy, but his dad had just made him feel like a man. The little boy didn’t want him to be a man and that man resented the little boy. \nA powerful urge threatened to drag him down to the floor and it was all he could do not to let go, give up and cry tears of pity that should be a comfort but could never bring the comfort he required.\nHe pushed himself away from the protection of the alcove that his father had pulled him into and drove himself forth. If he stayed where he was, he would be discovered. He had to do something. He had to move. \nNow he was on his own and walking through the building he was more himself and this brought an awareness that he had been lacking in the bubble of the panic he’d experienced in his dad’s car and had been fighting ever since.\n“It’s done now,” he whispered to himself.\nHis dad had referred to one guard. So it should be a simple case of moving around in a circle so he always had sufficient distance from that man. There was the question of how he would make his exit, but there was something about the way his father had acted that gave Archie an assurance in that respect. He trusted that all would become clear and all he really had to do was evade the bloke who was paid to wander an empty building to ensure it remained empty.\nSimple, as long as Archie stuck to the brief. Even now he got that that in itself was a lesson. Archie had made simple increasingly hard and that difficulty was not isolated to Archie. He knew he was hurting his dad, and once he was in receipt of that awareness it had only seemed to make him worse. Once that was the case, Archie couldn’t see a way back.\nThat was the point, he realised. His dad was making it clear that he also couldn’t see a way back unless something changed. Unless Archie changed.\nHe should have resented being here. He should have carried on with his dull and destructive downward patterns of behaviour, but he felt exhilarated by the adventure he was now presented with. It took him a while to realise that a part of that was the belief that his dad had in him. That his dad had always had in him.\nAs this sank in, he began to see around him. Really see around him. Now he was taking in his surroundings and there was a weird and eerie sense to what he saw. He was in a place devoted to the past. A carnal house of sorts. The ancient bones of times lost, arranged in meaningful ways to speak to those who paid attention enough.\nHis surroundings transformed around him. Obstacles and potential hiding places stepped out before him and greeted him. He’d heard the word gravitas several times, but never attended to its meaning. Some words were like that. They sat in a crowd of context but never made a fuss. Instead they awaited an appropriate time to make a proper introduction. \nArchie didn’t think that inanimate objects could have gravitas. People had gravitas. They walked into the room and showed it off to everyone in order to manipulate them and get what they wanted. He stopped at a bust and read the plaque in the surreal light that bathed his surroundings. The date meant nothing to him beyond old. He couldn’t comprehend the distance of time between himself and that of the life of the person the bust depicted.\nHe moved on, but only a short distance to a cabinet which contained weapons of war from the same era. The naughty boy inside him wished that there were no cabinet. He had an overwhelming urge to reach out and brandish each and every weapon. Feel the weight of them, imagining himself on a battle field in the midst of conflict. A shiver ran down his spine as he was reminded that he was in a place of death. Everyone who had wielded weapons such as these were dead, even the victors couldn’t escape that inevitable conclusion to life.\nIn the next room there were paintings. He didn’t note the change that was overcoming him. It crept up on him until he was calm and flowing through the place with little care for anything other than what was presented to him. He was floating in the blue light and taking in a world he’d never realised existed. He’d passed through places like this previously, but on those occasions there had been hustle, bustle and a glare of lights that reminded him of school. Too much of it had reminded him of the structure and rules of education and there had been little room for him to experience any enjoyment. This was different though. Somehow, he could be himself here in a way he never knew possible. \nThe centrepiece in this room was a huge, imposing painting made all the more daunting by the horse upon which a pompous man was seated. Pompous he may have been, but there was something in the imperious look of the man that made Archie feel small and insignificant. He wanted to resent that feeling, but something else spoke to him and said simply; relax, this is important.\nArchie moved on and as he wandered with a purpose he could not quite describe, he thought of those words and the importance of this night. His dad was at the end of his tether. Archie knew that. He’d pushed and pushed and pushed until he forgot why it was that he was pushing. He thought he’d probably wanted a reaction, and that each time he’d been in receipt of a reaction he had deemed it insufficient. Now he was here. As a final act, his father had locked him in this place.\nWhy?\nOf all the options available to him, his dad had chosen this place. His dad’s choice intrigued him as much as his surroundings did. He thought he knew why he was here, but there was no simple answer to it. Instead, there was a suite of answers and many of those answers spawned more questions. Not a surprise because this was a place of learning as well as the resting place for old bones.\nArchie stood before a weather worn and pockmarked statue that had once sat proudly in a desert kingdom. He looked at the artist’s interpretation of how the statue had looked thousands of years ago when it was as young as him. It’s presence had not diminished with time. Quite the opposite.\nHe continued his circuit, barely aware of the guard he kept at a constant distance, only once thinking of the only other occupant of the building; hoping he enjoyed this solitude with the wise dead as much as Archie was. \nAs the light in the building shone more brightly, heralding the end of Archie’s adventure, he felt a sense of loss. At first it was a far off call, but a call he could not deny. It was as he sensed the arrival of the first hoard of visitors and the end of his time in the museum that he found himself in front of a marble statue of a woman in robes. The statue was a statue he’d seen a thousand concrete copies of, in garden centres and the like. The contempt of his mistaken familiarity almost led him to miss the moment this museum had saved until the very last.\nHe looked up at the statue and came face to face with his mother. His mother as he was always supposed to remember her, a faint, mischievous smile that held a thousand promises. He wanted to cry, but instead he returned the smile and he held it close as he ran from the building and into his father’s arms.\n“I’m sorry dad,” he said into the big man’s chest.\nDan eased him away, but not out of his arms, “what did you see?”\n“Mum,” Archie said simply, “I saw Mum.”\nDan nodded. That was enough and more.\nBut for Archie it wasn’t. The boy needed to say more, to share the truth of his night at the museum, “I…” he began.\n“It’s OK,” said Dan, “I know,” he added kindly.\n“No!” protested Archie, “it’s not that… I mean… I am sorry. I’ve been a little git and I took things out on you that I shouldn’t have.”\nDan shrugged, “it’s what I’m here for,” then he grinned, “sometimes,” he added with loaded meaning.\nArchie scrutinised his dad’s face, looking for an answer he was already in possession of, “it wasn’t just Mum you wanted me to see was it?”\n“No,” confirmed Dan as he turned and lead his son away from the museum and towards a greasy spoon. The night’s work had made them both ravenous.\n“You wanted me to learn,” said Archie.\n“I always want you to learn,” said Dan, “that’s what it’s all about. Took your mother to truly teach me that. And you…” he turned and smiled sadly at his son.\n“I miss her too,” said Archie, falling into his dad like the little boy he would always be as far as his father was concerned.\n“She’s right here with us, son.” Dan said softly as he ruffled the boys hair lovingly.\n“They all are,” whispered Archie, “all the people that made us possible. All the people that made this possible. We owe them more than we can ever repay.”\n“True,” agreed Dan.\n“So how’d we…” began Archie.\n“Pay it forward,” Dan said, “Give. There is a light that burns within each and every one of us. It burns all the more brightly for everything we’ve been given. Throughout our life we are the custodians of that light. We’re meant to nurture and grow it. Give and add to it and in the end, we give it all away so that it continues to light this world up. That is living well.”\nArchie smiled, wondering how he’d ever been so angry with his Dad. He’d learnt his lesson and then some." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Dust to Dust\n\nGenre: african-american\n\nWord Count: 1578\n\nPrompt:\n\nMake a character perform a ceremony to set something or someone free." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I remember the night we left Haiti like a dream. It was a hot and sticky August night, and my little brother and I slept huddled together on the same bed. He had wet his bed the day before, so his mattress was still leaning on the patio railing to dry. My mother woke us hurriedly, shaking our legs in hushed tones.\n“We have to go,” she urged. “Grab your things,” she continued as she walked to the other end of the room. I remember thinking, what things? What time is it? But as I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, I saw our school bags plumped and perched against the wall and somehow knew those were the things. Those were all of our things. \nSo in the cover of darkness, and in the stillness of the night, with only the moonlight as our guide, we piled our things in the trunk of my mother’s Datsun and drove in silence to my grandfather’s house. I was the only stop we would make on our way to the airport. I often think about that drive, wishing I knew to take one last look at my home and commit every detail to memory. I wished I’d hugged my grandfather longer when we said our goodbyes and told him I loved him because it would be the last time we saw each other. I wished I had inhaled deeper, to take in all the sweetness of the fruit trees in the air, and listened to the noises of the animals and birds more carefully to play it over in my head whenever I got homesick. I wished I had known that after landing in the United States, I would search far and wide and still never find anything quite like home in the vastness of this land. But I didn’t know. \n“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to remember the life of a remarkable man.” People huddled in small groups under their umbrellas, protecting themselves from the drizzle, as they listened to the pastor speak. It was humid, and the air felt heavy. The clouds filled the sky, and a light fog shaded everything and everyone in grey. \nMaybe I had missed his remarkable years, I thought. That’s why I couldn’t conjure tears. Growing up, he was the boogeyman in my life. He was the infamous character who’d pop up if I was being bad or disrespectful to my mother. \n“Do you want your father to come get you?” She’d say. “Do you want to go live with him?” She’d threaten me at the end of any lecture she gave me because I was acting like a wild child again. My father was a faceless memory that slowly faded, year after year, into insignificance. But, to these people, he was remarkable. \nOne day, the week before we left Haiti, my little brother and I were playing in the front of the house, pretending to be mechanics and fixing our bikes, when my father came home, smelling of rum and slurring his speech. He yelled about the front door being opened and tripped over our bikes on his way into the house. He fell forward clumsily, hitting his forehead on the concrete and scraping his arm. My little brother, his namesake, rushed to check on him while I remained seated and watched from where I was. And as he approached, my father attempted to get up and swung his arm quickly, smacking my brother in the face as he turned. \n“Don’t touch me!” He yelled. “You little idiot. Pick up your damn bike!” \nI sucked in my breath and held it in, hoping and praying it would end there. But my brother froze, as he usually did in these situations, which provoked him even more. \n“Don’t you hear me talking to you? What?! You’re mute AND deaf!?” He screamed as he approached him, preparing to strike again. \n“Don’t!” I said, letting out the breath I held in all at once. I thought I would pass out from all the blood rushing to my head. He looked at me pointedly and shifted his body towards me. Slowly approaching, he asked, “What did you say?”\n“What’s going on out there!?” Someone shouted from inside the house. In that small moment of distraction, I leaped up, grabbed my brother by the arm, and pulled him as I ran towards the neighbor’s house. \nThe pastor finished speaking, and the casket slowly lowered to the ground. People approached one by one and dropped roses into the grave. Some lingered. Some cried. I stood still, observing everything as if it were a scene in a movie. \n“How did you know him?” A woman asked, approaching me. She looked young, about my little brother’s age, maybe younger, and had short black hair. Her dress looked about two sizes too big because she looked like she was drowning in it and had bags under her eyes. \nShe reminded me of a girl I had met during my first week at university. The girl sat alone in the student union, concentrating while scribbling on paper. She was pressing so hard you could hear her pen scraping the table. Maybe that’s why I approached her. \n“Is everything ok?” I asked as I lightly touched the table, motioning towards the paper on which she was writing. She popped her head up and looked a little surprised. Then she leaned back in her chair while slowly putting down her pen and flipping her paper over. \n“I recognize you. You’re that girl from 3B, right?”\n“Umm,” I replied, a little hesitant and slightly weirded out. \n“Yea,” she added, now more sure of herself. “You showed up to moving day with just a backpack when everyone else had like suitcases and boxes and stuff. \n “Yea. I travel light.” I replied, “What are you working on? Professors giving out homework already?” She let out a light chuckle. \n“Nah, nothing like that. I’m letting someone go.” \n“What?” Admittedly, I was lost. \n“Not literally. I mean, ceremoniously. You see, my grandma used to tell me when I was younger,” she continued, “when someone hurts you, you carry that hurt everywhere you go. Even if time has passed. If you don’t let go of that hurt of that person, you end up carrying it with you forever. You end up damaged. You know? Cuz you’re hurtin’.” \n“So, how do you get rid of the hurt?” I asked her, curiously. \n“You got to set it free. Set the person and the hurt they cause you free.” She leaned forward, turned her paper over again, and picked up her pen. “I do that by writing down everything I feel, everything they did to me, and everything I want to heal from. Then, I set it on fire. I get it out of me and onto the paper and set it on fire.”\n“Hmm.” I wasn’t sure what to say. Mostly I was skeptical that something like that would work, much less make sense. \n“What?” She asked, reading something on my face. “You ain’t never have somebody hurt you? You ain’t got nothing you carrying?” \n“That’s not it,” I replied. \nShe paused and looked at me for what seemed like forever. “Well,” she finally said, “Don’t knock it until you try it.” she got up, picked up her bag, and left. \n“He touched the lives of so many. Were you one of his students? The woman continued earnestly, pulling me from my thoughts. \n“His student?” I retorted, surprised. I was a little more surprised than I wanted to let on. \n“Yea, he taught engineering at Umass, “she responded. She looked for something in my face. Feeling uneasy, I stuck my hand in my coat pocket and clutched the paper. I shifted my weight from one foot to another. Remember why you’re here, I repeated in my head like a mantra. \n“Is that how you knew him?” \n“No. He is… was my father.”\n“Your father?” I was confused. No, I was surprised. Was I hurt?\n“Yea, I was-“ someone touched her arm, interrupting her mid-sentence, and whispered something in her ear. \n“Well, it was nice meeting you,” she said, but I must go. “You’re welcomed to the repast,” she said as she started to turn away. Then quietly added, “If you’d like.”\nThe rain started falling a little harder, and more and more people began to leave. I stared at the hole in the ground and wondered how quickly it would fill up. Two men started removing the metal bars used to lower the casket and the green tarp around the hole. This was my last chance. I walked up to the hole and pulled the paper from my pocket. I had spent the last week writing and dumping all of the broken parts of me into it, praying this would work. There were moments I questioned the whole thing. What’s a dead man going to do with a piece of paper? But then I thought about how much of my life he had already consumed in his absence and how much he had destroyed when he was present; there was no way I could allow him to take up even more space in death. Letting him go was for me, my sanity, and my healing. Not for him. \nI threw the paper in the hole and watched it float down. So heavy and so light. “This is no longer mine to ca" } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: To The Grave\n\nGenre: african-american\n\nWord Count: 1520\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about a character who develops a special ritual to cope with something." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "After forty-five minutes of standing in one spot, I placed the sunflowers at the foot of her grave.\nThe sky had gone from a vibrant baby blue to a slowly darkening purple. The cemetery would be closing within minutes and I had to accept I couldn’t stay by her grave forever.\nMy hands were in my pockets and my eyes stared at the floor.\nThe pathway was covered with freshly fallen leaves. I stepped on the ones that were darker than orange, looking for a satisfying crunch under my feet.\nMy gaze shifted to my Nikes and one of the laces that was coming loose.\nA pair of benches that sat back-to-back to each other were about thirty feet away. I took a quick pause to sit and fix my shoe.\nWith my head hung low, I untied the lace of the right shoe completely, tying it better.\nBut then I sat up and didn’t move. I could no longer leave. I didn’t want to leave. I never wanted to. Even as I was compelled to by the hours of the cemetery’s operation, I dreaded the thought of having to abandon her. It pissed me off that I couldn’t stay, even just for the night.\nIt felt tortuous.\nEvery thought brought me back to the realization that this was my new reality. I had visited her every friday for the last three months. I was never able to stay for long, but I made sure to get around an hour each time I visited. And I just spoke to her. Every weekend. Silently begging her to come back to me, but fully knowing that no wish I could ever make would ever bring her back.\nI felt my blood begin to boil.\nI was past just being sad. Life was forcing me to accept a truth that seemed unfathomable. A truth sprung on me too soon.\nThe footsteps behind me caused me to remember to breathe. I let out a big sigh and inhaled slowly, feeling my chest rise on my sternum.\nThe footsteps got louder but slower, then stopped.\nThere was a combination of a sigh and groan that immediately told me the person behind me was a man probably over forty.\nHis breath was audible yet quiet enough to be ignored. I returned to focusing on my own breath. I manually kept each inhale and exhale steady, keeping myself distracted from my anger.\nAnd I sat there. And I kept my breath and thoughts controlled.\n“’Scuse me, I don’t mean to intrude.” The man behind me said.\nI was caught off guard by how young his voice was. And I wasn’t sure if he was speaking to me or someone else, so I didn’t answer\nI was not in the mood to talk anyway.\n“Could you tell me the time? I don’t got a phone on me.” He continued.\nI could tell he was definitely talking to me.\nI considered the fact that if I ignored him, he could just ask again. So taking preventative measures, I lifted my wrist upwards. My watch screen turned on, showing the glow of three digits.\n“Seven-forty-three.” I replied, dropping my hand back down.\n“Thanks, bud.”\nHe sounded like he was in his early thirties. And he definitely wasn’t from the south. His accent was immediately distinguishable. What specific northern state, I couldn’t say, but I was certain he was just visiting.\nI almost scolded myself for overanalyzing something that had nothing to do with me. But I remembered how she liked that about me. She could always see it in my eyes when my focus was entirely on our surroundings. And she would occasionally have to pull me out of my “trance”. She would laugh and tell me how she found it funny when I “locked in”. She would tell me how she loved that I would constantly watch our surroundings in public. And she would tell me how it made her feel safe.\nKnowing I would never again hear those comforting whispers of words again felt like a punishment.\nI took control of my thoughts again and prepared to get up and leave.\n“Do you ever feel like…”\nI froze. I was praying the man wasn’t talking to me a second time. I ignored him and patted my pockets.\n“—this can’t be reality, right?” He continued to whomever.\nPhone, check. Wallet, check. Keys, check.\n“The feeling, I don’t know, it makes me never want to leave.” He whispered.\nA chill ran down my spine and goosebumps spotted my forearms and triceps.\nI relaxed my body back into the chair.\n“You ever feel like that?”\n“Every time.” I responded.\nHe let out a sigh.\nCountless seconds of pure silence passed. As I began to wonder if the man had silently gotten up and left, I heard him adjust in his seat.\n“Who’d you come here to see?” He asked.\nI sat forward, placing my elbows on my knees. My face was down, eyes staring at the boringness of my plain white shoes.\n“Ruth.” I replied. “My fiancé.”\nHe made a noise of recognition, expressing his knowledge of how it felt to lose a loved one.\n“Damn, bud. How long were you two…”\nHe couldn’t even finish the sentence. It was as if the atmosphere had changed, pulling the darkest cloud right over our heads.\n“I proposed to her this March and lost her in August”\nMy throat was dry.\n“Three months?”\nHe sounded shocked. He drew in a sharp breath and shifted his feet a bit.\n“I don’t know how you’re doing so well after three months. I was bedridden after I lost my baby girl.”\nHe almost choked on his words. He cleared his throat and sniffled.\nI could hear his pain, and it brought a chilling feeling I couldn’t shake.\n“How long has it been?” I asked.\n“There’s years ago. She was ten.”\nMy heart ached.\n“I’m sorry.”\nThat was all I could say.\n“No, no, don’t be. It wasn’t your fault. I mean, you don’t even know what happened.”\nHe laughed quietly and awkwardly to himself.\n“You know, I find it a bit odd when people offer apologies for things they didn’t do. Is that some sort of thing here?”\nI knew he wasn’t from the area.\n“I guess it is.” I replied. “I think it’s just a way of letting people know that they feel your pain.”\n“But they don’t.”\n“Well of course not. But it’s more of a its-the-thought-that-counts thing.”\n“But why go through that whole mess? Because even if people could feel my pain, it doesn’t take any of the pain I’m feeling away.”\nHis voice had raised just a bit. He noticed.\n“You understand what I mean?” He asked in a softer tone.\nI sat back up.\nHe sounded tense, and seemed to also be burdened with anger issues.\nIn a sense, I felt as if the two of us knew well enough how the other one felt.\n“How long are you visiting for?” I asked. “You’re from up North, right?”\nHe chuckled.\n“Yeah, I’m from somewhat up North. I’m actually on my way back right now. This was my final stop.”\n“That’s nice.” I replied. “Stopping for a visit one last time.”\n“Oh, I didn’t come to visit my daughter. I spend so much time with my daughter.”\nI was confused.\n“One thing I once learned is that people like to reach out once death has already entered the picture. You’d be surprised how many people have spoken to headstones more than they ever spoke to the person below. So if everyone is speaking to the deceased, then who’s speaking to people not dead? They need the most encouragement.”\n“Wait. I’m a bit lost. You said you spend so much time with your daughter, did you mean as in she’s always with you? Like her presence?”\nThere was a second of silence.\n“My wife left years ago, so I only had my daughter. And when she died, I couldn’t bear it. A week later, I ended up taking my own life.”\nI froze. I felt as if my pulse had abruptly stopped.\n“So trust me when I say you’re doing way better than I ever could have.” He added.\nI was breathing hard. I hesitated, but eventually my body turned around to look at the bench behind me.\nBut that was all that was there. An empty bench.\nNo man. No person. One bench.\nI shot up from my seat and faced the two benches. I looked left, right, I spun and looked behind me.\nThere was no way he could've been gone that quickly. Not without me seeing which direction he went in, or at least the sound of footsteps leaving.\nInstead, I heard the light grumbling of a motor directed my attention to my left where I saw a security officer roll up in his golf cart.\nWith his left leg hanging off the floor of the vehicle, he slowed down but didn’t stop.\n“Closing in fifteen minutes.”\nThe roar of the golf cart lowered and I was alone once again." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: The Feast\n\nGenre: african-american\n\nWord Count: 1761\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about a character who develops a special ritual to cope with something." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Leaving the market, Mabel constantly adjusted her heavy grocery bags to maintain a hold. It was a struggle, but she managed to find them a resting place against the soft protrusion of her ample belly. She also held an ear-to-ear grin anyone would see if it weren’t for those overflowing bags largely hiding her face. \nShe was going to have a feast; crab cakes, a lobster roll, a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, chosen because of its pretty label, coleslaw, fried-up sweet potatoes, and, why not, an ear or two of fresh corn with sweet butter. She could already see herself licking her fingers. It had been years since she had feasted on such a meal, on that meal. And Mabel had many years on her. \nThe cinder block steps leading up to her trailer home were getting even looser forcing Mabel to hold the groceries that much more tightly. She’d complain, again, as if complaining might get them fixed. It wasn’t quite her trailer; she rented it from Simon Legree. Simon Legree was not his real name. However, she felt it appropriate having read about the sadistic slave overseer in a Classic Comics version of Uncle Tom’s Cabin she picked up at the local dump’s put-and-take.\n “Woman, are you soft in the head? You know my name. Why do you keep calling me Mister Legree? If you’re trying to stall on that rent again….”\n “No, sir, nuh-uh. I know your name. It’s just that you remind me of somebody, and when I see you he just pops into mind. It’s not soft sir, that’s for sure. If anything, this old head of mine is hard as a rock. Been told that enough times.”\n The comic would have been worth something if it had had a cover. She made some under-the-table income picking up things at the dump and selling them. She used to do that off the sidewalk but now had graduated to local flea markets, which were long on the fleas but short on the cash. She kept this comic and read it again and again until the pages had grown fuzzy, and the images faded from the constant fingering.\n She had lots of throwaway things in that trailer. Not things she threw away; she rarely threw anything out if it still had some use. What she had was the flotsam and jetsam of other people. She wasn’t a bag lady or a hoarder. She simply had an extremely frugal temperament. You never knew when something might come in handy.\n It suited her even when it didn’t need to. When it didn’t was a long time ago when she was with Lucius, or Luscious, as she called him. He called her Maybelline because she hated the name Mabel and had once tried her hand at selling Lucky Heart Cosmetics door-to-door. The job hadn’t worked out; Lucius didn’t want her knocking on strangers’ doors at night. So, she went back to what came naturally to her, which was cleaning houses.\n Mable and Lucius were what educated folk would call the working poor. They wouldn’t have agreed. Proud, perhaps, yes. Content for sure. Content even without the children they so wanted but couldn’t have. Content together.\n Lucius died way too young and for no good reason. He had a temp job over the Christmas rush at the Post Office. Coming off the very late shift he missed the bus and went to walk home. Crossing an unlit intersection, he looked left, a driver turned right. The driver was drunk, uninsured, and lost his license. Mabel lost the only love of her life.\n That was 25 years ago. After Lucius died, Mabel picked up some more work from her clients to help make ends meet. Dog walking, cleaning up after them, was demeaning, and she never cared much for dogs having been bitten by a nasty old cuss of a bloodhound when she was a little girl. That was one reason Uncle Tom’s Cabin meant so much. The image of bloodhounds chasing down runaway slaves resonated.\n As time went on, most of her clients died or moved to some old-age home, and the new folks wanted highfalutin maid services. “Are you bonded?” one fancy lady asked, holding an iPhone in one hand and sipping from a latte held in the other. She stared at Mabel over the granite kitchen top waiting for an answer, a vague smile on her lips but a face that shined discouragement. Mabel didn’t even know what bonded meant. Those jobs mostly went to younger women, much younger, whom Mabel suspected weren’t even born here.\n “They all speak that Spanish,” she’d say, conceding without a hint of jealousy that they looked more energetic than she did anyway. “Must be that spicy food,” she’d say with a happy laugh to her girlfriends at church. “Oh, Lord, and do those girls have figures!” And she’d laugh even more.\n In short, Mabel scrambled to get any job she could find. And a scramble it was. She tried babysitting, but families preferred teenagers. She did a week at a coffee shop as a waitress and was grateful when the owner fired her, the stress on her feet was too much. “Carrying a bit too much of myself,” she joked to him. He slipped her $40 from the cash register, calling it severance. She wasn’t too worried. She wasn’t depressed. “Child, things work out the way they do for a purpose I can’t even try to figure on,” she’d say. She just wanted to keep busy and earn a little.\n She’d gone to the final day of her town’s library book sale when they gave away the books that didn’t sell, usually for good reason. She’d picked up a few that were not in the best of shape, but thought maybe she could sell them on eBay using an account she’d opened on the library’s public computer. Mabel talked with one of the librarians, asking about Classic Comics Illustrated and one thing led to another. The librarian lived with a social worker, volunteered at a local shelter, and sensing Mabel was a heavy woman on thin ice, suggested that maybe she could help with some “things.”\n “Mabel, at your age you might be able to get some assistance, perhaps food stamps, at least until you get back on your feet.”\n Mabel laughed it off at first, joking that no one would want to get back on her feet. Her mind went back to the jobs she’d once had and lost, to efforts she’d made that didn’t pan out, realized the money she had in that old cigar box—she always was paid in cash and never trusted banks—wouldn’t last forever.\n She got public assistance and food stamps. It wasn’t much, but it wasn’t much less than she earned on her own in the best years and rather more than she’d been making recently. At social services, they talked to her about job searches and employment assistance. They asked about her experience and skills. Mabel listed her profession as “housemaid.” The aide at the social services raised her eyebrow at the term but said nothing. Mable left out dog walker and waitress.\n She was able to pay rent on the trailer more or less on time and buy groceries. With that cushion she could still find some work now and then under the table. Over the table was rather rare. Stops at Goodwill and the Faith Farm Thrift Store were her treats when she was in an indulgent mood. That, too, was rare.\n This day would be an exception.\n The clerk at the grocery store had tallied up her purchases and looked down on the array of food stamps Mabel had given to her. “Ma’am, you can’t buy lobster with food stamps.” Mabel said, “Oh, yes I can,” and handed over a printout she’d made at the library from a USDA website that showed allowable foods. “If it doesn’t say no child, it surely means yes.” She said that in a cheerful voice. “I checked twice!”\n The clerk shook her head, looking around to see if anyone else had seen the exchange. “Welfare queen,” she said to the next person in line.\n Then Mabel picked up the wine. “I’d like a white wine, please. No, I don’t know a Chardonnay from a pussy fussy, you can imagine. I once had a glass of wine, oh, maybe it was two glasses; it tasted a bit like a pineapple. Oh, my that was wonderful.”\n The man at the liquor store put Mabel’s bags on the counter and walked her over to the New Zealand aisle. She liked the picture on a $10.99 bottle of Sauvignon Blanc. Wine is not paid for under the SNAP program, he advised when she handed over more food stamps. “Oh my, ten dollars and ninety-nine cents? I could fly over to New Zealand for that sort of money. It must be dee-licious!” The man smiled, leaned in, and whispered that it was on sale for just $3.99.\n Her eyes sparkled. “It must be my lucky day!”\n As the man watched Mabel slowly waddle off, holding her bags for dear life, he took $7 out of his pocket and slipped it into the register.\n She walked the distance to her home, resting every time she encountered a bench. She always walked to save money, even though as a senior she could get a discount on the town buses and even taxis. Such luxuries were just not her nature.\n Except today. Today she indulged as she had done only once before. That was what the lobster, the wine and crab cakes, coleslaw, and Jersey corn were all about.\n It was their 50th wedding anniversary and, as best as she recalled, that was pretty much what they had, just the two of them, to celebrate their marriage on an out-of-season weekend on the coast of Maine. It was the last time Mabel had had lobster. It was the only time she had had lobster. They laughed at the idea that they were eating at a lobster pound.\n “You’d think they’d keep dogs in a pound,” she told Lucius. “Maybelline, I just as soon keep on eating lobster!” he said. And they loved it, licking the butter from each other’s fingers as they shared one, then another, and then a third. They’d had sworn an oath they would save up and do it again to celebrate their 50th.\n That month she was two weeks late with the rent and didn’t feel the least bit bad about it." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Multiple Choice\n\nGenre: american\n\nWord Count: 1056\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story that contains the phrase “Okay class! Pop quiz.”" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Okay class! Pop quiz. If you've been doing the readings, this should be a piece of cake. Remember to fill out both sides of this paper. You have the whole class period to finish. Good luck.\n\n1. Christopher Columbus first traveled to the Americas using which means of transportation?\n\nA) A cargo ship\nB) A steam locomotive\nC) A Boeing 747 airliner \nD) A vintage red 1985 Camaro with a crack in the middle of the windshield and no heated seats\n\n\n2. What is the term for the pilgrims leaving England to journey to America?\n\nA) Immigration\nB) Emigration\nC) Migration\nD) A breakup\n\n\n3. What is the name of the people who were already living in America before the arrival of the Mayflower?\n\nA) Indigenous Peoples\nB) New Yorkers\nC) Canadians\nD) A fiancée\n\n\n4. Founded in the early 1600s, Thanksgiving best symbolizes which of the following?\n\nA) Eating a Tofurky dinner alone in a home that smells like pumpkin pie and the leftover bottle of aftershave you found under the bathroom sink and summarily poured down the drain\nB) A celebration of the harvest and a means of giving thanks for other such blessings of the year\nC) Your five-year-old son choosing to spend the holiday at his father's new apartment\nD) Both A and C\n\n\n5. Salem, Massachusetts, was famous for its witch trials, wherein a number of men and women were accused of performing acts of dark magic and sentenced to death. Now, imagine a woman named, say, Sally. Which of the following is something a guilty woman like Sally might reasonably have been accused of?\n\nA) Sneaking off with another woman's fiancé during your springtime PTA meetings\nB) Luring a woman's son to Thanksgiving dinner with the promise of cooking a real turkey\nC) Driving a vintage red 1985 Camaro that doesn't belong to her to the Safeway in your neighborhood, despite her apartment, which she now shares with the car's owner, being on the other side of town, twenty-five minutes away.\nD) All of the above\n\n\n6. Please select the adjective you think best describes Sally from the previous example.\n\nA) Caring\nB) Considerate\nC) Thoughtful\nD) None of the above\n\n\n7. Please select the adjective (or phrase!) you think best describes the nameless fiancé from question 5.\n\nA) Ignorant\nB) Hedonistic\nC) Confused\nD) Doesn't understand he's letting a good thing go by choosing Sally instead of the superior PTA woman.\n\n\n8. What is the definition of a \"pilgrim\"?\n\nA) A person who journeys, especially a long distance, to some sacred place.\nB) A person who journeys, especially twenty-five minutes away, to an apartment in the gutter of Bismarck, North Dakota.\nC) A person who journeys, especially twenty-five minutes away, to a supermarket in the heartland of Bismarck, North Dakota, with the intent of running into people on the PTA so she can \"accidentally\" display her new engagement ring, the same sapphire ring that fit on someone else's finger not too long ago.\nD) A woman who shares joint custody of her turkey-bribed son, a woman who tucks him in and reads him a bedtime story every night and kisses him on the forehead, then spends the next thirty minutes scrolling through her ex-fiancé's social media posts in the hopes that she'll see her name pop up.\n\n\n9. What is the name for someone who invades a foreign state or nation with the intent to dominate or gain control over its settlers?\n\nA) Homewrecker\nB) Adulterer\nC) Sally\nD) Colonialist\n\n\n10. What was the reason the pilgrims left their first home and strayed to America?\n\nA) They said their needs weren't being met with England.\nB) They wanted to break away from the Protestant Church and start their own religious community.\nC) They said they hadn't been truly happy in a long, long time.\nD) They said the only reason they hung in there as long as they did was because of the five year old.\n\n\n11. Which of the following statements is true, pertaining to question 10?\n\nA) England watched the pilgrims sail away to America, watched them drift toward the horizon until they were nothing but a speck in the sunset, knowing there was nothing they could do.\nB) England waited for days, weeks, months, hoping the pilgrims would come back, checking every starlit night for a sign of their return. \nC) England would still take them back with open arms, even after they chose another place and another life, if they only chose to come back.\nD) All of the above\n\n\n12. Do you think the pilgrims ever thought about returning to England when they were off with their homewreckers/adulterers/Sallys/colonialists?\n\nA) Yes, definitely\nB) Maybe once in a while\nC) Every other weekend, when the joint custody kicked in\nD) No (briefly explain your reasoning in the space below, if chosen)\n\n\n13. How quickly things change. Not even 200 years after the arrival of the pilgrims to America, the founding fathers spearheaded the American Revolution, instituted the presidential system, and even created the Declaration of Independence. Which of the following is a line from that famous document?\n\nA) \"We need to talk.\"\nB) \"Look, Lainey, this just isn't working out anymore. It's not you, it's me. Please don't bring Sally into this.\"\nC) \"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.\"\nD) \"Daddy said you can come to his wedding with me, Mommy. Why are you crying? He said you can come too.\"\n\n\nExtra credit bonus question: You finish your quiz early. When you walk up to the front to turn it in, you notice your teacher is at her desk, silently weeping into her thermos of lukewarm first-period coffee. What should you do?\n\nA) Turn in your paper, say nothing, and return to your desk—chances are that if she scheduled a quiz for the entire class period, she probably needs some time to herself.\nB) Turn in your paper, say nothing, and return to your desk—chances are that your teacher is like England when they were waiting for the pilgrims to return, and with enough time, she'll understand the truth.\nC) Turn in your paper, say nothing, and return to your desk—chances are that you could end up like her someday, because history repeats itself.\nD) All of the above." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: The Bullet that Esther Stopped\n\nGenre: american\n\nWord Count: 2506\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about a character unknowingly experiencing a “sliding doors” moment. Write your story in two halves; what could have been, and what actually happened." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I\nI shot papa square in the heart but he didn’t die. That damn bible he carried with him saved his life. I was considerable lucky that papa had his axe at hand, and that he kept it sharp. I picked it up. It was a heavy thing, so I swung with all my might and put it right through his head. Seein’ his brains made me throw up. I moved away so it wouldn’t get on papa. That would be disrespectful.\nPapa was a big man. I couldn’t bury him like that, so I started choppin’ off his arms and legs with the axe. I was down to the right leg when Sheriff Culverson showed up. Wouldn’t you know it, he came to arrest papa for stealin’ a couple of old lady Renner’s chickens. Papa didn’t have to worry about that now. Hell, he didn’t have to worry about the drought or where his next bottle’d come from, either. I reckon I did him a favor, savin’ him from all that worry.\nSheriff Culverson looked at me and looked at papa. I done threw up again, so the smell was somethin’ turrible in the vicinity. I looked at the sheriff. He was a shakin’ his head and had a sad look on his face. I reckon he didn’t want to take a nineteen-year-old girl to jail. ‘specially me, seein’ as how I was his daughter’s best friend. Maybe he’ll let Cassie visit me in jail.\nThe jailhouse only had the one cell. That door a clankin’ behind me sounded like what mama would call omnus. I kinda know what that means by the words around it. Corntex, I think they call it. I would know a lot more if papa would’ve let me go to school. He said girls don’t need school. They need to learn how to cook and to clean and to please their man. I’m damn good at cookin’ and cleanin’, but I don’t think I know how to please a man. Papa was a man and he was never pleased.\nOh Lord! Here comes the sheriff and another man. I seen him around. Mr. King. He’s always all duded up and talkin’ fancy and smilin’ and a swingin’ his walkin’ stick around. I sure would like to catch me a man like that. I bet he don’t beat his women. Not much, anyway.\nHe ain’t smilin’ now. I reckon I’m in a heap of trouble. Welp, papa won’t be slappin’ the tar outta me for my sins this time.\n**************\nBoth men sat across the table from Esther. The sheriff had placed the gun that Esther had shot her dad with, next to the bible that had thwarted Esther’s original plan. The metal gleamed in the harsh light of the room, sitting as silently as the three occupants. The ceiling fan squeaked quietly, not doing a very good job of cooling off the room. The open window allowed the sunlight to stream through, and a soft breeze brought a little relief from the heat, along with the scent of jasmine and dust. The harsh, unforgiving angles that the sun cast in the room matched Esther’s mood.\nEsther reached for the wounded bible. She wanted to feel the torn cover and open it up to inspect the damage. The sheriff pulled it towards him and opened it up before sliding it to Esther. The soft sigh of the bible moving across the table sounded like the whisper of broken dreams.\n“Notice anything?” The sheriff leaned back and watched Esther closely.\nEsther inspected the bible. The bullet had torn through a significant portion of the Old Testament. It had stopped at the Book of Esther.\n“Yessir. Esther stopped the bullet, I reckon.”\nMr. King smiled, though he didn’t want to. The sheriff nodded his head and leaned forward.\n“Don’t you find that a little odd?”\nEsther shook her head.\n“That’s your name, young lady,” Mr. King spoke. His rich, resonant voice filled the room. Dust motes danced and the breeze quickened.\n“Yessir.”\nThe men looked at each other impassively, but both were thinking the same thing. The girl was thickheaded.\nMr. King pointed to Esther’s face.\n“Your dad do that?”\nHer black eye and a swollen nose did all the testifying for her.\n“Yessir. Told me I shoulda caught a man by now, and he warn’t gonna feed no old maid much longer.”\n“He been drinkin’?” Sheriff Culverson leaned back, crossing his arms. He already knew the answer.\n“Yessir. Mama always says that papa only drinks on days endin’ with a ‘y.’ I reckon that’s true.” Esther played with her hair, twirling it between two fingers. She looked away from the men and gazed outside, lost in her own thoughts.\n“So you decided to shoot ‘im.”\n“Yessir.”\n“But the bible stopped the bullet.”\n“Yessir.”\nMr. Kind leaned forward and stared at Esther, causing her to blush.\n“That was when you decided to take the axe to his head?”\nEsther stopped playing with her hair and sat still for a moment before answering.\n“I suppose so. Papa woulda kilt me if I didn’t kill him.”\n“You feared for your life?” Mr. King continued to stare intently at Esther.\n“Yessir.”\nMr. King abruptly stood up and shook the sheriff’s hand.\n“I have all I need.”\nHe left quickly, so quickly that it startled Esther. She looked at the retreating back and worried that she had offended such a gentleman.\n“Am I gonna get the Chair?”\nThe sheriff stood slowly, as if it hurt him to do so. He closed his eyes for a moment before answering. His voice, when he spoke, was softer than Esther had ever heard it.\n“No. You’ll get twenty-five years in the women’s prison in San Antone. Minimum.”\nEsther started counting on her fingers.\n“You’ll be about forty-four, Esther.”\n“Damn. I reckon I’ll be too old to catch a man by that time.”\nThe sheriff felt his chest tighten just a little at those words.\n“And mama? How old’ll she be?”\n“How old is she now?”\nEsther paused, deep in thought.\n“Says she was born in 1901.”\n“Then she’ll be about sixty.”\nEsther nodded, standing, and smoothing out her skirt.\n“Reckon she’ll take me back when I get out?”\nThe sheriff scratched his forehead and looked at the floor.\n“I don’t know, honey. I just don’t know.”\n**************\nII\nThey’re calling us heroes. The newspapers, that is. I suppose we are, but I don’t know that I feel heroic. I do, however, feel a difference in me now that papa’s dead. Liberation would be the word. Papa would have hit me if I had ever used that word in front of him.\nPapa had been drinking, of course. And smacking mama around. Cassie and I were hiding out in my room, wondering when it would all stop. At one point, I heard mama scream. That’s when I went out to investigate.\nPapa was pointing a gun at mama. I didn’t even think about what to do. I just did it. I stepped in front of mama just as papa shot. The bullet hit my bible. Yes, I carried a bible with me, right over my heart, but only when I was wearing overalls. It was fortunate that I was wearing them at this point.\nI staggered backward and fell. The impact of the bullet stunned me. Mama fell as well, trying to hold me up. That’s when Cassie came charging out of the room and started to wrestle with papa, trying to get the gun out of his hand. We heard another shot. Papa took a bullet to the gut. He died two hours later, in a lot of pain.\nCassie stood and fairly sprinted out of the house. She came back a few minutes later with her dad. The sheriff. The look on his face was one that will not soon leave me. Pinched and drawn, with worry written clearly in the eyes.\nMama should have never been home. She was supposed to go to San Antonio to see her sister, but papa beat her so bad the night before that she refused to go. I believe that papa beat her so severely so she wouldn’t go. He was like that.\nCassie shouldn’t have been there either. Her father told her never to go to my house when my papa was around, but Cassie often defied her father. Her father was so relieved that Cassie wasn’t injured or killed that he never punished her. On the contrary, he hugged her tightly and kissed her on the cheek. I had never seen him do that before!\nI’m supposed to write a story for the newspapers. The one in San Antonio wants to give me – and Cassie – fifty dollars each for our story. An astounding sum. Some rich people in San Antonio also want to give us full scholarships for college. Imagine! Going to college! It’s in Denton, but that’s even better. Cassie and I can get away from the blight of the Hill Country and experience a different kind of life.\nA different kind of life. I’m filled with a substantial happiness, and I wonder when it will leave. Never, I hope.\nThe real hero is mama, and I’ll make sure the newspapers know that. All those years of insisting that I go to school, even when papa beat her for her sass. He called it that, anyway. It was grit and toughness and love. I’ll call it the stuff that heroism is made of. That has a nice ring to it. And it’s the truth.\n**************\nAll three steps to the elevated porch squeaked under Mr. King’s tread, though the man was not heavy. Like the rest of the porch area, they needed paint; rusted nail heads poked out of the wood, loosened by years of neglect and Hill Country weather. The evening was soon to turn into dusk.\n“Just spoke to the judge. Cassie ain’t to be charged. He said she did us all a favor by shootin’ that man.”\nSheriff Culverson didn’t show it, but a wave of relief flooded his body. He relaxed a little and felt his breath coming easier. Mr. King sat down and lit a cigar, offering one to the sheriff. Both men took some time to light their cigars, ensuring that they had a proper draw. This was not a task but a ritual, and it was not to be taken lightly.\nThe sheriff went inside his house and returned in a few moments, bearing a bottle of whiskey and two small tumblers. Each man filled their glass to the amount desired and sipped. Mr. King grimaced at the first sip, then took a second, larger sip.\n“I reckon she did us all a favor, sure, but it was an accident. I’m damn happy the judge was of the same mind,” the sheriff said. He took another sip of whiskey and sat his glass down, concentrating on puffing his cigar and enjoying the news.\n“You know, I’m surprised one of those women hadn’t killed the man before. He sure liked to beat his women,” Mr. King said.\n“The mama,” the sheriff said. Mr. King turned his head slightly.\n“Pardon?”\n“The mama. She made that girl, Esther, get an education. I hear she took a beatin’ or two for her daughter. Damn fine woman, in my opinion.”\nMr. King nodded and smiled. He had already heard the news.\n“You went to visit the widow, I hear.”\nThe sheriff glanced at Mr. King and then quickly glanced away.\n“Offer my condolences, in an official capacity.”\nThe sun had disappeared behind the horizon, bestowing faint light and beautiful colors to the sky. Fireflies came out of hiding, their pinpricks of light giving the large front lawn a magical appearance. As if fairies were in attendance. As if a miracle had been bestowed.\n“You were there for two hours, sheriff. That’s a lot of…uh…condoling.”\nThe sheriff turned and stared at Mr. King, his steely blue eyes narrowing a little. Mr. King laughed and hastened to explain.\n“The old biddies in town. You know what they’re like. Most of ‘em had you and the widow makin’ a baby during your visit.”\n“Vicious old cats,” the sheriff spat out the words.\n“Makes sense, though. You and the widow. Esther and Cassie are best friends. They’d be tickled pink to become sisters, so to speak. And the widow’s a fine, strong woman.”\n“You done have us at the altar.”\nMr. King tamped the ashes from his cigar onto the porch and scuffed them with his boots. He poured himself more whiskey and watched the fireflies perform their chaotic, beautiful dance.\n“Your wife’s been gone for twelve years. I reckon you grieved enough, sheriff. I figure the widow’s grievin’ was nonexistent. Can’t really miss a man that beats you, can you?”\nThe sheriff poured himself another three fingers of whiskey and stood at the railing beside Mr. King. He sighed and turned to Mr. King, handing him a dollar bill.\n“I’m hirin’ you for a two-minute consultation, Mr. King.”\nMr. King looked at the bill and put it in his breast pocket.\n“What’s on your mind, sheriff?”\nThe sheriff paused for a moment, trying to get the words out of his mouth.\n“I heard Esther ‘n Cassie talkin’ one day last year, just before Christmas. Esther was tellin’ her that she wanted to shoot her daddy dead so he’d stop beatin’ her mama. Well, that froze me.”\nMr. King looked at the sheriff, a thoughtful expression creasing his face and pursing his lips.\n“I figure she would have done it one day, sheriff. I guess Cassie took care of that, though.”\nThe sheriff sighed.\n“I reckon.”\n“So, why the dollar?”\n“We got attorney-client confidentiality now, right?”\nMr. King laughed, nodding his head.\n“Yes. Very clever, sheriff. But I wasn’t gonna divulge that little piece of information anyway.”\n“I expect a receipt when you get to the office tomorrah.”\n“Yes. Of course. Come by after work, sheriff, and I’ll buy us a couple of beers. I seem to have an extra dollar in my pocket.”\nThe night darkened and the breeze stilled; even the fireflies slowed down. Soon, they were gone, letting the darkness of the night have its way. Both men remained silent. Cigar smoke curled and drifted upwards past the porch lights, disappearing into the blackness.\nMr. King left after finishing his whiskey.\n“See you tomorrow, sheriff. And I’ll expect a wedding invitation.”\n“I want that receipt, young man.”\nThe rest of the night passed as it should have. Frogs croaked lazily, crickets chirped, and lights winked out one by one across the countryside. Two young ladies were dreaming of adventures at college, one sheriff was thinking of matrimony, and one widow was contemplating the mysteries of fate and providence.\nThe bible with a bullet hole in it was, in due time, returned to its rightful owner. The whereabouts of the mangled word of God is currently unknown." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Out of Place on the Appalachian Trail\n\nGenre: american\n\nWord Count: 2982\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about a character who’s climbing a mountain, whether internal, external, or both." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "My backpack weighs 31 pounds, and it barely fit into the trunk of Jen and Steve’s Honda. I don’t think they believed I was actually going through with this until I called and asked for a ride up the mountain. Jen gave me that look, that pitying, tight-lipped smile, but she helped Steve and I load up my things, and then they bought me lunch before dropping me off at the trailhead. Jen cried, and Steve gave me a can of pepper spray and an awkward side hug.\nSo here goes nothing. I’m at Springer Mountain, Georgia, with zero miles down and only 2,190 miles to go.\nSee you on the other side. \nMile 8\nI can feel my heartbeat in my feet, but I made it to the first campsite. I’m exhausted, but in that good I-did-a-hard-thing kind of way. I had trouble setting up my tent—broke a nail just getting it out of the bag—but there was another group at the campsite and some nice college kid saw me struggling, jogged over to help, and then had the whole thing up in under a minute. He looked at me funny, and I’m sure he was wondering what I was doing all the way out here instead of lounging on my sofa with a glass of chardonnay and an Oprah’s book club novel, but he didn’t pry.\nMile 19\nWell, I pooped in the woods today. You would have laughed at me as I hunted for the perfect spot, then deposited and buried my own waste like some dainty, purebred housecat.\nI laughed at myself too.\nMile 49\nI’m already behind schedule. I wasted hours repacking my bag yesterday to redistribute the weight, as one hiker told me it would be less strain on my back to move the heavier items to the center. So I took everything out and repacked it as tightly as I could, which took forever. The hiker hovered nearby the entire time, obnoxiously commentating on all my belongings, and when he finally left, I sat down to write, only to find I’d somehow buried my journal. So, I unpacked my whole bag again, rummaging through my gear like a madwoman, just to then see the journal had been sitting on a rock next to me the whole time.\nEven in the cold spring air, I was red-faced and sweating.\nMile 65\nMy feet are killing me, but I think I’ve finally broken in these fresh-out-of-the-box hiking boots.\nI fell asleep last night listening to the crickets and thinking about you.\nMile 87\nI met an interesting hiker today who said this was his second thru hike. He looked at least 10 years older than me and called himself “Pinetree.” All skin and bones with a long scraggly beard, he looked like a castaway stranded in the woods, though I got the sense he liked the solitude. He’d jutted out his bearded chin at me and said, “Nobo?”\n“What?” I huffed out.\n“North bound?”\n“North bound? Oh. Yes. I am.” I had to pause and catch my breath after each sentence. “Just getting started.”\nHe looked me over and clicked his tongue. “You’re carrying too much weight.”\nI was momentarily offended before realizing he meant my pack. “How?! I left so much behind. I need all of this.”\nHe was quiet, chewing his lip. “Give it a few more miles. You won’t feel that way then.”\nWe continued walking; his stride was twice that of mine, but he slowed and matched my speed, and we hiked in companionable silence until I stopped for lunch.\nHe kept walking. “When you’re ready to let some of that go, you’ll feel much lighter. Trust me.” Then with a final, “take care out there,” he disappeared around the next bend.\nHis reprimand irritated me, but the frustration kept me going for a good four or five more miles.\nI envied him: so confident and free.\nHe reminded me of you.\nMile 112\nI pulled eight ticks off my legs yesterday. There were probably more where I couldn’t see them, and that thought kept me awake all night, tossing and turning and twitching in my tent until the exhaustion pulled me into fitful sleep. I dreamt that my hiking boots jumped off a cliff, and I had to walk the rest of the trail with my feet covered in orange plastic ramen noodle wrappers.\nMile 148\nI met some thru hikers from South Dakota (which I had completely forgotten was a state) who were both in their 80’s! We talked the whole way, and it helped the miles pass quickly.\nThey told me the secret to longevity is to never stop moving.\nMile 162\nI’ve been making better time; today was my record so far—14 miles. A rather uneventful 14 miles, though I did see a porcupine, which was interesting. I always thought they’d be…spikier…? \nAt the shelter, I removed three shirts, a book, and a tube of lotion from my backpack and left them in a giveaway box. It made a surprisingly noticeable difference.\nMile 169\nWell, those 14 miles about killed me. I slept late today, then took two ibuprofen before even getting out of my tent. My back hurt, my feet hurt—even my earlobes hurt.\nThe last thing I wanted to do was put those boots back on my swollen feet and walk.\nMile 202\nRegret tastes sour and so do the dry ridges of my dehydrated gums.\nWhat am I even doing out here?\nMile 327\nI hiked 18 miles yesterday but took today off. I needed to replenish my food, as I guess there’s going to be a good stretch before I reach another town (I’m still learning how to read maps and plan ahead). I bought groceries and some new clothes, as my pants are starting to hang on me, then checked into a motel and took the first real shower I’ve had since leaving Georgia. I stood there until the water ran cold, then laid down on the sheets and passed out until my grumbling stomach woke me up. I ordered a large pepperoni pizza and ate the entire thing myself.\nThen I called the pizza place back and ordered another one.\nMile 463\nMade it into Virginia. It’s been raining for three days. The trails are slush, my boots are filthy, and I feel like a wet rag.\nI want to go home.\nMile 567\nI made a small group of friends who have sort of pulled me into their circle and let me tag along the last 50 miles or so. Melons is a vet tech from Florida, whose cleavage makes introductions before she does. Huckleberry is a lanky 22-year-old who wears his pants rolled at the ankles and hikes in crocs. Seems impractical to me, but he says it’s comfortable. Aunt Jemima is a hulking middle-aged Norwegian man who loves breakfast food and lugs around a flat top campfire griddle. He’s made us pancakes almost every morning, and it’s become one of my favorite parts of each day. Easily the largest man I’ve ever met, Aunt Jemima often smacks his head on low hanging branches as we hike, eliciting a string of game-like sound effects from Huckleberry like “doink” and “boing.”\nTheir company has changed everything, and I’ve laughed more in the last few days than I have in years.\nMile 653\nToday was HARD. The terrain was rugged and uneven. I made a game, tracking how many hours ago I could go without tripping.\nI never actually made it a whole hour.\nMile 713\nMelons, Huckleberry, and Aunt Jemima decided to take a detour; Huckleberry’s family lives nearby and invited everyone to stay for a few days, but I wanted to keep going.\nWe all exchanged contact information, then parted ways.\nMile 806\nYou don’t feel the blisters until you stop.\nMile 878\nI’m tired of hearing my own breathing, tired of TREES, tired of freeze-dried soup, tired of having nothing but time to think about everything I should have done differently in my life.\nI don’t know who I thought I was, why I ever thought I could do this.\nMile 900\nI almost quit yesterday, and then I met an angel. \nI was 7 miles into the day, feeling like there was no possible way I could make it to the next shelter, nevertheless all the way to the tip of Maine, when I walked straight into a spider web, tripped over a rock, then faceplanted in a patch of ferns. I was so angry, I hurled my backpack against a tree, pulling a back muscle in the process. Then I sat down and just sobbed.\nEverything hurt; I was sunburned, hungry, and ready to call it quits and admit to the world that I couldn’t do it.\nThen the next thing I knew, I was on my back, staring up at the floppy, wet tongue of a gigantic Great Dane. I struggled to sit up, and when I did, it nuzzled its massive head into my shoulder, and without thinking, I draped my arms over its neck. I realized then it was the closest thing I’d had to an embrace since Steve’s stiff-armed goodbye hug.\nShortly after, I heard someone whistling and calling for “Karen,” then saw a gray-haired woman heading down the trail. She took one look at me—at my pack thrown into the ferns, my scraped-up knees, and her dog (which was indeed named Karen) with its head on my shoulder—then looked me right in the eye and asked if I liked lasagna.\nShe introduced herself as “Zippy” as we walked a side trail up to her place. I could smell oregano before I saw the cabin. She’d made two bubbling-hot pans of the best lasagna I’d ever had and never asked if I wanted seconds of anything, but just continued to load food onto my plate the second I’d cleared it.\nAfter dinner, we sat on her couch and talked about the hike—the solitude, the friendships you make, and the boredom too. I’d gone a few days without really talking to anyone and when she asked why I was doing it, it was like a dam broke within me, and I cried—ugly, shaking sobs that rattled our teacups on the side table. She let me cry, let me talk.\nI told her that hiking the AT was never my dream, that I never wanted to put my life on pause to traipse up and down mountains and live out of a backpack for half a year.\nThen I told her about you—how this was always your dream, your adventure, how you begged me to hike it with you…bought me my own gear and everything…because I had told you I would.\nThen I told her how every time you brought up the hike, I shut you down—put you off with a “maybe next spring,” and “things are so busy with work right now,” or “how about when we retire.”\nHow naïve I was to think time would wait for us; sometimes hearts stop beating, and they never start up again.\nI know I can’t blame myself for that, but I blame myself for giving you the false hope that I’d join you when I never had any intention of looping my arms through that purple backpack you hung in the garage next to yours. You waited for me, and now it’s too late for you. We should have been doing this together, and now you’ll never have the chance.\nThis hike has been hard—the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life, but you would have loved every minute of it. And I would have loved to do this with you.\nI felt lighter the next day than I had the whole trip. Even with a belly full of lasagna.\nMile 989\nHow am I STILL in Virginia?\nI left a multitool, some too-big hiking shorts, and an extra flashlight in a shelter box.\nMile 1057\nThis muggy dog-breath summer air is making my skin crawl…\nI dropped the gasket of my water filter in a creek today and stood staring into the brown trickle for several minutes trying to find the thing before I realized I was standing about a foot away from a coiled-up copperhead. My blood turned to ice—a momentary reprieve from the suffocating heat—and then I spun myself away from the thing with the agility of a woman 20 years younger.\nSo, I didn’t get bitten by a snake, but I never did find that gasket.\nMile 1132\nYou wouldn’t believe who I ran into today: Melons, Huckleberry, and Aunt Jemima.\nI must be that slow of a hiker.\nMelons gave me a big hug, squished me right in between her giant bosom. Huckleberry was wearing real boots—said he’d lost his crocs in a river and had to walk a mile and a half in socks before he could buy new shoes. Someone made Aunt Jemima an apron with a picture of a giant backpacker flipping pancakes. He said he wears it every morning.\nMile 1281\nAlmost through Pennsylvania.\nI know I’ve complained a lot, but today was one of those days where all the blood, sweat, and tears felt like they were worth something. I woke up before sunrise, made hot coffee, and climbed to an overlook where the valley stretched below, still shrouded in shadow. I watched the sun rise and shed light on each curve and dip of the land. Birds chirped all around me, leaves danced in the breeze, and I felt you there with me.\nFor the first time, I couldn’t wait to get moving.\nMile 1359\nDid I tell you I’ve been given a trail name?\nScribe.\nMile 1422\nWe’ve made it to New York! Melons and I hitchhiked into town today and got pedicures, mostly just to see the looks on the beautician’s faces when they saw our feet (that and I was dying for a foot massage). I picked out some bright red nail polish and sunk down into a massage chair, but when I peeled my socks away, my left pinky toenail came clean off and landed right in the sudsy water.\nI didn’t feel a thing.\nThe poor lady painted the nail-less stub of my toe anyway, and now you can hardly tell anything is missing.\nMile 1614\nThe terrain has been fairly steep the past few days but absolutely gorgeous. We’ve made it into Vermont, and the gang and I stopped for a much-deserved night at a motel. The motel served scrambled eggs at the continental breakfast the next morning, and between the four of us, we must have eaten two dozen eggs. Aunt Jemima wasn’t impressed with their pancakes, but he still ate enough for a football team.\nMile 1736\nI’ve made it to New Hampshire. From Georgia. WITH MY OWN TWO FEET. I can hardly believe it. There have been so many days when I’ve wanted nothing more than to give up and go home, but now that I’m getting close to the end, I’m almost afraid. What happens when it’s over?\nMile 1901\nI beat my own record and walked 24 miles today. Every muscle in my body is screaming, and I barely have the energy to hold up this pen, but I just had to say one thing: I’m sorry.\nI’m sorry you never got to see what I’ve seen or walk where I’ve walked, but I hope you know that I have carried you with me every step of the way. I know it doesn’t change anything, but wherever you are, I hope you know that you are what has pushed me through these mountains.\nMile 2032\nWe’re in Maine! We celebrated crossing into the last state with way too much beer, and Huckleberry, in his inebriated condition, forgot to pack up his food. Well wouldn’t you know, around 1 in the morning, I started hearing this huffing and rustling, and I thought maybe it was Huckleberry getting sick, so I ran out of my tent to check on him and came nose to nose with the ugliest black bear I’ve ever seen. It was missing one ear and had a ragged scar across his eye.\nI froze, panicking—what was I supposed to do again? Run? Play dead? Scream? I just knew I was about to be mauled to death, when suddenly Aunt Jemima stepped down from the shelter, walked up to that bear with his chest puffed out, and started yodeling. Yes. Yodeling. Deep, reverberating, melodic howls. I’d never heard anything like it in my life, and that bear must have thoroughly hated it, because it took off.\nI slept like a rock knowing that ugly bear was off telling all his friends about the terrible yodeling monster I call Aunt Jemima.\nMile 2178\nTomorrow, we hike Mount Katahdin—the last leg of the Appalachian trail!!\nMile 2191\nIt was a grueling trek up 4,000 feet of rocky elevation, but I made it.\nI MADE IT!!\nThere’s a picture of me, Melons, Huckleberry, and Aunt Jemima, our arms outstretched at the big wooden “Mount Katahdin” sign, and I’ve never seen such a wide smile on my face.\nI looked confident—free.\nThe four of us lingered at the top for a while, reveling in our victory, then the others left me alone:\nSo you and I could have a few moments to ourselves.\nAnd that’s when I set you free.\nI lifted the cap on the small, cylindrical urn I’d carried with me through sunshine and rain for the past 2000 miles, and I sprinkled your ashes into the wind. You spread your wings and flew over the mountain, settling yourself in the rocks and rivers and valleys of beautiful, wild Maine.\nWe’re thru hikers now, you and me.\nAnd I couldn’t have done it without you." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: The Man With No Face\n\nGenre: african-american\n\nWord Count: 1322\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about someone seeking revenge for a past wrong." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Warning: Contains graphic scene and language\n“See the thing with a n— like me is that n—-s are confused as to if I am really a n—- n—-uh or a just a plain ol’ albino n—--. And I ain’t gon beat ‘rund the bush no mo’. If your boy haddn dun this 90 years go … f—-in slang my brain with that chayain and fry ma face over the grill like a charred hickory ol’ babacue sauce man… f— no. I ain’t square dancin here nay neithuh I am tap dancin’. I came for his rusty a— and I want that m—----ers head on a nice ol dish… nuh scratch that on a silver platter of one of them Elizabethan silver sterlin marks.”\nErnie stared at him for fifteen seconds as he vented in front of the counter where a glass separated them at the saloon. Clearly the gentleman had much on his plate. And yes, he is right. You couldn’t tell if he is black or had skin-color disorientation behind the partial covering of a bandanna facemask under a Stetson hat. \nThing is things have changed. It is no longer 1887 of wild, wild West. People have settled down and the town is starting to heal. As a sheriff, Ernie can’t possibly let it all loose like a free-for-all buffet down at the Vinny’s. People have families. Jobs. Past no longer holds them in guilt manacles. \n“All cuz uh wat? Cuz y’all found yassef a n—-. A n—-- on a leash. That won’t listen to nunna yar bullshat even though half o yo’ life you had his uncle tortured, maimed, brutalized, mayhemed and what not like a f—-in a man in an iron maiden ni—a. N—--! All cuz of his what? Skin coloh? And then when someone like me had the nerv… AUDACITY to interject. INTERVENE. Is that good’ enuff for you? Is that EDUCATED ‘nuff for you you illiterate n—--s…. When he had the… or as we say down south cojones to stick his neck up…. You scorched his face. You scoundrels scarred him for life. \n“Now this n—-- can’t get no jooub. No p—---y. No f—----in bank ‘ccount. Nothin’. Nada.”\n“You have some balls to come here and speak like this in front of my children.” The man with the bronze face wearing a bushy mustache finally couldn’t hold it together. His voice boomed and the whole room turned around. It is clear who held the authority here. \nOld Billy Wily, or also known as the Faceless Man, The Man With No Face or The Fastest Draw in Texas kept rambling on. Yes it is true: he is probably the only black person in town. And it is also true, by the time Sheriff Ernie Rodriguez can even think of reaching for his holster, the man could easily split his skull in an eye blink.\nIt takes less than a second for a Rosette-Nosed Pygmy Chameleon to flick its tongue at a prey at 8,500 feet. In that same instance, Old Billy Wily can shatter the glass partition with the bullet spinning at enough angular momentum for a hollow point damage to Ernie whose misfire will cue the chandelier and the drip pan that will befell on a wretched witch who would get what she deserved for being the insufferable shrew that she has been for the last two years to Lil’ David Tim…. - as well as turn around to render incapacitate the furthest two guardsman as well as Mean Nick sitting at the corner behind Nacogdoches Gazette and burst through the barn door, leap on his Quarter Horse and ride to the dust-bowl trail to an incoming locomotive within a 5 second precision of synchrony.\n“You are hurting my child.” Ernie was old enough to possess the wisdom to know when to yield and diffuse the situation. “The past has been past. ‘For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you don't forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.’ ” He paused. “I believe you are a man of scripture?”\n“That I am.” Billy conceded. “That..I a..m.” He spoke slowly. As if pondering a deep, Gordian riddle. \n“Look,” Ernie intuited he had an opening… “I can’t bring the person for you. Besides it will take days to dig up the old records. I reckon, why don’t I take you to Father Smith over there… and you may unburden your soul, my son.”\n“F—- that. I ain’t doin’ nunna that. I want that m—---ers head… and I want him now. And his name… his NAME is Lil Johnny Jims… or as his friends called him “Bonez”. Thass right. His name Johnny “Bonez” Jims. How F—--- difficult is it to dig that up?”\n“Look man I am trying to help you here.”\n“Goddamn right you are partner. And guess howut? Pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered.”\n“What the hell is that ‘posed to mean?”\n“I ma show you what that’s ‘psed to mean…n—a!”\nHaving said that Old Billy Wily zoomed past the doors and started walking as his dark colt slowly cantered on behind him with the elegance of a dressage. People were walking by as no one hardly bothered to pay attention. Although people knew there was a newcomer in town, most were busy with their day-to-day lives to express any concern. Some politely nodded and doffed their hats; Old Billy Wily kept waltzing on. \nHe soon came by a solitary yew that guarded a white steeple which stood against the backdrop of distant mountains like a castle. Billy tied Breezy by a wooden bollard and idled inside the church. He walked past the pews and found himself in the confessional. \nHe sat motionless for few seconds. And finally began. Began his saga. How his uncle Jim died an unfair death, how he was tortured and brutalized and left stranded in an ocean of Time only to hold on a barge of splinters and wooden fragments of a broken psyche all tempered, galvanized and honed like a harpoon for an one-pointed mission - a mission in life- to avenge the injustice. The injustice that plagued this country and yet far too often people assume one must take the high road of compassion and forgiveness shrugging it off.\n“You are hurting my son.” The Father echoed what the sheriff figured out. “It is best to forgive.”\n“Hah! Forgiveness. Forgiveness Father?” Old Billy spat and scoffed. His mouth salivated with spite and contempt. “And what good has that ever wrohought ‘xaccly, Father?”\n“Jesus suffered way worse. As did Joseph. And Noah. And Moses. I can go on and on. Scripture is replete with benevolence triumphing over evil.”\n“Oh cut it Father. Cut it.” \n“And what exactly will you do to him once you find this… certain Jimmy?”\n“I am gun slit his head right out and then make them Maoris play boyol with’m. Is that good enough response for you Father? Is that GOOD ENOUGH RESPONSE FOR YOU FATHER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”\nOld Billy Wily exploded. He shot up straight from his seat and beat his chest like a gorilla. His eyes were about to pop off and his neck veins about to tear. Suddenly his whole body contorted like a voodoo doll. He clutched his heart and the man with more than thirty years of experience of gun-slinging intuitively reached for his 7.63mm Mannlicher. Yet, the fastest draw to ever live could hardly make a thimble contact with the ice-cold steely component in his belt. \nHe fell on the floor on his back with the head cracking half open as he landed. Blood immediately coagulated as the Father got up, touched his rosary and made a sign of cross in the air. \n“Anger is a sin, my son.”\nLittle did Old Billy Wily know that within three-feet distance of his was the very man who tortured him for years." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Stolen: The Bernard G. Story\n\nGenre: african-american\n\nWord Count: 1173\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about how a single event affects a seemingly unrelated area of a character’s life (their friendships, career, romantic relationships, etc.)" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Stolen: The Bernard G. story.\n Since starting high school, I knew where I would be the Monday morning after my eighteen birthday and looked forward to it. I dreamt of punching that timecard with my name printed weirdly; last name first, first name in the middle, and middle on end; with the four columns just like my father since we toured the steel mill in the fourth grade. I wanted to be just like the gentle giant that brought me a two-liter Ne-hi Peach soda, a Slim Jim, and a massive bag of Pork Rinds every Friday evening for us to enjoy while watching WWE Smackdown and (GLOW) the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling.\n\nHere we are, two sons and a little princess 13 years later...\n\nI'm an average Joe. I go to work in another man's hellhole. I spend six days a week sweating into an abyss alongside my father and several cousins. At three a.m. I wake up to start fires in the wood stoves, milk Bessie and gather the eggs before waking Gloria, my pregnant reason for smiling. That was my routine for thirteen years. She wanted to wait a year before we had any children, but like the gentle giant, I guess I was blessed with super sperm. She had been nauseous for the first week of our marriage. So much for a different kind of birth control she wanted from the doctor; she's got to wait a month for the possibility of being pregnant again. We will have to be tested again in a few weeks. An over-the-counter test may work in a week; if not, we'll have the doctor retest.\nShe's upset and happy! Her moodiness says that She's in the mother's way, Mom said. I don't know what to do or say to make her feel better because, yet again, we believe her plans have been derailed by pregnancy. On a chilly November morning, I roll out of bed like every other to protect my bride from a cold start. I used to see my father do this same thing before going to work in the very steel mill I'll probably keel over in. I once asked him why… he replied: \"O boy, my woman doesn't need to be shivering to try to feed us; I do it to show her love.\" So, when Gloria and I married in 82, my sleeping-in days ended. We married on the Saturday morning after my eighteenth birthday, and on Monday, we traveled three miles to my parent's house so I could ride to work with Dad; this would be our new routine every working day. Gloria kept our car to get to her doctor's appointment at 2. Since I was still considered a newbie, I had to work until 4, but She preferred my mom to go with her because I am number 4 of 13 children.\nHow could it all be stolen in an instant?\nShe disappeared between the time that she left for another doctor's appointment and after stopping for gas. Some of my brothers and sisters are too young to be left home alone. So, Mom could not go with her today. The doctor's office called Mom's house when Gloria didn't arrive for her appointment, thinking she had forgotten or was running late. They rescheduled the appointment for any time as a walk-in for the next day.\nMom was so frazzled when Dad and I pulled up at 6 pm that she was having an asthma attack on the front porch; She could not speak. My sister Poochie had just gotten home around 4:30, thankfully. While Dad attended to Mom. Poochie filled me in about Gloria.\nUnfortunately, I couldn't even report Gloria missing for another 46 hours; It was easier to register my car stolen. So, that is what I did. The store owner where we purchased our gas remembered seeing Gloria at 1:30 talking to another woman, and after paying for the gas, they drove off down US 627, which should have taken them past Mom on the porch in 10 minutes.\nAfter he told me this, I called Mom, who confirmed that our car never passed. I called the police with his information. I knew this doctor's appointment was critical and that Gloria would not miss it for any reason. The state police were dispatched.\nI thought they would take the case, and I felt some relief…Until I became subject number 1. They had found my car abandoned on a side road, torched and empty.\nMy Saving Grace came at 8 am when my boss verified that I worked until 5:30 pm the previous day.\nWe still have no clue where Gloria is, but We're praying for her safe return. Given the car's location, everyone on the only road they could have turned on has been asked to search their property. We have no idea why someone would abduct her now. She's not even showing a baby bump yet. \nIf she didn't want another baby, she wouldn't disappear…she would have talked to me.\nI fell in love with her candor… the first time we met, she told me off. I truly love her\nPlease help me bring my wife home\n***********************************Update****************************\nTen months ago, I got the worst news ever. My wife had been carjacked. I'm sure she was pregnant with our fourth. \nWe've been married two months shy of fourteen years, and it felt like yesterday until my life was ripped apart. We've lived in the same house for the whole time. Since my eighteenth birthday, I've worked beside the gentle giant until his retirement two months ago. We were given the news that the mill would not reopen in January. It is November, the Monday, a week before Thanksgiving. Our children are 13, 10, and 5.\n(phone ringing)\nHello\n(state police call)\nMr. Vuitton, it's Captain Logan from Virginia State Police. Can I come out to see you? I'm close to your location right now.\nDo you have news about Gloria?\nYes, but I'd rather…\n(interrupting)\nNo…. Our children are asleep. Tell me\n\nSomeone hunting tripped over a fresh grave near the original car burn site, and the state coroner has confirmed that it is Gloria.\n(dropping phone)\nWhoever took her kept her alive until she delivered. The Medical Examiner said she put up a good fight.\n(Are you there, hello, hello, hello)\nI'm sorry to have to tell you this way.\n(tears flowing)\nThat's my Gloria, everything for the family.\nI have a child out there somewhere. According\nWe have to wait…for the results of the samples from under her nails and the core blood.\n\nFinally, some answers ….\nA week has passed, and I now know I have another Prince. We had decided on Bernard Gabriel for this son.\nThe sample from under Gloria's fingernails reveals Bonnie Lenoir, the nurse from Doctor Washington's office. The one that lost her baby and husband to a drunk driver.\nHer life was stolen, so she stole mine… My son is still out there somewhere…" } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Polar Night\n\nGenre: american\n\nWord Count: 2862\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about a character emerging from hibernation, whether literally or metaphorically." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "“Give me that thing”\nChunhui grabs the cigarette from Bobby’s hand. There is a moment where their fingers touch, the warmest feeling in Alaska’s Northern Slope, and then it is gone.\n“No need to get handsy,” Bobby says to her. His voice is a dead whisper against the sweeping brown coastline, but she can hear him. They’re sitting shoulder to shoulder on the dried-out vertebrae of a bowhead whale.\n“You wish, cheechako.” Her lips are around the filter now, pursed in a way he has never seen. Bobby is glad to be under six inches of parka- his boyhood is screaming.\n“What does that mean?” Bobby asks.\nChunhui puts the cigarette in one hand and grabs his red jacket in the other. Their faces are eight inches apart, and she bridges the gap with a long push of tobacco. Then she smiles. “It means you don’t belong here.”\nIt’s like static on his face, the heat traveling across his ruby nose and down to his pants. Her eyes are browner than moleskin. “Is that a bad thing?” Bobby says.\n“Depends. Are you a jerk like all the other guys in this town?”\nIt’s now Bobby’s turn to smile, and he takes the opportunity to show it off, white and gritty. Chunhui laughs and turns out towards the slushy whitewash. The scene is strips of pink and yellow against a descending orb, the sea a million snowy molehills separating the two teens from the Artic tundra. She pulls on the cigarette again.\n“You never forget your last sunset,” Chunhui says.\n“No?”\n“Never. For two months, it’s all you have.” Chunhui’s exhale is silvery, like an invisible fox. He wants to steal it from her. “So you gotta savor it.”\nBobby leans a little closer, his hand moving atop the girls. She doesn’t pull away. One day, Bobby thinks, they will end up like the bones they sit upon. But it won’t be today.\n“Trust me,” Bobby says. “There’s no chance I forget this.”\n---------------------------------------------------------------\nSakari walks up the frosty shore, as far as he can go. He is completely alone for miles. In front of him is a drop off, a collection of tan and black rocks that drift into the sea. It is the northernmost point of the Western Hemisphere- the locals call it “The End of the World.”\nHis long flowing hair bounces to a stop as he saddles five feet from the edge. He slips his hands into his kuspuk and takes a deep breath. Sakari knows the air is different out here, yet today he feels no spark. He lets it out slowly, disappointed.\nThings in Utqiagvik have felt like this for a while- sparkless- and despite the shifting colors above him, he can’t seem to recapture it. The realization had come unexpectedly months prior, on an ice fishing trip with his brother.\nThey were huddled together in a small blue teepee, the wind hard and angry against their tent. Miku, who is two years younger, had thrown white lima beans in the fishing hole, and always enjoyed staring into the blue pit, waiting for the break in color. “Oh! Here one comes!” he said in a whisper, feet doing a little patter like some antsy sled dog.\nThe rod was in Sakari’s hands, and it began to bend, not violently but with delay, as if something was chewing instead of swallowing. Sakari waited a few seconds, then began to reel at the same pace as the fish’s bite. Halfway up, the creature realized its mistake, and began sprinting back in forth, slapping the roof of the ice floor. It only took ten more seconds before the head of the artic char was breaching their little hideout, a beautiful orange 33 incher.\nMiku grabbed the line and pulled the rest of the fish out of the water. “Nice, Sakari! This might be our biggest yet!” Sakari dropped the rod, and Miku handed the fish over.\nSakari was smiling at first- that he remembered. But when that cold slime ran over his fingers, and those orange-spotted muscles began fidgeting and flexing, he felt a sudden drop in temperature within him. Sakari looked into the eye of the fish, an open black hole the size of a dime, and saw there was nothing. A trickle of blood fell from its gill flap and puddled in his frozen palm- that seemed to make it worse. He pushed the fish away, afraid and disgusted by his lack of excitement.\n“Are you OK, Sakari? Did you hear something?”\nHe shook his head, wiping his hands on the ice, but his eyes were locked on the flopping fish, and its cold, dead, upward gaze. They didn’t camp for much longer that day.\nThat was where the stain began. It drifted over everything- the deckhands on his whaling boat, the diner waitresses, his snow-shoveling neighbors- and corrupted them. Where there once was life, and personality, and fulfillment, now reeked of a truth only he seemed to be aware of. That all of this- this frozen, aquatic existence- was just a passive march towards fish eyed emptiness.\nAt the End of The World, Sakari ponders his next move. The dancing kaleidoscope above him is dimming into night, and on his shoulders he can sense the coming of a heavy snowfall. In the morning, he won’t be able to see it- there will be darkness for sixty six days, and for the first time in his life, the idea of a full Polar Night scares him.\nOutside his vision, a bowhead whale breaches the surface. There is a faint sputter of broken water, and a louder pshhhh from its blowhole before things are quiet again. As darkness comes closer, and Sakari turns towards home, he makes a note of the giant mammal, and wonders if he’ll be around when the light can reconnect them.\n----------------------------------------------------------------\nNanook wheels Yuka to their living room window. In front of them is a mural they are familiar with- the bright cream hues of an Alaskan sunset- and on ordinary occasions, they would take a stroll out to the beach to celebrate another notch on their long post of revolutions together. Yuka can’t keep her eyes open, though, and her feet are crusty and bloated. So their tradition will have to wait.\n“It never gets less beautiful, does it, Yuka?”\nShe says nothing, but answers via a small squeeze on Nanook’s palm. It is so weak that it feels like a newborns.\nNanook continues to speak in their quiet home, the crackling fireplace his only narrative aid. “Remember the year after we got married, Yuka? The sunset came early, and we were upset we missed it- too busy working in the shop, both of us.” Nanook pauses, as the sun marks its halfway journey beneath the horizon’s maw. “Remember how this one ends?”\nAnother squeeze.\n“We walked outside that night, with our hands coated in that thick motor oil that they always shipped in frozen from Anchorage. A glob of it had stained your cheek, and I remember how it felt to not recognize you. My love, turned into some greased-up motor monkey.”\nThe sun is three quarters gone- a sliver of bright red licks their snowy encampment like raspberry glaze.\n“We were desperate, overworked, exhausted. And then- you remember this, Yuka, as we left that garage? The black sky ignited into neon, right in front of us, with wavy crystal ribbons that intertwined like loose balls of yarn. A cheechako might have mistaken it for the rapture, given how bright those gemstone colors pranced across the stars.”\nYuka squeezes hard, and Nanook feels a pull on his vision.\n“And then I turned to you and grabbed your hand-“ Nanook leaned over and grabbed her other hand, standing behind the chair- “and felt the sticky lock of our fingers in the negative fifty freeze. There was a hundred shades of purple across your face, and this time I failed to recognize you in a different way. You were a goddess, a primitive spirit with no ties to the living. You were up there with those ribbons in that moment, I could tell.”\nNo squeeze, but a small grin across a thousand wrinkles, illuminated by a dying sun. There is morning dew across his cheekbones.\n“And do you remember what I asked you?” Nanook says.\nYuka moves her shriveled lips delicately, each word a raspy, singular effort. “Can… anyone… exist… as… perfectly… as… you… do?”\nThe sun is subsiding off the coastline, leaving a dusty orange residue that is being cleansed by an oncoming storm. Nanook holds Yuka’s hands, tight as he knows possible, and quiets the whimpers in his chest. Together, they look out into the departing sunlight, and wait for harder days to come.\n----------------------------------------------------------------\nWhen Randall told his beer friends that he was moving to Alaska, their reactions were mostly the same. “What they got in the Tundra that they don’t got in the South?”\nRandall lined his pool cue up to the ball, the tip compacting on the glossy face as he spewed his holiest dream. “I want to run the sled dogs.”\nBrant, the loudest in their crew, chuckled so hard that the stretched pitbull on his tee shirt began to rumble and growl. “What you know bout’ sledding, boy? The only sledding you done is with your nose down the bar line!” The rest of them, equally obtuse and disgusting, giggled in agreement.\n“I kicked that shit, long time ago. I’m done with the drinking, too.” Randall powered through the last of his frosty Miller. “Starting now.”\nBrant moved from the booth, his knees buckling under his own forgotten weight, and waddled behind Randall, slapping two thick hands on his shoulders. “You’re a fine man, Randall, for an Alabama hick. You should know, though…” Brant brought his lips behind Randall’s ear, his breath an acrid, hair-frying heat.\n“You ain’t ever gonna make it out this town,” he whispered.\nIt wasn’t a moment Randall thought about very often, those nine words in a locals-only backwater saloon. But today, as he pets Kamona’s head in the pale shiver of November, it strikes his mind like the presentation of some great achievement.\nThere was nothing easy about it- the first challenge was finding this town, the coldest gulley in all of Alaska if you account for the onshore wind chill. Then he had to find an elder to learn from, in a language he was not familiar with. That took ages, sweeping bars and online forums, pulling for a lead. Turns out, all he had to do was wait outside and listen.\nA mile from his house was a barking place that set eruption to the empty land. Randall chased the noise one morning, and met twelve leaping huskies, all riled and untethered in the six-inch sleet. It must have been strange for Sitka to witness a redneck being absorbed by the bouncing pelts of his kin. It was why Randall had to answer to Sitka’s glistening bolt-action before they could discuss apprenticeship.\nSitka was a good man, and Randall was a good worker. That was six months ago, and they’d shared a lot of coffee and frostbite since then. On his birthday, Sitka pieced him in on some good news- Kamona, the dog Randall had grown fondest of (every sledder has a favorite), was pregnant. She was due in January.\nUp above him, the sky skims and twirls in a million different arcs, like a boy learning to scribble in his coloring book. The high mountains shiver in gold tinfoil, and a small sneeze leaps from Kamona’s nose. Randall pats her belly slowly, feeling the gurgle and tensity of her chest through his mittens. This is the time of day he feeds the dogs and puts them to rest, but Randall knows that can wait. For a kid from the sticks, this is all he’s been waiting for.\n----------------------------------------------------------------\nIt is January 23rd. The town of Utqiagvik is quiet, almost to the point of religious divinity. Snow spreads across the ground like frosting, and on the exposed parts of buildings, a thick layer of white freezer burn rides up the wooden edges.\nThese are not developments anyone can notice. The sun, a shy schoolgirl, has avoided this town for two months. The others make fun of her- the wind screeches laughter on worn-out haunches, the storm clouds dump their misgivings onto those unlucky enough to be below them, the sea continues its eternal bubbling hiss. None of this encourages her to show her face again.\nToday is a new day. It is expected she will be back, recovering a flash of braveness after a dark, lonely hibernation. The townspeople cower to their windows, peeling back the frost using only their breath. Utqiagvik has been patient, patient as a town can be, and they expect to be rewarded.\nHer entrance is grand- she’s always been an agent of class, and today she shows it, warming up the sky like a pot coming to boil. The darkness fades to gray, fades to blue, and then sparks of orange and pink begin to pop between the clouds, hidden kernels against solar heat. It is an articulate dance that she’s curated, and it scares the elements away. There is no more wind, no more churning sea. Only a white canvas for her to perform against.\nThe first civilian makes their way outside. A little girl opens the front door, a slip of red nose peaking from her parka as an offering. The sun takes it, climbing a little higher and shining some hotter rays across the one-story homes, which swim over the rigid mountaintops like unseen ocean tides.\nA bark cracks across the quiet space, and then another. The sled dogs billow out Sitka’s door, their coats downy and hungry for a good shine. Randall follows the crew, and in his arms are two pups, their eyes clipped fingernails, their fur gray as the past. Behind him is Kamona, heavier and milk-laden. She rubs against Randall’s side like a housecat, knowing his smell as closely as her young.\nThe sun continues to stretch and rise, a lump of sourdough set to proof. It ignites Barrow High School, then the Whaling Museum, and finally the town common, where fifty men and women stand within kissing distance. There is heat as the sun arrives, but with the temperature still in the negatives, no one is tempted to stray from the pack.\nThis is good news for Bobby and Chunhui, who stand face to face in the coming light. Bobby’s skin, almost transparent from the lack of Vitamin D, pulls tight against his lips as he sticks a tongue out, the red wet flesh baring small, smoky trails. Chunhui giggles and grabs his hands. It is these little faces, these passing glances, that have taught Chunhui what she’s been missing all her life. She doesn’t care what anyone thinks- she drags him in until his tongue is within her own.\nAnother man hangs inside the crowd- Miku. He is a man now, and the others recognize it, like the horns of a freshly matured elk; only Miku wears it in his grizzled beard, and his creased cheekbones, and his eyes that sing like judgement day. On his shoulders is his brother’s kuspuk. The sleeves are knotted tight against his chest, medallion-like, and in his pocket he chokes a cell phone. He winces constantly at the touch of it, as if it is made of something molten. Except it’s not a physical pain- it’s a spiritual kind that comes from waiting, from not knowing. Miku stares up, into the open blue sky, and lets the heat wash over him like a winter storm. There is a twinge in his eye, and then it comes, unexpected, a forgotten feeling. It is hope, overflowing his long empty cup.\nAway from all this, and the last one to be touched by the glowing sky, is the farthest home on the hemisphere. Inside is a dusty living room- a covered sofa, an old rabbit-eared television, an empty wheelchair. The door is wide open, yet the wind doesn’t catch it, so it stays that way, a bright blue gullet with one man within its lips.\nNanook steps across the beach. Each movement is slow, and as his boots break the skin of the icy soil, there’s a loud crunch. He has never done this walk alone- never dreamed he would have to. But it isn’t as bad as he thought it would be. The warm feels good on his joints.\nAs he moves, he holds onto each crunch like he does with everything else- the patter of her eyelashes, the meeting of their noses, the soft sigh as she lowers into bed. And for a moment, it’s as if she’s behind him, walking in his trail, her skin a golden fire and her gaze a neon sky.\nNanook wants to turn around, to catch her in his tracks. He doesn’t. Instead, he moves forward, chasing the unbroken snow in front of him, and blesses the light that shines upon their small, little world." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: The Flight of Annabelle Jennings\n\nGenre: african-american\n\nWord Count: 1563\n\nPrompt:\n\nStart your story in the middle of the action." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Based on the 1866 Memphis Massacre, this story contains violence, sexual violence, and child abuse.\n\nI saw my daddy fall to the ground, his eyes staring right at me, looking like two marbles but deep like the endless night sky. I wanted to run to him, but I was frozen in terror, breathless. Fighting filled the streets, nearly trampling me as I stood there gazing into my father’s eyes. A stray bullet bounced off the ground, grazing my calf. The sting of that hot metal slicing through my delicate skin was enough to break the trance and the sound of the chaos came to full volume.\nI hurried into our home and my momma rushed me into the bedroom, hiding me under the bed. I heard a crash that made momma yelp. Dirty black boots entered the room. They rushed towards momma, clunking against the wood floor with evil intent. I could see my momma’s bare feet backing away from them as quickly as they could go, as far as they could go. I heard a slap, and it knocked her to the floor. I saw her face, the panic in her eyes, the mark on her cheek, the shh on her lips telling me to stay quiet as she tried to make it back to her feet. I covered my mouth to suppress any sound that might burst forth with my crying.\nMomma was flipped over and slammed hard to the floor with a thud to her head. At the other end of the bed, I could see the man was down on his knees, pulling momma closer to him. She kicked and slapped until he punched her twice, hard, right on the side of the head, leaving her barely conscious. The man undid his pants and began to gratify himself with my momma’s limp body, tears slowly dripping from her eyes.\nI wish I could say that rage propelled me to help my momma that day, but it didn’t. Instead, I swallowed down a tremendous amount of fear, crawled out from under the bed and jumped on that man’s back with all the courage I could muster. He grabbed me by the ankle and swung me into the dresser. My shoulder absorbed most of the impact, but I laid there in a daze, hurting something fierce. The man came and stood over me, a menacing presence to such a small girl, with his bushy red beard and bloodshot eyes, raising his leg like he was about to stomp a roach. Momma regained consciousness and tackled that man before he could hurt me anymore, yelling, “Run, Annie, run!”\nI shook off the pain that was coursing through my body and scurried back under the bed to the wall where I found the loose board I used to sneak out at night and catch fireflies while momma and daddy were sleeping. I started for the only place I knew, Aunt Millie’s house. Aunt Millie was my momma’s sister. We spent Sunday’s at church together. Afterwards we would sew quilts and the ladies would tell me stories of the underground railroad and how they used quilts to signal safe passage. If anybody could help me, it would be Aunt Millie.\nI went as fast as I could up the grassy knoll, but hearing a gunshot from my house made me stop dead in my tracks. The image of momma lying there like daddy was out front entered my mind. My lips quivered and tears continued to stream down my face. Even at seven I knew I needed to run, or my fate would be the same. I reached the old dirt road running as fast as I could, my little legs searing in pain, lungs burning. Evening was settling in. The night sky was alight with the burning of the houses, schools, and churches. Gun fire rang through the air, and men scuffled everywhere, sometimes two to three white men to every black man.\nMaking it to Aunt Millie’s, her house looked unscathed. I ran in without knocking, startling two officers. One had Aunt Millie in a chair at gunpoint while the other was rifling through her things. Aunt Millie sprang from her chair, pushed past the man with the gun, causing the gun to go off. She grabbed me by the wrist and led me out of the house and around back.\n“Where are we going, Aunt Millie,” I asked, with fear and trembling in my voice.\n“To the South Bend Church, child. Hopefully, that is far enough away from this hate and violence,” said Millie with a tinge of uncertainty.\nThrough the yards we went, dodging stray bullets and avoiding men tussling; past the houses of slat wood and red brick chimneys with wood stacked neatly by the doors; around crooked unpainted fences and old clothes lines draped with bedding; through crowds of women fleeing with their children, white men firing at them like a herd of deer on the first day of season. Aunt Millie’s long legs were hard to keep up with, making my little ones work twice as hard. They started to give out and I was stumbling and falling by the time the South Bend Church came into view. Aunt Millie hoisted me up and ran for both of us as quickly as she could.\nThe South Bend Church was a one room white church with a belltower and a cross on top. Many people were crammed into that little church, on their knees praying.\n“Let us pray child. The Lord Jesus shall comfort us in our time of need,” Aunt Millie said, as she knelt down next to a woman praying through shudders and sobs. I joined her on my knees, and I could feel the presence of the Spirit wash over me as I began to think about my parents in heaven with Jesus.\nThere was a pastor leading us in our prayers. I remember the power of his voice, unwavering against fear or intimidation. To this day I think of him in that moment when I think of strength in the Lord. My moment of admiration did not last long, for through the window came a bottle of whiskey with a burning rag shoved down the neck of that bottle. When that bottle burst, that little wooden church went up in flames. We all got out, but people’s clothes had caught fire. Everywhere I looked people were rolling on the ground, screaming as fabric melted into their skin, their kin trying to beat out the flames. I wasn’t even spared the fires finger. As soon as I hit the warm nights air, Aunt Millie knocked me to the ground stomping on my pretty little dress. Aunt Millie fell on top of me, nearly crushing me. I didn’t understand at first, but a warm, sticky liquid poured onto my cheek and down into my mouth; the metallic taste and slimy texture causing me to gag. I panicked and fought my way free to find people who were already badly burnt being beaten with clubs and the ends of rifles, anything the rioting menace could find to inflict pain and suffering. Wiping the blood from my face, I turned and ran. I had no idea where I was going. All I knew was that bullets were kicking up dust at my bare little legs as I moved. I prayed to the Lord above that none of those bullets hit me.\nThe bullets stopped when I reached a marshy low-land area near the river, but I didn’t stop running. I was getting tired. I was stumbling and falling, but I was moving, splashing through the muddy bog. Someone leapt out from behind a tree and grabbed me, covering my mouth with their hand, stifling my startled shriek.\n“It’s alright, little one. You’re safe. My name is Ben Roker,” the man said. I recognized him as the pastor from South Bend Church. “This is my wife, Miss Maddie.”\n“Come, child, lets clean that blood off you,” Miss Maddie said sympathetically. “Where are your parents, sweetie?”\nI couldn’t answer. I could hear what they were saying, I understood, but it was like listening to people talking in another room. They said they would take care of me from then on, but all I could do was stare into the dancing flames of the city on fire as I listened to the whistling of bullets and the wailing of tortured souls. I dozed off that night, watching those flames and listening to those screams.\nMiss Maddie woke me up as blue and purple could be seen on the eastern horizon, providing a dim grey light that reflected off the fog and smoke. Fires still burned, people still screamed, and gunshots still rang out that morning. I rubbed my eyes and looked around. There were around ten to fifteen people there with us, hiding amongst the trees and debris that the Mississippi cast aside haphazardly. I don’t know if they all showed up overnight or if some of them were there when I got there, but it was nice to see other kids. Pastor Ben swept me up in his arms and I looked back over his shoulder at Memphis, taking one last look at the masked monster within men, making sure it was behind me, at least for the time being." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Influence\n\nGenre: american\n\nWord Count: 2893\n\nPrompt:\n\nYour family’s holiday dinners always end with everyone at each other’s throats. This year you’re determined to keep a low profile, but your patience is being put to the test." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Thanksgiving dinner has ended in bloodshed the past two years running, so when my sister Claire requested that we wear red for the big family photo, I applauded her ingenuity. If someone bleeds, it’ll blend in and we can just power through as if nothing happened. How genius! Although her career choice is not one I would choose for myself, I admire her determination. She is not going to let anything derail her holiday content this year, and heaven help anyone who gets in her way. \nI hope that since the last two Thanksgivings have been a disaster, this one will be better. What's that old saying–third time’s a charm? Or is it that bad things come in threes? Whatever it is, I am committed to laying low this year. I am excited to see my dad and my nephew Jaxon. The joy that I feel being with them is always enough to sustain me through whatever foolishness Claire or our mother have planned for the occasion. \nI smile when I see that Dad is sitting on the porch as I pull in the driveway, but my stomach drops when I get a closer look at him. His hair has grown back in, the first time he has had any in years. It is thin and wild in the breeze. Next to him is a shiny silver tank, and I can just make out some plastic looped over his ears. \nI lock the car and walk up the driveway with the green bean casserole in one arm, and a flask of Jack Daniels tucked under the other. He pulls me in tight for a hug. He smells like home. The sweater layered over his dress shirt is not thick enough to conceal his sharp shoulder blades and collarbone, but we won't speak of it. It’s not our way. Instead, he holds me in the embrace a bit longer than usual; an acknowledgement of thoughts we will not speak to life. \n“Hey Charlotte- how are ya?” he says instead, reaching for the flask and lifting it to his lips.\n“Oh you know…” I shrug, glancing at the oxygen tank and the cane leaning against the wall. \nDad swallows with a sigh of appreciation and inclines the flask back towards me. I wave him off but she cocks an eyebrow. “I saw your sister unload a ring light and tripod from the car earlier.” \nHe holds it out again and this time I accept. The burn rises up my neck and face and the front door opens just as I sputter a cough, revealing my mom and Claire behind it. Mom sees my flushed cheeks and frowns, and Claire does a brazen once over of my outfit. She is in stilettos and a fire engine red bodycon dress, so my red sweater, jeans and flats are frumpy in comparison. Judging by the approval I see in her eyes, I know I have hit the mark. I look good enough to be in the family pictures, but not good enough to steal the spotlight. I mentally pat myself on the back for getting it right this year. \n“Cutting it a little close to dinner, huh sis?” Claire says, waving Dad and I inside and patting each of us on the back.\n“Mhmm.” I say, locking my jaw to keep from saying something sarcastic. \n“I’ll take that,” mom says, pulling the casserole dish from my hands. “And Jaxon is in the living room. He’s been waiting for you to watch the parade.”\nThe mention of my nephew gets me back on track, and I stride past them through the long foyer. My brother in law, Nathan, sits next to Jaxon on the dark leather sectional, not looking away from the football game to acknowledge my arrival. Conversely, when Jaxon spots me, he rips off his headphones and tosses his tablet aside before launching himself into my arms. \n“I missed you so much Aunt Charlotte!” He says, squeezing me tightly around the neck with his small arms. When I release him, he laces his fingers with mine and waves towards dad, leading the way down the hall.\nOnce inside the small guest bedroom, Jaxon jumps on the bed and lays down in the middle, and Dad and I take our spots on either side of him. We used to watch the parade all together as a family tradition, but over the years it has dwindled to just us three. We like it better this way. \n“How many big balloons do you think will be in the parade this year, Jax?” I ask, holding out my arm for him to cuddle at my side.\nHe pulls his brows together, and my dad and I exchange a smile at his look of deep concentration. After so many years, the parade is not particularly exciting to watch anymore, but experiencing it through Jaxon’s eyes gives it new life. \n“Last year there were twenty three, so I think twenty four this year.”\n“Good guess, bud.” Dad says, handing him the notebook and pencil to keep tally. \nToo soon the parade is over and dinner is announced, so we trudge back out to the dining room to take our places at the elegantly decorated dining room table. Claire is closest to the camera, with Nathan and mom on either side of her. Dad, Jaxon and I are at the other end of the table, and I have never been so thankful to be considered the least photogenic of our family. \n“Looks like everyone is in frame...” Claire says, fiddling with her phone behind the tripod. I share a look with Dad as Mom uses her phone camera to check her teeth for lipstick. \n“We are just going around and saying what we are thankful for, ok? So stick to the script and this will be quick and painless.” She looks at everyone but me before taking her seat. \n“I’m sorry. Did you say stick to the script?” I ask, confused.\nClaire sighs and briefly closes her eyes. “Yes, Charlotte. I knew you wouldn't take any suggestions, but I made it easy for everyone else and planned some dialogue for the video.” \nMy stomach sours as I imagine what curated sentiments I am about to hear when she hits record. She is right, I would not have taken any of her suggestions, although I doubt that mentioning I am thankful for being Jaxon’s aunt would have been met with much resistance. But with Claire, you never really know. \n“Ready?” She asks, this time only looking in my direction. \nWhen I nod, she pushes a button and runs back to her seat, snapping her fingers to get Nathan’s attention. He pauses the football game playing loudly on his phone and sets the phone in his lap, just out of view of the camera. \n“I am thankful to have a job that allows me to be present with my family.” she says, smiling sweetly around the table. \nI quickly turn my head away from the camera so that the camera does not catch my gigantic eye roll. \n“I am thankful for my smoking hot wife!” Nathan adds. Claire throws her head back and laughs in a girlish way that gives Nathan the space to playfully bite her neck. She smacks him gently and beams for the camera. The move is so smooth that it reeks of a choreographed number. \nJaxon is next. “I am thankful for all of this healthy food I am going to eat!” He waves his little arms over the table and then makes a cheeky grin to the camera. This time I am not successful at hiding my reaction. Even though the lie is harmless, I have to fight to control the anger that is rising in my chest. Sitting on the kitchen counter is a plate of freshly microwaved dino nuggets for Jaxon. He will not have a single bite of the food on the table. \nAll eyes turn to me but I am still stunned. Why would she have him say that? There are so many other things he could have said that were true. Was it some weird flex that I didn’t know about to not let your kids eat dino nuggets on Thanksgiving? Who would even care? \nWhen it is clear that I am not going to speak, Claire’s plastered smile falls. \n“Ok, cut.” she huffs, pushing away from the table to stop the video. \nJaxon turns to me, his face concerned. “Did you need help with what you are going to say, Aunt Charlotte?” \n“No Jax,” I say, smoothing his hair back from his forehead. “I was going to say that I am thankful to be your auntie. I just wasn't ready yet.” I say, sparing him from what I really think about this whole charade. \n“Ok let's try one more time. Ready?”\nI nod, and in a near perfect reenactment, Claire and Nathan restate their lines, the bite, and the playful slap. Jaxon repeats his lie, and the table turns to me again. I open my mouth to speak, then close it. \nJust say it, I think to myself.\nI open my mouth again, but the words are stuck in my throat. I turn my gaze to Jaxon, hoping it will help the words come if I just focus on him. His eyes flash with panic as no sound leaves my mouth. \nClaire slams her fist on the table and everyone jumps. She shoots up, clattering the plates and silverware around her. “What the hell, Charlotte?” \n“I’m sorry…” I start, trying to diffuse the situation for Jaxon’s sake.\n“Why are you so committed to making me miserable?” Claire accuses.\nI scoff at the irony of that statement, and that only intensifies her rage. \n“Let me handle this Claire.” Mom says, her eyes apologetic as she turns her makeup caked face to me. “I know this is hard, sweetie. It's hard for me sometimes, too.”\nI am not sure what I expected her to say, but commiserating was at the bottom of the list of possibilities. My shoulders drop in relief. “Yeah. Thank you mom, it really is…” \n“And it’s only natural to feel jealous of your sister…”\nI recoil as if I have been slapped by the words. “Jealous?” I ask, incredulously. My blood is now boiling as I balk at the insinuation that any part of Claire’s life is something I would want for myself. Every single mean thought I’ve ever had about the two of them rises up, ready to be hurled at them at a seconds notice. I want so badly to put them in their place. I want to grab Jaxon and get far away from this. I want to hurt them the way that they have hurt me.\nDad reaches out and puts his hand on top of mine just as I open my mouth to start launching my insults. I turn to meet his eyes as my shoulders are heaving. I have to press my lips together as hard as I can to keep the vitriol that has built up over the years from spewing out. \nHe shakes his head at me, his eyes saying what I already know. \nIt won't make a difference. \nNothing I say will change them. \nAnd most of all, Jaxon doesn't need to hear just how rotten his parents are when there is nothing I can do to save him from them. \nI let out a dejected sigh through my nose and turn back to Jaxon, giving him a tight kiss on the top of the head as I stand. “I’ll be back in a few minutes, Jax.” \n“Thank God.” I hear Charlotte say as I walk away. \n“Can we just film without her?” My mom suggests, but I am too far away to hear Claire’s response. \nI enter the guest room and close the door behind me, lying down to stare up at the ceiling and attempt to control my breathing. Frustration morphs into hot shame as I think about Jaxon. I should have done my part. If I had, I would be sitting out there with him now, exchanging a dino nugget for a bite of the marshmallow topping of the sweet potatoes. Why couldn’t I just say that I was thankful for being Jaxon’s aunt so that we could move have on with the night? He already has enough to deal with, and I always strived to be his safe place. I let him down. \nI wipe my eyes at the sound of a soft knock at the door, not wanting to let Claire or mom see my tears. Thankfully it is neither, and Dad shuffles in the room to sit down next to me. \n“I’m sorry, Dad. I should have just said that I was thankful for Jaxon and let it go. I didn't mean to ruin the night.” \n“I know,” he says, patting my leg. “But you don't owe me an apology. I came in here to apologize to you, actually.” \n“What?” I ask, my eyebrows pulling together in confusion. “Why would you need to apologize?” \nHe takes a deep breath before speaking. I sit up straighter and turn towards him, wanting to hear everything he is about to say. I can tell by his expression that I will want to take in every word.\n“As cliche as it sounds, one really does start to put things into perspective when they are at the end of their life.” he starts. I nod, knowing where this is going. “We put up with a lot for those that we love. And we find joy in the little moments amongst the more tedious ones.” \nHe’s right, as usual. But it is a bitter pill to swallow. “So we just let them be awful all the time? I hate that they make Jaxon be part of the facade.”\n“Well, I can promise you that nothing you do will ever change them, and that there's a good chance Jaxon will turn out just fine anyways.” \n“How do you know?” I say, wishing that I believed he was right. \nHe puts his hand on my shoulder and squeezes it. “Because look at how great you turned out.” \nI blink, taking in his words. Was my upbringing really that similar to Jaxon’s? \nThe picture perfect holidays of my childhood flash behind my eyes, not unlike the one happening back in the dining room. Images of mom putting so much energy into the way the house looked and planning the perfect meal, but never slowing down to just be with us. The eventual division of mom and Claire versus dad and me, and finding the joy in the little moments, just like he said. All of my best memories as a child are with my dad, and I am a reflection of him just how Claire is a reflection of her. \n“We finished the silly video, so come back and eat with us. Let’s turn this around for Jaxon’s sake. The kid is like them, but he is also a lot like us, too.” \nI nod and follow him back to the dining room, unable to deny the ways that Jaxon takes after us, feeling renewed in the task of being a positive influence in his life. Jaxon beams as I take my seat next to him, and I reach over to steal a dino nugget when I see that all of the marshmallow topping is scraped off of my sweet potato serving. The table is silent for just a moment, but when Jaxon starts to giggle the group takes a collective sigh. Even if we have different approaches, each of us want what is best for Jaxon. He deserves to have a holiday with his family, and if we can't agree on anything else, we can at least agree on that. \n1 year later \nPulling up to my parents house just is the same as last year, with green bean casserole in one hand and a flask in the other. At the table, we say how thankful we are for the camera, we take the family photo, and Jaxon counts twenty six balloons in the parade rerun. Before my mom cuts the pie for dessert, I sneak out back with the flask and let a few tears fall, ones I have been holding back all night. \nLifting the flask skyward, I make a quiet toast to my dad, wondering how I will be a light in Jaxon’s life when I have lost the light of my own. \n“Who are you talking to, aunt Charlotte?” I wipe the tears and tuck the flask into my back pocket as Jaxon approaches and laces his hand in mine. \n“I was talking to grandpa.” \nHe frowns. “I miss him.”\nI swallow. “Me too.”\n“Is he listening?” he asks, looking up at the sky. \n“Of course,” I nod. “Do you want to say something to him?”\nHe thinks hard, pulling his brows together in contemplation. After a moment, he steps forward and says, “Grandpa, there were twenty six balloons this year. And don't worry, Auntie Charlotte and I are continuing all of our traditions forever and ever.” \nI nod, his statement perfectly complete without needing to add any more words of my own. I squeeze his hand and leads me back inside." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: UNCOMMON GROUND\n\nGenre: african-american\n\nWord Count: 1933\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about two friends getting into a fist fight." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "UNCOMMON GROUND\nThe old man sat alone, unkempt, unshaved, on the promontory, looking out to sea. It was an uncommonly fine day and the sun shone brightly as he stared off into the distance watching the launch as it slowly approached. His turn for a fortnight on the mainland.\nAt first, despite the differences in age, they’d been friends. Though they shared no common ground, apart from their jobs, they had both gone out of their way to be polite, make conversation, not antagonise each other in any way and he, Jonah, had found that cohabiting on this rock, several miles off the mainland, could, contrary to his beliefs, actually be a pleasant experience.\nSo used to being the sole lighthouse keeper in his previous positions, he had had his doubts that he could, in fact, adapt to living with another human being in isolation from the rest of the world for two months at a time. For such was their tour of duty: eight weeks on Roughloch, the rocky outcrop on which the Strathairn Lighthouse had been built-then two weeks leave, taken in turn, back on the mainland of North East Scotland.\nHe’d been surprised to learn that Angus, his new partner, was a married man, with a bairn on the way, no less. What kind of man could leave an expectant wife alone to cope with everything while he sojourned on an island in the Atlantic for two months at a time? Being a lighthouse keeper was no job for an attached man, which was why he, Jonah, had never formed a serious relationship, ever.\nOver time, as the two men shared their evening meal and conversed, the only time in a working day that allowed for proper conversation, apart from the odd passing word, Angus had explained, one night, that he did not intend to stay in this job but, by working on this rock for twelve months, he could actually save enough money for a down payment on a wee cottage for him and his family. It had made sense though it was the first time that Jonah had felt that first twinge of something cloud his thoughts. Was it jealousy?\nOr was it, merely, dismay that this young man could look upon lighthouse keeping as a means to an end, a temporary occupation? Whereas, for Jonah, it was a career, a profession; a craft that took a lifetime to hone.\nWhatever it was, from that moment on, Jonah’s opinion of his young comrade began to change and a glacial division arose between the two. Little things, minor episodes, took on a whole new aspect and, more than once, the two had almost come to blows but Jonah, being much the larger of the two, had graciously held back and let his smaller companion off the hook.\nFor Angus, this change in their relationship had been a shock. He had read about men, confined in one restricted space, turning on each other so he understood that it was beholden on him, as the novice, to go above and beyond in his efforts to form a bond with his experienced colleague and he believed that he had gone out of his way to accomodate this ridiculous man he now lived with. For a start, Jonah’s affectation in dressing as if he was the skipper of a boat, wearing a captain’s cap, thick turtleneck sweater and peacoat, an unlit pipe jutting from his mouth, had made Angus think of Popeye and he had been forced to cover his mouth with his hand to stop from laughing that first time he had sighted him. His constant use of the word “aye”, doubled up as in “aye, aye”, as if they were serving aboard a ship rather than on a remote rock, also amused him; initially. Of late though, it annoyed him, grated upon his nerves.\nOf course, there had been no denying that Jonah knew his stuff and, at first, Angus had set to with a passion, only too willing to listen and absorb, to learn from this experienced mentor but, gradually, as the same instructions became repetitious, day after day, he found it almost impossible to hide his boredom. How many times did somebody have to be told to polish this, watch out for that?\nAs far as Angus was concerned, the pivot, upon which their relationship had turned for the worse, had been their conversation over their evening meal when he had foolishly disclosed that he was on the same wage as Jonah. The older man had been unable to disguise his anger, disgust, bafflement at this injustice and had stormed from the small room that served as their living quarters at the base of the lighthouse. For two days, they had not spoken. That had been at the completion of the first eight week tour when he, Angus, was due to board the launch that would take him back to the mainland for a fortnight, leaving Jonah alone on the rock. He had searched for Jonah before his departure, anxious to put things right between them, to explain that he wasn’t responsible for peoples’ pay-but the older man had been nowhere to be found.\nTo Jonah’s mind, the equality in pay was merely the final straw; the ultimate insult. Though he actually revelled in being alone, the sole master, once again, he seethed at the situation he found himself in. Where was the respect for his years of service, his command of his craft? He knew that this young upstart secretly mocked him, his dress, his mannerisms; the fact that, outside of this job on an isolated rock, he had no other life or interests. How many times had Angus tried to engage him in subjects he had no knowledge of: music, football, books. The only thing that Jonah read, cover to cover, over and over, was Old Moore’s Almanac. By God, he wanted to teach this young cur a lesson, administer a good thumping. As he lay on his cot at night, he drifted off to sleep envisaging the blows he would strike the very next time that Angus upset him.\nBack on the mainland, Angus’s pretty and sensible wife, having listened to his grievances about life with Jonah, was busy counselling him that it was his responsibility to go out of his way to appease the older man. No matter what, he had to bite his tongue and make a huge effort for, there was no denying that Angus, new to this job, truly had no right to be on the same salary as his more experienced co-worker. Angus, who adored his wife and respected her wisdom, listened as she advised that Jonah should, in fact, be pitied for having no other life outside of his job and she insisted that, on their first shared leave-after six months -Angus would bring Jonah home for dinner, so that she could meet him. She urged her husband to think of something suitable that he could take back to the lighthouse as a peace offering. So it was that Angus boarded the small motor launch that would return him to Roughloch in a completely different frame of mind to that with which he had left, two weeks previously.\nJonah had been carefully counting down the days. Though he dreaded the return, at the same time, he longed for the first opportunity to lay a beating on the younger man; one that would establish the hierarchy of their relationship once and for all. It was a blustery day, drizzle falling constantly and, though not heavy, it was the type of rain that seeped into one’s clothing and dispensed a thorough soaking. Jonah stood in his peacoat, spurning his sou’wester and waterproof coat, watching as the launch approached the small jetty, the only place on the rocky isle where the waters were calm enough to allow a boat to heave to. He glared at the figure of the young man, sensibly dressed in yellow waterproof and sou’wester, as he jumped onto the small promontory, waved goodbye to the launch crew and made his way up the steep path to where Jonah was stood.\nAngus had spotted Jonah while still two hundred yards from the isle. He could see that Jonah was not wearing waterproofs, preferring his vain look of sea captain and getting a real soaking because of it. It was difficult for Angus to hide his contempt for he could imagine the awful, musty smell of those wet clothes, hanging to dry, in their living quarters. Dear God, eight more weeks of this to face up to but, for his wife and his soon to be born bairn, he would endure. As he leapt from the boat and waved farewell to the launch, he turned and began to climb the chiselled stone steps up to the lighthouse. It was just as he neared the top that a gust of wind took Jonah’s captain’s cap and swept it out to sea, exposing his thinning hair, a look of incredulity upon his face. Angus could not contain himself and let out a roar of laughter.\nAt the sight of those flashing white teeth, mocking him, the sound of laughter rising above the noise of the wind, Jonah threw himself at Angus and, because of the slight advantage of being above the younger man added to his greater size, at first, he had the upper hand but the slipperiness of the oilskin that Angus wore meant that Jonah could not get a firm grip on him. The two fell to the side of the stone steps, among the brambles and gorse, oblivious to the scratches imposed on their exposed skin. Jonah was surprised at the smaller man’s strength as they wrestled and, also, at how quickly he, himself, was out of breath.\nSomehow, they both staggered to their feet and Angus, overwhelmed by this sudden attack, climbed the steps to get away from Jonah. He held out his hands in a placatory gesture to ward Jonah off but there was no stopping him. As they both faced each other at the top of the steps, on level ground, Jonah threw a mighty right hook that would have knocked any man unconscious but, with the speed of youth, Angus blocked the punch expertly with his left hand, at the same time, ducking low and driving his own right hand into Jonah’s solar plexus. As Jonah collapsed, gasping for breath, Angus turned his back on the older man and retreated to the lighthouse, not seeing Jonah pick up a heavy rock and come staggering after him, a look of madness in his eye.\nLater that night, as Jonah returned to the lighthouse after disposing of Angus’s dead body, weighted with rocks, over the side of the promontory, he caught sight of himself in the mirror of their living quarters. Bedraggled and windswept, his comb over blown askew, his peacoat saturated, he realised that he did look ridiculous and he understood why Angus would have laughed at the sight of him.\nGoing through Angus’s kitbag, he was stunned by some of the dead man’s belongings: The photograph of his lovely wife, the medal for bravery in the Great War, the certificate awarded for winning his regiment’s lightweight boxing championship, the envelope addressed to him, Jonah, containing an invitation to dine with Angus and his wife in four month’s time and, finally, a copy of the new Old Moore's Almanac!\nThe old man sat on his cot shivering, still in his soaked clothing and cried himself to sleep." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: View From The Window\n\nGenre: american\n\nWord Count: 2154\n\nPrompt:\n\nImagine an origin myth that somebody might use to explain an eclipse, or some other celestial event." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The plane is halfway through the air when the windows start to dim. It’s a connect flight from Houston to Albuquerque and I’m sitting by the wing, dreaming about a conversation long ago.\nWe lived in a shank shack out in the desert, a fifteen minute walk up a single lane road where no one could get to us. The realtor knocked ten percent off the asking price because there was no running water, so we had to use a well in the twenty-first century. Daddy saw that as a plus- thought all that walking would turn us into a real family, one worth its salt.\nNear the well was a chicken coop, and a windmill that made a strange whistle when the day was quiet enough. The days were always very quiet, especially in the summer, when my brother and I would play cards on the dusty living room carpet, the only light coming from the hatchings of the screen door and the curtains in a blue cotton tint. We’d play war and rummy and games like that on milk crates where we’d sweat in our boxers and talk about comics we stole from the school library. \nOn one specific day, that screen door barked like a gavel as it opened and came to rest. Me and Greg looked up, a bit scared, a bit excited. It wasn’t a sound we associated with loneliness, and like most things loneliness could become a protection of its own.\n“Morning, boys.” It was my father, the highway cowboy of our daydreams. His beard was long with streaks of gray, and his hair flowed longer under his tan “Merle Haggard” ranch hat. The wind that designed the desert pulled at his loose denim, so that even then, the world was trying to steal him away. My brother and I latched onto his legs, shackling him to our home.\n“What’re you doing here, Pa?” my brother said.\n“I’ve got something to show ya.” He moved to the kitchen, walking like Frankenstein. “But I want to tell you boys a story first. Wanna hear it?”\nGreg and I nodded with great eyes of pearl.\n“Well, then, come on up. And Greg” Daddy pointed under the sink, which was a spigot-less fossil filled with Vienna Sausage cans. “Grab that bucket.”\nIn the rear of the kitchen was another screen door, and in the summer it turned orange and alive. Daddy pushed it open, and in the heartland of our little America, between the tired wooden giant and the muted clucking and the sand that seemed a permanent resident in our home, he reclaimed his title as the ruler of it all. The orange from the door had stained his hands, and we felt it on our shoulders as he led us into the country, his fingers a comfort that, even to this day, I’ve never found in religion or elsewhere. As we walked, he spoke.\n“You see, your Daddy ain’t too different from this world. He’s a driver, and in a lot of ways, so is everyone else.”\n“What you mean?” Greg held the bucket low, and it clipped the ground every step or two. \n“Well, I move things. I load them up in my truck and I get them to people who need it. Then, once that’s done, I load up some more and start moving again. Texas to Kentucky, Kentucky to Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh to Cleveland. Round and round and round like that.”\nI nodded, and he turned his gaze towards my side. “Now, it may not seem like it, but most everybody works this way, too. The farmers plant and harvest, the schools churn out the students, the little barn mice search for food and hide when they got it. Have you noticed this?”\nWe were closer to the well and the land was losing a bit of its luster. His words reminded me of how Greg always folded with pocket sevens. Just like that, as if he hadn’t any choice to do so, just tossed them on the milk crate face up. When I asked why he tossed a pair, he’d shrug. Pocket sevens and a shrug. I told my father I noticed this.\nGreg piped up, as if this were an accusation. “Well Billy strokes the chickens before he puts em’ down. Pets them for a half hour. And he cries when he wrings them out.”\nMy face grew hot. Pa’s hand strengthened on my shoulder. “Boys, you’re missing the point. It ain’t a competition. We all got these things, these little cycles we’re involved in. Just look at the sun and the moon. Everyone depends on em’, but they don’t know any different. They move when they gotta move, running their course, and when it’s over they do it the next day. Again and again.”\n“When’s the moving stop?” Greg asked.\nMy father chuckled. “Well, that’s the great mystery, Greg. We could sit here and guess, but the truth is maybe forever. Or it could be tomorrow.” Daddy felt my body tense up and took it back. “Not tomorrow. Probably not in your lifetime.”\nI tried to move the conversation along. “What did you want to show us?”\n“You’ll see. We’re almost here.”\nWe approached the well, and in the presence of our Pa, whose appearance we considered almost mythical, it looked incredibly dated. A few bricks had fallen into the sand. Plus, my brother and I had broken the spoke a long time ago, so a chaffed bit of rope hung out of the well’s mouth like a snake put to sleep in the shine.\n“Fetch us some water,” said Pa, but Greg needed no instruction. He’d already awoken that snake, looped it under the handle of the pail, and twisted it until a sort of fibrous tumor developed above the bucket. Then, he tossed the bucket inside the well. The rope spit old grains of sand as it ran through his hands. When the water and wood collided, we could hear very little of it- only breath, a single breath, one that traveled round and round. All three of us pulled it upwards, and when it had been unearthed, it was wet and glimmered warm as the stars above our house in the summer.\n“Now,” Daddy began, and he got on one knee, slower than the two of us boys did. “When I’m on the road, a funny thing seems to happen. I’ll be moving through my day, but so are many others, and these cycles overlap sometimes. Usually they’re truckers- occasionally it’s a cross country tourist. We’ll throw each other a smile, and if it ain’t our first time, then maybe we’ll grab a coffee. But it’s never much more than that.”\n“One time,” Greg said, “I saw the same turkey vulture everyday for two weeks. Sitting on a gutted jackrabbit out a half mile from our house.”\nI nodded because I remembered that bird. Its head was always covered in red pulp, and in the night I thought I could hear it batting its wings outside our window, as if warning us where all this was headed.\nDaddy looked very solemn. “That’s part of it, yes. The vultures and the jackrabbits and the fat black ants that we find when we look close enough. They’re all in on it, all tapping into each other’s cycles.”\nMy eyes were downcast, focused on the bucket. The water tilted and slowed inside like a dying hurricane.\n“But there’s the other side, too. Honeybees and hummingbirds and the turning of the world. And that’s where some amazing things can happen.”\nIt was only then I realized how much darker the world had become, as if my father’s speech had sucked the soul and the pale yellows out of the land. The water had finally stilled. A glowing object lay prone within it.\n“Here’s one,” Daddy said, and pointed to the bucket. “Remember what I told you about the sun and the moon? Them not caring much about their course?”\nBetween the bucket’s lips, under the beating heart of twine, the sun had become a crescent. A black cut of ink chewed hungrily at its white skin. The sky had turned gray, and I grabbed my father’s hand.\n“Even they run into each other once in a while.”\nMe and Greg said nothing. We knew what it was, in theory- the comics mentioned them all the time. But to see the drive-by in real time, to taste night in the afternoon and complete silence and a hope that your father might come home… can you put a price on that?\nHis voice was strong and etched hard by long roads and rest stop cigarettes. “This is all it is, boys. That’s what I’ve figured out. We follow our cycles, and when our time comes, we take it to the end.” He grabbed harder on our shoulders, pulling us closer. “But it’s these communions that make a life. The good and the bad and the strange. All of it.”\nThe crescent had receded to a fingernail and then a whisker. When that shiny whisker was gone, our father turned us around to look. Up above our home, hung between the blades of the mill, was a ring, rail-thin and brilliant. Beads of light bled from the edges of the dark, dripping onto the desert and onto the footprints that we paved out to the well. It was the outline of a dream, a tunnel you chase after death, a vulture’s eye, the beginning and the end. It was everything.\n“Dad,” Greg said. “Will Mom ever come home?”\nDaddy looked onward, and his long brimmed hat shook from a quiet breeze. It didn’t stop until the sun had become barren and clean again. Out in front of us, encouraged by the breaking of a new day, the chicken coop rustled and clucked. From inside, a rooster crowed.\nI come back to it just like my Daddy, staring endlessly out a window, and my eyes feel coated in silk. I blink it away. The plane is very empty except for a few suits and a flight attendant. She comes down the lane with a tired smile and offers me a drink. I decline.\n“Can’t believe I’m missing the eclipse,” she says. “Do you got a good view over there?”\n“No,” I tell her.\n“Darn,” she says. “Bet you wish you were down there, huh?”\n“Yup,” I tell her, and this time it’s a lie. I chose this flight for a reason. For two reasons, actually.\nThe first is that a funeral always comes around on such short notice. Greg hadn’t left me much time to be picky. Selfishly, I wish he’d told me a week or two in advance, before he knotted himself up like he did that bucket. That way, I could’ve made a drive out of it. A stop at Daddy’s grave, another stop at the old house, and maybe lunch at that place where me and Greg liked to skip stones before school. That would’ve been a nice trip, I suppose.\nThe news had wrecked me, but it hadn’t surprised me. In my heart, I always knew that he’d go out that way. Just as I knew he’d fold on pocket sevens and shrug it off like it was nothing. Part of me hated him for it, and part of me understood. I picture that vulture digging its head into the insides of that jackrabbit, picking it to the bone over fourteen rotten days, with my mother standing behind them all the while, and I think to myself, why bother? These things run in cycles, a wise man once told me.\nThe second reason wasn’t something I could put a finger on. It was more a feeling, or possibly a reaction, to the current state of things. I believed- and I really believed this- that if I watched that eclipse on solid land, through the bucket as I did on a Saturday afternoon in Lubbock, Texas, then I might take a note and follow my brother. Not out of fear or grief, but out of necessity. There are some things you can only see once, and when you urge for communion like I do, there’s only so much temptation you can take.\nSo I stare, 35,000 feet in the air, as the sky turns to nothing, imagining how that ring of fire is scaring and mesmerizing and changing the lives that we fly over. I think about that until the window heals and returns to blue.\nThe flight attendant moves back up the row, dragging a cart as she walks. There is no one to take a drink from her. It rumbles in the numb exhale of the plane’s interior.\nI stop her near me, giving her a smile that I think I learned from my father.\n“Would you like to have a coffee with me?”" } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Only Through His Grace\n\nGenre: african-american\n\nWord Count: 1484\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about someone who has always done something as part of a group, and is now starting to set out solo, or vice versa." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Kirk grew up in a church, loved the church and served at the church but over time as he grew up he became detached. He and his friends created a secular rap group by the name of The Misfits that became so big they started touring all over the world. Kirk loved all the fame, money, girls and jewelry he gained from his career but for some reason he still felt empty inside. The group it’s self was pretty big but Kirk was the man of the group everyone and I do mean everyone loved him. Until one day he decided to just get up and pray mid studio session, and that’s when he heard a voice tell him, “it is only through His Grace will you feel complete”. That moment sparked something in Kirk he knew exactly what he had to do and for some reason didn’t care about the outcome. \n“And now coming to the stage we bring to you, coming all the way from the dirty Dallas tx The Misfits” you can hear screams from all over the arena ‘yayyyyyyy” the crowd is going crazy. Sean B. Walks out and the women in the crowd began to pass out, you can hear prince voice on the mic as he walks out shirtless rapping their hit new single “The Bag”. As the crowd is getting hype Sean looks over at prince with a confused face, where’s Kirk his verse is coming up? He whispered as he walked towards him. “ Aye Yo DJ cut the beat” you can hear Kirk say! The whole crowd went into an awkward silence. “ as many of you may not know but I’ve been in a strong battle as of late” Kirk said as he walked on to the stage in front of over 75,000 people. “This is and will be my last show with my brothers” Kirk said Prince looked at Sean B in Shock “ bro what is bro on?” “ Did you know about this?” Sean B Shakes his head and immediately walks off stage. Prince followed in a rushing manner leaving just Kirk on stage. \nAs he finished speaking to the crowd about his recent encounter with GOD you can hear so many of the fans cheering him on for what he had decided. The DJ even gave him words of encouragement and told him in front of the crowd that he would love to still be his DJ moving forward. He said his goodbyes and walked off stage back to the green room. You can see the look of defeat on both prince and Sean b’s faces as he approached them. “Bro how could you pull something like that without speaking with us” Sean B said. He began to just look and tell them everything would be okay and that this is something that he needed to do for himself and hope that they both understood. Prince walked up to him shook his hand like a man and said ‘Whatever you need brother we got you handle your business”. Sean B. Left both of them alone and walked away.\nMonths later Kirk walks into the church that he had been visiting and volunteering at since the groups break up. A young man by the name of Malachi walks up to him and ask was he Kirk from the Misfits and told him he was at that concert and what Kirk did inspired him to get back into church to use his gifts for god. Malachi was a producer and cinematographer who just wanted to give back to the church. After service he walked up to Kirk and told him he had been working on the churches youth department media team. He then asked him would he want to help out with this years youth explosion. That’s when he told him the church had a production studio. \nMalachi and Kirk began meeting up at the churches studio every Sunday after service working on projects. They were both excited about the upcoming youth explosion making hit after hit, that’s when Kirk realized he was still in love with making music. He explained to Malachi that what he was about to do was going to potentially change Malachi life for good and began to tell him that this was only for god and to make sure that he didn’t lose focus. “Okay I got an idea we create an album and call it OHG short for only through his grace” Kirk said. “Bro lets do it” Malachi replied.\nThey were working hard on this album and also putting together the biggest youth explosion ever. Kirk had the bright idea on getting back on social media to help promote it so he took to instagram. Not knowing what was in store Kirk made a post with him and Malachi in the studio you can hear the 808s thumping guitar strings and piano keys going in the background, “Aye yo check this out we getting ready to bring y’all the livest youth explosion you’ve ever been to and get this ya boy will be performing for the first time since my performance with the misfits so make sure y’all click the link in the bio and get ya tickets June 21st its going up at Social Hope Outreach Center Lets GOOOOO”.\nAs he and Malachi prepared he began to just feel better then he ever did before the love and support that he was receiving was overbearing. He was receiving so many comments from fans telling him he inspired them to change their lives and that they were excited to attend this youth explosion. Things began to be so big on social media that radio host were reaching out to him and Malachi asking to do interviews, set up vendor tables at the youth event etc. In this moment nothing else mattered to him because this was his way of spreading the gospel all while using his talents for god and the church. \nNow this is not just any church this is a Mega Church to put in perspective. The pastor is already what some people would call a Youtube Preacher so the amount of in person and online members is insane. The church also began to help promote and before you know it tickets were sold out, over 20,000 tickets sold, the church then offered free online access for those who could not afford to come. \nThe day had come and fans and church members began packing out the church, Malachi was nervous because not only was he kirks producer but he had took on the task of also being kirks DJ and this was his first big concert. As opening acts performed the crowd were worshiping and praising god. Some artist were rappers and some were singers a good balance of both some of the acts had their own bands and others came performing over tracks. Right before Kirk got on stage he gets a knock on the green room door “Come in” he yelled. At the door you could see Sean B and Prince standing there smiling ear to ear “ bro its been a while and we couldn’t miss this for nothing the last time I saw you I’m not going to lie I was hurt but brother God has been working on you and I see it” Sean B said. “Alright enough being all sentimental get out there and do Gods work my guy” prince interrupted. “Thanks man this means so much” Kirk replied as he walked out the green room and onto the stage.\nKirk went on the stage and performed all of the songs he and Malachi had been working on for months not missing a beat. He began taking the crowd through a worship session and back to a praise session with the music that they had created this new Kirk was pure and full of life the glow that came over the stage wasn’t from the spotlight beaming on him but this light that was among him came straight from GOD. As he approached the last song you can see people in the crowd begin to throw their hands up and total praise. “ now this next song is titled OHG because it was only through gods grace that I was given this chance to fully surrender on to him if any one out there is struggling like I was this is for you” Kirk Said. He performed a song so touching and moving before you know it people all over the church were in a deep prayer people watching online were in groups of prayer in their homes. As Kirk gazed amongst the crowd he looked back at Malachi standing at the Dj booth and said “this is why we do it little brother” with the biggest smile and tears of joy coming down his face." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: She Didn't Have The Right Words\n\nGenre: american\n\nWord Count: 1811\n\nPrompt:\n\nSet your story during a total eclipse — either natural, or man-made." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "They were in his favorite restaurant, downtown, in Tribeca.\n“Let’s do the eclipse”, he said.\nHe seemed very busy, so it came as a surprise to her.\n“Are you sure?” she said, “it’s such a long trip, to Maine”.\n“I can carve out time, but I might need to make a few phone calls on the road,” he said.\nShe didn’t mind. His work was important. She would find a place for them to stay.\n“Are you staying at my apartment tonight?” he said to her, as he handed the waiter his credit card. \n+++\nCouples, families, small groups traipsed from cars and pickups to the thawing sod field on the hill, where they clustered in islands defined by bags, blankets, chairs, and thickets of camera-tripods. In the distance, beyond the pitch and yaw of wintry Maine wilderness, beneath a brilliant blue sky, Mount Katahdin gleamed blue-platinum and ice-white, a giant origami construction.\nThe young couple from New York City occupied a second-floor bedroom in the small hotel that backed onto the hill-crest field. It was a cheap, bare-bones place, with neither spa nor gym, but it was only two nights, so they could tough it out. They might even checkout early, stay overnight in Boston and get a decent meal, or do the pit-stop marathon down the Interstate, full throttle in the BMW.\nThe man, thick black hair, good-looking, was hunched over a laptop. The woman, pretty and petite, stood at the window. Outside, a boy tossed a football, two girls hurried into a wood-thicket, a small white dog barked at a Black woman in a silver jacket. She wanted to be part of the restless crowd on the snow-flecked field.\n“Perhaps we should go down now?” she said.\n“I’m still on this damn conference call”, said the man, removing an earbud. He rolled his eyes, “the internet up here is so slow!”\nThe woman looked up at the blue dome of sky, and side-eyed the golden sun. Why was the moon not visible? Surely it was very close now. She put on her eclipse shades for the first time. The sun appeared as a small yellow dot against a black background.\n“I cannot see the moon at all,” she said.\n“This whole thing…”, he said, but he was interrupted by someone or something on the conference call. He put the earbud back in his ear.\nWhy could she not see the moon? Her left hand was the sun, her right hand, fisted, was the earth, between them hung an imaginary moon. She rotated her right hand, twisting it toward her chest. She felt very close to comprehension. She was surfing on this small orb.\nHe resurfaced from the conference call. “Why don’t you go on down? I will join you when this blasted call is over. It should end soon. It’s getting late in Singapore,” he said.\nShe left the room, went down through the deserted hotel, out the back door and joined the buzzing assembly of sky-watchers. Men fiddled with tripods, adjusted cameras, nudged lenses directly at the sun. The internet would be flooded with identical images of the eclipse.\nA large truck roared up the hill, threading the narrow gap between vehicles parked on both sides of the country road. Perhaps its operator was the designated driver, tasked with an urgent delivery? Would he pull over soon, or just keep on going, cursing at three-minutes of gloom?\nPerhaps there should be designated photographers, she wondered.\nA cheer over to the left; a purple-haired woman was staring at the sun. “The moon has taken a nip at the bottom right corner. We’re missing a piece of the sun!” Laughter.\nThe young woman pressed the cardboard spectacles onto the bridge of her nose and confirmed the missing sliver. The sun, the orb, had a corner. More cheers, a group of college-age kids. She looked back at the second-floor window. How would he find her in the crowd?\n“Exciting, isn’t it?” said an elderly woman with hair that was drawn back tightly into a braid. Her unprotected eyes were screwed up, her tan face was creased. Where had she come from?\n“Yes, but I’m not sure why,” said the young woman, but the braid-haired woman turned in the other direction; she was talking to an elderly mustachioed man wearing a U.S. Navy Veteran’s cap. He was squinting at the sun, also without shades, also tan. The young woman wanted to ask them where they came from, whether they were Trump supporters.\nThe light was changing, warmth was draining away. She searched for words. Pallid? Leaching? Watery? She texted her partner. “Started. I am near woman in silver jacket”. The Black woman in the silver jacket who laughed away the dog incident.\nShe took photos of the wilderness, of the crowd, of Katahdin, with her iPhone. Flat, uninteresting, all-subject; nothing held the eye.\nShe donned the star-spangled eclipse shades. A total eclipse, an American eclipse, goddammit! Arizona, Illinois… Ohio? The moon, the sun, which? The fly-over states, moving at the speed of… she was lost. The speed of sound? The speed of light? A shadow going coast-to-coast, sea-to-shining sea at the speed of an American bullet.\nWhere was he? Not at the window? She pivoted to the south-west, then toward the paper shoulder of Katahdin. A narrowing strip of daylight spread around the horizon, a frame around the darkening dome, accentuating the overhead vastness. He, her boyfriend, he should be here. He would make sense of this, she thought, the fist, the rotating orb.\nThe light was seeping away. Leeching? Leaching?\nA third of the moon was gone, gobbled by a mythological dragon, or – more likely - a frog, or a squirrel. It had to be a small creature because the sun was so small, a yellow dot. How could they see it all happen, back in the day? Were they shocked? Did whole villages go blind? She removed the shades and squinted at the sun as if she were a primitive… tribal... a native… no, not a native... a woman? Always a woman, not once a warrior, or at least a man.\nTwo hawks flew up from the woodland, circled briefly against the now-indigo sky, then glided over the farmland to the North and out of sight. A cock crowed. There were dogs in the crowd, doing normal dog things.\nElectronic buzz, where? A drone swept over the crowd. More buzzing. A second, a third drone. Red and green lights flashing. They hovered, fixed overhead, threatening to plummet, to cut and slice. Unwanted.\n“It’s Mom. She’s texting. It’s finishing in Buffalo,” said someone.\nThe young woman stared in the direction of Katahdin, at the stretch of wilderness. Her mother was dead, died without seeing a total eclipse. Linda Bean too, the wealthiest woman in Maine, died last week; she missed the eclipse.\nThat word again: leached? Watery? Dilute? What exactly was happening to the light? The sun was on a dimmer-switch. Was this it, already? Her shadow sharpened against the panchromatic ground. The sun was a curved shard. Any moment now. He was going to miss it. Talking to Singapore. Singapore, in the middle of their night?\nOohs and Aahs, from the college students; a girl’s outstretched hand refracted light prismatically onto the side of a cooler.\nThe cock crowed again.\nA dull shadow dropped on Katahdin and onto the wilderness, then raced towards them, up the hill.\nAnd then it happened. The sun was eclipsed by the moon.\nStars! Stars in the dark dome, near and around a gold-fringed hockey puck. Cheers and catcalls. A spectral dawn hung around the rim of the world, beyond the umbral shadow. Two fists, an imaginary moon; things pivoting, circling, elliptical and… and… and… oh, the stars! The crowd hushed, the wind blew chill from the universe, from space. The stars! Icy peaks of Katahdin, glinting. Silhouettes of the awestruck in the golden ribbon of light between heaven and earth.\nAlone, so alone. From nothing, to nothing, am nothing. Nothing. Nothing.\nAnd then it was day again and the young woman, the throng, her people, woke from the dream. The crowd stirred, sunlight spilled around the side of the disk, Katahdin sparked, the stars faded.\nApplause? They cheered at the celestial performance. Applause, but for whom? For the diminished sun or the fearless moon? Not for the earth, a mindful observer.\nThe young woman clapped at the moon, she clapped for the moon. She clapped for this unutterably strange interruption. She clapped at the moon’s audacity. She felt sorry for sun, revealed by its eclipse to be smaller and less.\nIt was still cold, and the light was thin, pallid, watery, leached? Spectral crabs played in the shadows on the ground. A new noise aggregated from the crowd; it was the sound of people concluding, packing, of the mundane. It was an ordinary day again.\n“I’m sorry I took so long”, he said, ambling up to her with a grin on his face, “this is amazing!” He spread his hands out. Goofy jazz hands, out of character. He was performing, a distraction or an apology.\nIt was less amazing than it had been.\nShe agreed that it was amazing. He hugged her, pulled her into his chest, a long embrace, a memorialization. He whispered that she looked lovely but said nothing of the stars. She could smell nicotine on his jacket, and on his breath.\n“How much did you miss?”, she said.\n“I saw it from up in the room!”, he said, “it was eerie, right? Mind-blowing.”\nHe saw a dusk and a dawn.\nPeople drifted toward the road. The Black woman in the silver jacket trod unsteadily across the clumpy pasture. She looked out of place in the field, eclipse-watching, in rural Maine; a thought that arrived unbidden, and the young woman wanted to apologize for it.\n“I think we should leave, soon. Never mind the traffic”, she said.\nThe young man released her from his embrace.\n“I felt like I was watching a Spielberg movie,\" he said, \"What was it like for you?”\nIt was like nothing else for her. Katahdin was crumpled paper. The light was watery, leached? A squirrel ate the moon. She surfed an orb. A shadow crossed the land. Spectral crabs too. Never a warrior. A diamond in the corner. The sun was a cuckold. The moon was fearless. She was alone. The stars! He was a fool. The stars! She didn’t have the right words.\nHe filled the silence, “well, I hope you enjoyed it”, he said, generous, earnest, indulgent.\nShe felt like the small yellow sun, diminished to a dot. One hand, the sun, the other, fisted and rotating, the earth, and between, an imaginary moon. The eclipse was just a story to tell at a dinner party.\n“I took some photos,\" she said." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Discarded Dreams\n\nGenre: african-american\n\nWord Count: 1023\n\nPrompt:\n\nSet your story at a large entertainment venue, after the show has ended, amongst the discarded plastic cups and confetti." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Discarded Dreams\n“Hey Betty, another night in the books; Patti was on fire, huh?” “Sadly, I don’t know: I’m just getting here. Economies 321 may hinder my early graduation. If I don’t pass it, I won’t be able to get into Julliard next semester.” “There you go, Julliard or bust. Don’t you know God gave you that voice, your determination, and a praying grandma for a reason? Julliard or not, you’re going to make it, girl! But these cups, candy wrappers, and programs need our help before 8 AM.” “I know; see you at the time clock.”\nI put on my headphones and enter the elevator with the #3-cleaning cart, as I have done for the past twenty years. I own G. C. C. (Gail’s Cleaning Company LLC) and have held the contracts for UVA concert venues for the last fifteen years. Many of my employees are mostly temps who usually only stay until they get that first paycheck when they realize they will need two more jobs to survive. There are about four “lifers,” people who have already retired from somewhere and enjoy being able to attend a concert, play, or lecture that interests them for free and get paid for it.\nAnd then there’s Betty, the eighteen-year-old songbird who’s been with me since her mom’s death two years ago. Her mother and I had been friends for decades, classmates in college, sorority sisters, and thick as thieves from day one. So, when she became ill, I moved them into unit one on the ground floor. They lived next door to me in my small four-apartment rental unit. I gave them the three-bedroom unit, and I moved into the efficiency. I didn’t charge them any rent. The two Penthouse units sustain the mortgage on the building. Karen’s friendship for a lifetime was payment enough. Her daughters have always called me Momma G even though I am only their godmother.\nBetty graduated high school at fifteen and changed her Julliard plans when her mother was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2020 and was gone before Christmas. My mom’s transition derailed my life also, so I understand why Betty is just going through the motions and not living up to her potential. She can’t defer any more time because she’ll lose the rest of her scholarship. Piedmont, Virginia Community College (PVCC) allowed her to use two years of her $50k award for her associate’s degree in Liberal Arts while caring for her mother. Julliard was expecting Betty this semester, but she asked to wave one more until her sisters’ eighteenth birthday. The twins started PVCC three months ago.\nJulliard’s next semester starts on July 5th, and the twins were born on Independence Day, 2005. So, we purchased a train ticket yesterday. Betty shipped her belongings to her aunts in a neighboring city months ago, except three pairs of jeans, four T-shirts, two pairs of sneakers, and a jacket. Everything she kept will fit in a carry-on.\nHumming from the center stage promptly at 4:00 AM when Betty works. She starts cleaning the lobby and works her way down from the cheapest seats on the lower level to the stage. I’m sure she’s probably singing the whole time, but I usually don’t hear her until I have worked my way down to the front of the nosebleed section. This morning I just walked out of the men’s room, in the far-left corner, and it’s barely 1:30 AM, so it’s more than humming.\nHopefully, this means she’s looking forward to Julliard, her life, and the future…\n(muffled conversation) (nosey, I want to make sure she’s all right) Trying not to be detected, I ease my broom to the floor. I walk down one step at a time until I can see over the balcony.\nPatti LaBelle and Betty are conversing through song. Betty finishes any line the mega-star challenges her with as if they were long-lost friends who have just found each other after being apart for years. I knew our girl could sing but didn’t know how to restore her compassion, confidence, and love for her gift... Pitch Perfectly!\nI know she was pitch perfect because I was a music teacher in a previous life when I was married in that previous life. I once had a chance to be the diva on center stage, but the “Ike” to my “Tina” broke my spirit and killed our unborn child. I filed a restraining order and had our marriage annulled from my hospital bed. After being discharged from the hospital, I moved and never looked back. Karen, Betty’s mom, was the only one who knew I had moved to Charlottesville and soon followed, dragging her husband and three children kicking and screaming along. We knew her “momma’s boy husband” wouldn’t last long away from his overbearing mother.\nDon’t say aww…I have been happier here. Karen and the girls made me realize that motherhood was not for me. I would panic when one of the girls coughed. When Karen named me as their godmother, I made her promise never to leave me in charge until they were old enough to be independent. I could pick up and go whenever I wanted. I didn’t have to prepare a meal if I didn’t want to. I love the girls and could spoil them and return them.\nI sometimes wonder why I gave up on music after my rehab. I used to say I would sing or teach again when my voice strengthened. I went on four interviews with schools, but PTSD kept me from returning to the classroom. That short marriage ended in the auditorium of an elementary school in Florida on the Wednesday night after the World Trade Center fell. One thing had nothing to do with the other, but they both changed me. Every time I tried to get over the feelings that stemmed from being attacked backstage. I was offered a gig with a band and would be traveling over the summer. The band liked my voice but disapproved of his treatment of women.\nI don’t look back anymore. It’s Betty, and the twins turn now!" } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: The Fading Light\n\nGenre: american\n\nWord Count: 2998\n\nPrompt:\n\nPeople have gathered to witness a once-in-a-lifetime natural phenomenon, but what happens next is not what they expected." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Dylan had been walking steadily uphill for what felt like days. It had, in fact, been 3 hours and 37 minutes, a climb he’d completed many times in his life.\nHe was lost.\nOr simply exhausted, he couldn’t tell anymore. Nothing around him made sense, he had started to notice this feeling come over him more often on his hikes. Since turning 50 his mind couldn’t keep up with his body and the exhaustion would go straight to his head. He had lived in these hills his whole life, losing his way wasn’t something Dylan did, but now as he looked up through sweaty brow, all he could see was unfamiliar rocky outcrops and leaves from unfamiliar trees. None of this panicked Dylan, as he wiped the sweat off his head with a rag, he dragged it through his unkempt beard and shook his head vigorously like a dog. He knew he could just push on to higher ground and he’d see the world beneath him laid out like a map on his kitchen table, he’d be able to see his shack, and far below that the town, roads, train station and farther in the distance, if his eyes could pick it, out the Susquehanna River.\nDylan made it to the lookout point; he slumped back on the rock feeling the burning pains in his legs and back. ‘Would they be able to make it up here?’ was Dylan’s first thought. ‘They’ll all be suffering the same age-related physical deterioration I am, but maybe that city life has been good for them, gyms, health foods, warm houses, easier on the joints. On the other hand, Patrick was always a bit of a chubster, and Jessika never really liked exercise even when we were young. Alex was the only one who could keep up back then.’\nThe ‘they’ Dylan was swirling around his exhausted mind were his 3 closest childhood friends, they had grown up together out on the Appellation hills, gone to the local school together, hiked to each other's homes every day, found solace in each other's shared experience of life as a teenager in a small remote, abandoned part of an otherwise busy bustling country. Each of them had one at a time left. First college then maybe University, except Dylan, Dylan was too busy working as a cashier in the local town shop and never had the will to leave his family home. Then each found jobs and partners and moved away to bigger things, each followed their respective dreams. But not Dylan, Dylan would look up at the stars and dream of what might be out there, but he didn’t want to study astronomy so that he could be locked up in a lab all day pouring through research papers, because the next day Dylan might be dreaming about the wonders of the deepest depths of the ocean, or what microbes can live in rocks, or when the first tree grew fruit.\nIt wasn’t that Dylan wasn’t interested in anything, it was that Dylan was interested in everything, but no one thing enough to dedicate his life to. The thing that had piqued Dylan's excitable mind now was a news broadcast he had heard on his old 1970s transistor radio about an upcoming eclipse that would be best viewed in the mid-northeastern area of the USA at 4:30 pm on the 22 of April 1997. Dylan sat on his lookout rock thinking about his life and how it had led him to here… Now. He thought about his childhood, his upbringing and the years that had flown past him that he hadn’t noticed (those that he could remember) that had led him to this point sitting in this time, on this rock.\nOn his way back down the 10-mile trail that would take him back to his shack, Dylan mulled over how he could convince his old friends to come and watch the eclipse with him.\nArriving home Dylan looked around his worn-out old shack in a dismal frame of mind, ‘I’ll need to tidy’ he thought. Dylan had built the shack in his 30s on his father's small plot of land leading onto the hills, at the time he had had dreams of making it into a luxurious 3-storey lodge but with his mother passing and his father's illness it never became a priority. His father had sold the main house and most of the land to pay for medical bills and upkeep before passing. What was left was a 3-acre patch of hillside and woodland that Dylan had built his tiny 2-room, hermit cabin. A small kitchen area, with a stove, a fridge, and a door at the back leading to a bed. Just enough for Dylan with no spouse or children he didn’t need much.\nThe small dining table had become cluttered with letters and magazines, Dylan frantically sifted through them looking for his old phone book and searching for the names of his 3 best friends. It didn’t take much searching, the only phone numbers he had were the local mechanic, the store where he used to work, his Dr, Dr Herman a handful of acquaintances and his 3 childhood friends. He called each one and after a short catch-up, Dylan would deliver his proposal, almost word for word to each of them.\n“Hey d’you remember when we were kids and we saw the eclipse, we hiked up Little Bear Ridge and sat all day with blankets waitin' for the moon to come over, well that was just a partial eclipse and this year, in just a few weeks in fact, there’s going to be a TOTAL eclipse. And the best place to view it will be right here, back at home in Huntersville Pennsylvania. Now I know we haven’t seen each other for a few years, and I know you’re busy, what with your job and your life and all. But you’ve missed my last 3 birthdays, and I am missing you a whole lot. So I’m hoping, you can find the time to come down here and pay me a visit, I’ve got a viewing spot all picked out, and you can stop out in one of the lodges around here or I can make room for you to spend the night with me” Dylan looked around his tiny shack “Or y’know we can camp out under the stars like we used to”\nNow Dylan was sure that each one of them would make excuses as to why they would be too busy and wish him the best and say happy birthday if they didn’t see him before the next one. But to his surprise, they were all pleased to hear from him and expressed a great deal of excitement at the prospect of seeing the eclipse in their home town with him.\nAlex gave a full and frank breakdown of his life living in New York and working as an investment banker, he spoke excitedly of his girlfriend and their travels around Europe, rock climbing and kayaking. Dylan listened and politely endured the conversation, though his mind was almost entirely focused on his eclipse endeavour.\nPatrick seemed a bit more apprehensive about the concept but agreed nonetheless with the premise. Providing Dylan understood that he had a stent put in his heart, and although his doctor was encouraging plenty of fresh air and exercise, he wasn’t going to be racing up Little Bear Ridge anytime soon. Dylan completely understood and explained to Patrick that he too was feeling his age and had no intention of jogging up there.\nJessika sounded the most excited to hear from Dylan, she was now lecturing as a professor of medicine and had chosen to start to move away from being a practising Dr to try to pick up her childhood love of writing, she had already written some well-received journals on various medical subjects, but wanted to start writing fiction. She attempted to query Dylan about his medical state, including his mental health and his, as she put it, ongoing trauma response to the death of his mother and father. At which point Dylan phased out of the conversation as politely as he could, attempting to shrug her off with ‘We’ll talk about it when you get here’.\n{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}\nDates and times had been discussed and agreed upon, and Dylan was set to pick them all up from the train station, or more accurately meet them at the train station where they would all get a taxi. Patrick and Jessika had elected to book two nights at a motel in the town a few miles out from his shack, and Alex had agreed to stay with Dylan, for a ‘taste of the hermit lifestyle’ as he put it. Dylan would have much preferred to spend the night with Patrick or Jessika, but he didn’t quibble, he was excited to see each of them again.\nDylan spent the day before their arrival eagerly packing provisions for their hike, he found his dad's old welding visor to view the eclipse with, made sandwiches and filled water bottles. Made up a cot in front of the fire for Alex to sleep in the kitchen.\nThe next day Dylan stood at the train station, pacing back and forth in anticipation of seeing the faces of his friends that were etched into his misty memory. Anxiously he checked his father’s timepiece again and again, scanning up the tracks for any sign of a train.\nThe first to step off the train was Patrick wearing a thick overcoat that made him look 3 times bigger, or maybe he’d gained weight. Dylan rushed at him with unexpected tears in his eyes forming.\n“You’re looking well,” Dylan said with a beaming smile.\n“Don’t lie, I look like crap” Patrick responded “You look… thin!?”\nNext Jessika sauntered down the platform with the grace of a swan imperceptibly powering herself through water.\n“DYLAN!” She screamed\nJust as Dylan was about to break his embrace with Patrick to swap it to Jessika, Alex grabbed him from behind and lifted him into the air with a bear hug that startled Dylan as he writhed to escape it.\n“You smell awful” Alex proclaimed with a grin on his face. “And you weigh nothing, what are you eating!? Or are you eating?”\nThe group all got into the taxi and made their way back to the outskirts of their home town, along the way pointing out landmarks and discussing memories of lost summer days in the park, they talked about their parents and what had become of them. Patrick spoke of how he had wanted to move back here to raise his kids, but his partner had work commitments in the city and it never would have worked. Alex talked at length about his plans to buy up a few properties around his parent's old place and turn them into hiking lodges, but he never found the time. Jessika just looked out of the window, lost in her own memories of childhood, and occasionally looking across to Dylan with a concerned look in her eyes.\nDisembarking the taxi they all agreed to meet back at Dylan's early, 8 AM to have coffee and prepare.\n\n“We’ll need to set off by at least 11 Am, which leaves us 5 hours to get there I know it’s only 10-11 miles, but it’s a hard 10-11 miles, It’s not all a well-trodden path and it is all uphill,” Dylan said, trying to prepare them.\n“Yes, Hike Leader!” They all jokingly chanted back at him in unison with a mock solute.\n“I’m not joking I barely made it up there myself the other day and I know every rock on these hills”\nDylan showed Alex to his shack and waved goodbye to Patrick and Jessika.\nAlex burst into his quiet shack like a hurricane blowing open the door.\n“Nice place you got here Dylly” Alex said snooping around, kicking the makeshift cot Dylan had set up. “How much did it cost ya” Dylan didn’t know whether Alex was joking so just ignored him.\nThey sat up into the night chatting about old times and joking.\n{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}\nThey all convened at Dylan's shack at 8:30 Am, Alex was already awake and doing press-ups on the lawn outside the shack.\n“Sleep well?” Said Patrick in a mocking tone.\n“Sure, if you don’t mind bugs crawling over you all night, smelling of fire smoke or the sound of Dylan's snoring and deranged sleep muttering like a 90-year-old”\nDylan came out of the shack carrying 3 premade satchels, 1 for each of them, containing sandwiches and water.\n“Ready!?” Dylan said excitedly\n“I thought we weren’t going until 11?” protested Jessika\n“Yeah, me and Alex discussed it last night and we thought it would be better to get a head start on it, in case there were any hold-ups” They all looked at Patrick.\nThey set off in high spirits, trudging up the long and arduous track through the woods, Dylan led for a few miles but steadily dropped back to walk with Patrick at the back. Alex would call back encouraging yet mocking remarks at them whilst also asking Dylan for directions. At which point Dylan would storm up the hill to join him, pause and look around for a while with a look of confusion, and gesture in a direction without much confidence.\n“How’re you holding up?” Dylan asked Patrick at around the halfway mark.\n“I’m ok, just need to have a sit down in a bit I think” Patrick wheezed, his face drenched in sweat.\n“Yeah, I think I need to stop for a while too.”\nThey both sat on a fallen tree.\n“Jessikas worried about you, you know.” Patrick said “She said she’s seen signs that you’re struggling with symptoms of early onset dementia”\n“Does she say so!? It’s hard out here Patrick I haven’t got a family like you, and there’s no one checking on me or anything like that, so I don’t know, would a person even know if they’re struggling”\n“How’re you guys doing?” Jessika called down to them.\nDylan and Patrick got up, patted each other on the back and continued up the hill.\nAlex made it to the lookout point first and was already sitting eating a sandwich when the rest caught up.\n“What time do you call this!?” Alex said jokingly as they all squeezed to sit side by side on the rock.\n“2:45 pm.” Said Dylan looking at his father's timepiece, “Still plenty of time”\nThe four of them sat enjoying sandwiches chatting and looking out across the view.\n“What time is the eclipse going to happen?” Jessika asked\n“Oh, wait there I’ve got it written down somewhere” Dylan rummaged through his satchel and pulled out a tattered piece of scrap paper “4:15 or 45, here Alex you read it your eyes are better than mine”\nAlex took the piece of paper and looked at it for a few minutes “I don’t care how good my eyes are, no one can read this Dylan it looks like you wrote it during an earthquake. That might be a 4 or a 6 but the rest is just scribbles”\n“It’s ok we’ll just wait, we’ll see it when it happens”\nHours passed and apart from a scare from what Patrick insisted was a bobcat that he saw down in the woods, and an eagle flying over. The group just sat and waited, Alex walked back down the hill a way to see if he could get a signal on his cellular phone but walked back up disappointed, stopping only to do a few pull-ups on a reachable branch. Jessika wandered off for a while to inspect some plants that she thought had medicinal qualities and Patrick ate another sandwich.\n“Hey everyone, this is it, do you see that, the skies turning darker!” Dylan shouted in excitement\nClouds had started to come over by this point and the sun was no longer visible\n“Are you sure?” Alex asked, “What time is it?”\nDylan looked down at his father's timepiece\n“7:30 pm…. Did we miss it?” Dylan looked solemnly at the timepiece\n“So it’s just getting dark because it’s night?” Patrick said in annoyance\nJessika walked over and squatted down near Dylan and held both his hands in hers, she looked into his eyes.\n“Are you sure the eclipse was today?” she asked Dylan softly.\n{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}\nThey all made it back down the hill in the dark, slowly and silently. Apart from a couple of stumbles from Patrick and a few curse words from Alex.\nBy the time they all made it back to Dylan's shack, there was only time to light a fire and drag out enough bedding for them all to sleep on the floor, which they did, soundly despite the uncomfortable conditions.\nThe next morning Dylan woke up early to make them all coffee, they sat outside to watch the sunrise and discuss the hike, they talked about how their feet were hurting, the scratches and bumps they’d suffered, the length of the hike and their collective reluctance to do it again. But no one mentioned the eclipse.\nBy 3 pm they had all got their belongings together and were in the taxi heading to the train station, Dylan didn’t join them, he wasn’t sure he could take the walk home.\nIn the taxi Alex handed a letter to Jessica, “I found this on Dylan's floor it’d been kicked under the cupboard, says it’s from a Dr Herman, what do you make of it?” Jessika read through the letter several times with an increasing frown across her brow.\n“It doesn’t sound good Alex.” She said morosely.\nAs the three of them sat on the train looking out the window in silence contemplating what had happened, the light started to dim and the sun on the horizon started to look like a slice was missing." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: BOUSHEE’S BROWNSTONE\n\nGenre: african-american\n\nWord Count: 1226\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about someone trying to track down the source of a rumor." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Inclining his head toward the ornate door and accentuating the action with his gun hand, the masked intruder demanded an explanation. A twinkle surfaced in his eyes that gave new meaning to his rudeness of the evening. He had not seen the door before.\n“You, in the plaid suit, come over here. Come on, move it”! Bellowed the intruder. “What’s behind the door”? Unable to suggest an answer, the man received the butt of the pistol upside his head. Blood flowed from the injury as the man attempted to push the life force back into his head.\nLooking around the room, the masked intruder riveted his attention on one of the scantily clad women. He liked how she looked and thought he would satisfy his curiosity.\n“Okay, I want everybody to strip. You’ll make sure they strip”.\n“Boss, you want us to uh, to uh get them naked”? Asked one of the four interlopers, who were also masked.\n“Say whaaaaaat. Naw, just make them take off their clothes and get all their jewelry and money. Hurry it up”.\nIt took quite a while for all fifty guests to be deprived of their evening’s finery. This was to have been another memorable occasion. Boushee was hosting his usual party in Harlem at an invitation-only event.\nLeonard Boushee had lived in Harlem since his arrival from New Orleans circa 1900. Upon his arrival, he purchased the brownstone and entertained the uptown clique.\nIt was also being noised abroad that the brownstone held secrets known only to a few, but then most rumors were just that; rumors.\nIt was just those rumors that had brought the uninvited guests to Boushee’s home this particular evening. It was those rumors that had contributed to his guests standing unceremoniously in their underclothing.\nOne gentleman rebuked the intruders by telling them they could have spared the women the ignominy heaped upon them. The said gentleman was advised to keep quiet or bashed in his head.\nAccepting their fate, the guest of Leonard Boushee began apprising their situation. Some were taking mental notes to be redeemed after the fiasco. Women were noticing some of the more significant attributes of the men, as well as the men reminding themselves to speak with certain ladies later.\nAll in all, the night had its redeeming qualities. Giggles were heard as there were observed irregularities in one under attire. These irregularities could be dismissed considering the circumstances, but tongues would wag.\nHarlem was a tight-knit community where nearly everyone knew everybody. For instance, it was known that only one person in Harlem used the exclamation, Say whaaaaaat. Regardless of wearing a mask to disguise himself, that individual was known as Say-Say. Several members within the naked ranks knew this.\nSay-Say saving grace thus far was that he had not allowed his underlings to assault Leonard Boushee. Say-Say admired the man and wouldn’t let himself see Mr. Boushee publically undressed. Leonard Boushee stood among his guests, wholly dressed.\nLeonard walked over to Say-Say and politely said, “There is nothing behind that door that would interest you. I beg you to take what you have and leave my guests and me to enjoy the rest of the evening”.\nThe rift raft that had accompanied Say-Say saw their chance to remark that they should take what they had and leave. Small minds are easily satisfied during times such as these.\nSay-Say was patting the pistol into his left hand as he looked into the eyes of Leonard Boushee. He had never seen the man up close, and the cold stare that emanated from those grey eyes unnerved Say-Say. Say-Say tried to play it hard, but those eyes of Leonard never wavered in intensity.\n“Say whaaaaaat. Mister, I just can’t leave until I know what’s behind that door. I figure you must be hiding something. Why look, there isn’t a door handle on the door. Why do you think that is”? He was retrieving his lost nerves, and he felt pumped. Even a couple of his boys yelled, “Yeah, what you trying to hide, huh”?\n“You’ll shut up! Mr. Boushee, I don’t want to cause you any further trouble, but I’ve got to know what is behind this door. How come it doesn’t have a handle”?\n“They call you Say-Say, don’t they,” said Boushee.\n“How, how do you know my name Mr. Boushee”?\n“Look, if you allow my guests to put their clothes back on and leave without taking anything from them, we’ll forget that this ever happened.”\nSay-Say appeared to be in deep thought. The thought wasn’t that deep as Say-Say had no intentions of walking away empty-handed. Neither did his boys.\nThe guests began murmuring and crowding the armed men when Boushee spoke again. “Alright. Since you’re so interested in what is behind the door, I will show you.\nBoushee took a white card from the table near the door and wrote something. As Boushee attempted to slide the written card under the door, Say-Say stopped him.\n“Hey now, wait a minute. How do I know what you’re doing? You can tell your peeps behind the door to shoot me or something”.\n“Say-Say, the way this thing works is that there is no door handle that you can plainly see. The only way to open the door is for me to write on the card and slip it under the door”.\nSeveral of Boushee’s guests said that the only way to open the door was with a written card.\n“Say-Say said, “Let me take a look at what you done wrote.”\nIt was also common knowledge that Say-Say could neither read nor write. Say-Say looked at the white card, turned it over, and handed it back to Boushee.\n“I implore you not to open this door as there is nothing there for you. Please listen to me”.\n“Naw, we gonna open the door. Slide that card under the door”. As Boushee reluctantly slid the white card under the door, the accomplices gathered around. They wanted to see what lay beyond the door.\nThere were more murmuring and gasps from a few in the crowd.\nThe door with no handle swung inward as Say-Say urged two accomplices to precede him into the room. The room was dark with no lighting. Say-Say looked back at Boushee and followed his two men into the room. The third offender was pushed into the room by Boushee as the sizeable ornate door closed behind the four men.\nLeonard Boushee turned to his guest and admonished them to get dressed. The affair transpired quickly as Boushee announced that the drinks would be on the house for the rest of the evening. This was welcome news in the time known as prohibition.\nA dozen or so of the in-crowd guests surrounded Boushee and asked him, “Boushee, what did you write on the paper”?\nBoushee answered, “Devil’s Island.”\nThe In-crowd guests knew well what had transpired with the ruffians. They had been sent to Devil’s Island penal colony, where they would spend their lives.\nThe door that did not have a doorknob was a coveted gem of Boushee’s Brownstone. It was a doorway to any place on Earth that one desired for a price. The only entrance to the door was the writing of the destination on the white card, the white card that Say-Say could not read." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Nooks and Crannies\n\nGenre: american\n\nWord Count: 2304\n\nPrompt:\n\nStart your story with a character staring at a picture they don’t remember taking." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "There it sat, in a framed glass on the windowsill that overlooked a spice garden and a sloppy view of the city. Mark never really noticed it, but he remembered it being there every time he washed the dishes, his hands moving brilliantly through the suds. Under stalks of parsley and coriander, his eyes would drift to it- its hard brown frame, the aged curl of the photo, his reflection peering ghostly over the two girls. Then it would disintegrate in his mind, into the hot, shifting clutter of his work, hiding until his sight reclaimed it the next day.\nThere were many objects like that in Mark’s apartment- a doorstop shaped like a Mallard, a black umbrella from a college he never attended, a half-opened pack of cigarettes hidden behind his blender. He knew of their existence, knew they were his, but was never sure what purpose they served in his life. Most of the time, he believed them to be the simple banalities of a couple in motion. But once in a while, when he filled his glass of bourbon a little too high, Mark saw them as the ultimate expression of humanity- the thin red line in a world painted black.\nTonight was one such night. He had captured the picture frame and brought it to the couch, where it hovered in his lap above a smoked old fashioned. Mark rubbed his thumb over the glass, and a small, clean window broke through the pane. It showed another time- the filter was grainy and dark, with a bright orange glimmer behind the two silhouettes of the girls. Carved on their faces were smiles, identical and gray and close to each other. In the bottom corner, the sharp edges of a timestamp sliced upwards. Mark excavated the yellow date from the dust: 09-14-2009\nThe front door made a loud snap as the lock was defeated, and then creaked open. He knew who it was before he looked up, but it still shocked him, and he felt the photo rattle off his knees and onto the rug. Portia moved quietly, as a cat might mid-stalk, and her hair burned crimson and blond and some other color. She made no acknowledgement when she saw Mark drunk on the couch. They were two pets playing house, and any engagement outside of eye-contact was a call for battle. Portia slipped off her shoes near the Mallard and moved to the fridge, her footsteps unburdened by gravity.\nPortia’s presence had an effect on Mark, and although inebriated, it still sunk deep within him. With her entrance came water, and lots of it, filling the room until the vaulted ceilings swelled and the paperbacks from his library lost their structure. There he would sit, holding his breath, the room very blue and her hair dancing like coral, and he would last as long as he could. But eventually, his lungs would kick out, and he’d let the liquid find a home within him, and those memories- her dinging phone as she slept, that hairy present from the sushi chef, the way glass bullets over hardwood after landing flat on its face- were what Mark believed to be the slowest of deaths.\nThere seemed to be something different today, however. He glanced around, and found that in his trance, he’d retrieved the photo from the floor. His fingers gripped it with the special intensity of a starving man, one with no hope or resolution. He wondered why that was and studied it some more.\nAs Portia pulled okra and overpriced kale and mung beans from her den, Mark leaned into the picture, and he learned things. He learned that the girls were standing outside, which accounted for the porch light and the buzzy quality. He learned it was something candid, for he could notice an outstretched hand from the girl on the left, an attempt to swat the lens away. But most impactful was the lines of their faces. He traced them, the gray parts and the dark parts and the sort-of light parts. He traced them until he was absolutely sure that the girls were sisters.\nPortia had a sister. And she had never told him.\nThe water had been drained from the room, and Mark felt very strong. He was a forensic accountant in the daytime, and in the night he dreamed of taking his skills against a more personal enemy- a cashier who snuffed him out of a quarter, maybe, or an abusive car salesman. But this, he could tell, would be his magnum opus. The red line had become a thread, and Mark prepared to wrap his fingers around it.\nThere was chopping from the kitchen, and the purr of a boiling kettle. Mark stood up without excitement and moved to the liquor cart which hung ten feet from Portia’s back. It always seemed to him that, even after the fallout, they still carried that sixth sense between them- that feeling of knowing where Portia was in the house without seeing her, her movement as intrinsic as breath and sleep. So Mark was confident that the announcement of his words wouldn’t shock her.\n“How long have you had this picture?”\nThe chopping ceased, but Portia didn’t turn around. Instead, she looked over towards the windowsill as if expecting to see something. Mark had foreseen this feint and brought his drink over to interrupt her gaze. He sipped on it, and it tasted good and bitter. It was distilled in Segovia, gifted to him when things were sweeter between them. Mark pulled from its strength and history and calcified into a harder man.\n“It should say on there. I think it has a timestamp.”\n“September of 2009. What were you then, ten?”\n“Eleven.” Portia went back to chopping, her hands fast and elevated like a pro. Her hair was fire and embalmed her white flesh so that nothing could be seen of her face. Mark took a step closer. The mung beans had sprouted and interloped with the steam from the kettle, turning his kitchen into rot, into a squashed possum on a ninety degree highway. The smell was necessary as all hell. The smell was what they had always been.\n“Eleven. OK.” Mark took another drink, and his fingers shook imperceptibly on the glass. It always came down to finding that receipt, that little scrap of financial holiness that ripped all the curtains from conversation. This photo was no different. “And this is your sister.”\nThe tide of Portia’s chopping picked up, as if attempting to drown out the statement. But it was in the kitchen now, and it had become as immovable as the mallard and the umbrella and the things that defined their life together. Portia knew it, so she nodded, her face still tucked from view.\nMark slammed the drink down against the tile, and the ball of ice clinked at wild angles. The look on his face did not sting or curse or hurt. It was the look of the judicial, of the uncaring. “Four years together and not a word. Why wouldn’t you tell me that? Why hasn’t she visited?”\nPortia finally turned, her hair pulling off her face like an old bandage, and inside was cured hatred, sparkling in a very pretty way. The skin on her face burned red all the way to her pupils, and a black mole on her neck looked close to ignition. Mark quieted a whisper of fear, for he seriously believed her to be aflame.\n“You SHOULD know why,” Portia said. “You SHOULD understand by now.” And then a smile, a wicked endearment which he forgot existed, graced her lips. “But you’ll never get it, will you?”\nMark could feel the receipt slipping away, her coaxing words a lubricant between his fingers. He was desperate, and that hunger was very loud within him, scratching in his chest. With his left hand, he smashed the picture frame against the counter. It screamed a song of dissolution, of splintered wood and glass and freedom. Clear shards nested between the mung beans and under Portia’s knife. His palm became a warm liquid.\nMark wrestled the photo from the debris and pushed it face-out to Portia. “Then MAKE me understand. TELL me what this is.”\nPortia had stopped smiling, but the expression still hung there, radiating from her soul. She spoke again.\n“Think back. Think back to how this all started.”\n“Oh, I know how.” The impartiality had run from Mark’s face. He now wore the look of both victim and defendant. “I caught you taking a pork roll from a fucking sushi chef!”\nPortia laughed this time, and the sound gave Mark a strange thrill. The photo was still outstretched, and red dripped down his arm and onto the counter. “That was nothing. Think back further.”\nMark didn’t enjoy these games. They were variable and messy, a combination he never faced during work hours. He was used to paper trails and loose lips- those were his currency, his clues to the crime. Memory was something else altogether, a medium he’d never been one to trust.\n“Think about Bermuda. About the Poconos. About the kitchen we’re standing in right now.”\nPortia looked into Mark’s eyes. There was hate and lust, sure, but behind that was the true action of his mind- the search for a needle. A pattern for his receipt.\n“Let me remind you, then.” Portia told him. And then, with all the might and fury her 135-pound body could muster, Portia punched Mark across the face.\nIt was a punch like no other, fueled by something more powerful than muscle. It was a punch that, in her last moments, she would never regret throwing. Mark thought about its form and its perfect arc as he collapsed. His chin had been split from her engagement ring, and his knees rung sweet on the hardwood. The photo fluttered a foot in front of him.\nPortia did not stop. She began kicking, her bare heel beating into Mark’s side. Behind the scalding kettle and the ringing in his corneas, he could hear no words. But he didn’t have to. He remembered everything now.\n“How could you?” Portia yelled. “How could you call that love?” The fire had fled her face now, finding an outlet in her limbs and her throat. She wanted it all to burn. “My FATHER had to nurse her black eyes! My own FATHER!”\nPain blossomed in curious places. Mark felt he might deserve it, but part of him hadn’t forgotten the water in his lungs, the act of not breathing. That was enough to live on, Mark decided. With his sliced hand, he grabbed for the corner of the photo, praying he wouldn’t get stomped on, and pulled it closer.\n“You never DESERVED her.” Portia began panting, and the interval between kicks decreased. “She gave you her future and you took it for GRANTED.”\nMark scooched the photo beneath him, and as he scrunched up, it gave him a second to analyze. The back of the photo was smeared with blood, but in the middle were two words. Side by side, the names were “Portia” and “Mallory.”\nA kick catapulted against his groin, and Mark moaned, a sound he was not used to making in pain nor pleasure. Portia stopped as Mark toiled on the ground, his body wriggling as a lame dog might moments before being put down. The kettle quieted its whistle, and there was the smell of char and carbon and decay.\n“She couldn’t stay here. I think you knew that, at the end of the day. She had to leave, but she wanted the apartment, too. The one you two co-signed ownership on- that was a stupid idea in the first place.”\nMark, in his anguish, started to crawl away, back to the living room. This was the price for falling curtains, for the unraveling of a thread. Mark wouldn’t have it any other way. “The mole…” he moaned as he scooted. The assault had knocked something clear in his skull- everything seemed very clear now. “Portia never had that mole…”\nShe scoffed. “And you call yourself a husband.” Mark was almost out of the kitchen now. She followed him. “Cheating was the least of your problems. Which Portia would have never done, by the way. She was loyal like that.” The woman Mark used to know walked in front of him and leaned against the wall. “But I’m nothing like my sister. I came to take everything. The apartment. Portia’s freedom. My revenge.”\nMark had made his way to the shoes, and to another object with forgotten utility. The black mallard stared at him, face to face, its yellow wooden beak holding a secret shared only between them. Mark suspected the duck had always known what role it would play in his life. He was just too near-sighted to notice. Mark grabbed the duck by the face.\nWith his last bit of strength, Mark smashed the duck against the woman’s open toes. He felt them crush and imagined the red ball of yarn within her, the spindly thing he’d been chasing all his life. Mark wanted it so bad that when she fell, he didn’t doubt his decision to strike her again, this time at the temple. And a third time in the teeth, just for good measure.\nThe apartment had become a quiet place, a place good for a drink and a pondering of things. As he wobbled up from the floor, blood streaked and staring at a dead woman, he realized what he could really use was a cigarette. He smiled and retreated to the blender, where a lucky pack was waiting for him. “The ultimate expression of humanity,” Mark whispered as he found himself a light." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: The Ritual\n\nGenre: african-american\n\nWord Count: 1475\n\nPrompt:\n\nSet your story on a warm summer evening with a full moon, when everything feels magnetic and your character’s about to meet someone important." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The kettle whistles pulling me out of my almost meditative reading. I rise out of my oversized chair left to me by my father and walk to my kitchen to make my grandma’s recipe for “nerve soothing” tea. Between you and me it’s just green tea with a splash of honey Jack Daniels. In any case, no matter what the materials magic happens in your heart, I believe that my grandma’s unique recipe is in fact, nerve soothing. I settle back in my oversized chair and begin to think about how I’ve been feeling off for weeks now. I thought that maybe taking a few days away from the office would help me to get back in the right headspace but no, that didn’t work either. My best friend Lynn, who knows where all the bodies are buried, meant well in describing all the various life situations that could be affecting my mood and overall vibe but hell none of that is new or out of the ordinary. Those things haven’t just fallen into my lap, and they may still sit there for a while yet. I need a charge and it’s been a while since I’ve practiced. I think that’s my issue. I haven’t practiced in months. My alter looks at me with judgment each time I walk past it. I haven’t even lit a white candle, dusted the pictures of my ancestors, or even placed flowers or rainwater on it. The silent judgment of my ancestors sits with me daily. My phone chimes with the reminder that the full moon reaches its apex tonight. I can’t believe I need a damn reminder now; I remember when I just knew when it was time for a change in the moon phase. I’ve been so detached that I can’t even read people’s intentions anymore. Maybe it is time for me to release some shit. Or maybe just a person.\n Jake takes up residence in my memories and thoughts when I think I’m not actually thinking. Like a kidnapper who stakes out your house to see when you are unaware or just to comfortable and then slips in and snatches your loved one, Jake sneaks into my deepest memories and snatches me from the safety of the here and now and into memories of him. Always presenting me with the early memories that made my heart race, made me feel giddy, beautiful and like a teenager. He is very careful to avoid those memories that remind me of just how selfish and cold he can be. I’ve been finding myself trapped in these memories more often in the past few months. The issue in the dissolution of the relationship was my focus on work and painting, or at least that is his version of events. In any case I’m surprised my grandmother hasn’t reached across the astral plan to slap some sense into me. I’ve gone months allowing the most minor of my life’s unpleasantries to take over and I’ve been standing in the same place trying figure out what I should do next. Lynn presses me that I am missing so many opportunities because I am grieving a death of a relationship that should have had the plug pulled on years ago. She’s adamant that if I just pull myself out of my own head, I will look up one day and see opportunities too, but I swear I have no idea who she’s even talking about. That’s Lynn though. She sees opportunities everywhere, while I am so hyper focused on what I am in, that I still find it hard to let go.\n I guess this is why my mind went to the ritual for tonight. A simple act that anyone can do. It’s as simple as having a white candle, Florida water, slip of paper, match, and a flame-retardant container (preferably glass or iron). My grandmother made sure I had a cast iron bowl to practice. I rise slowly from my chair and begin to gather my items. Before I can carry out my ritual, I know I need to give my ancestors respect and apologize for my neglect. I prepare my offering to them and place the offering on the altar with a lit incense. I take a moment to speak to them. “Dearest ones, I have been so selfish these past few months. I give you my sincerest apologies for ignoring your presence and not acknowledging you as I should. The amazing thing is that though I have forgotten you for a period, I have noticed that you have not forgotten me. For this I find a well of gratitude that I will continuously pour out to you. I am your daughter and I know nothing but your love and guidance. Be with me tonight as I work to let go of people and thought processes that have held me back for far too long. As I release fear and hold to the unending gratitude and love you have always given me. I am completely committed to service in love. May it be as the universe wills.” I wait for a moment and just allow the moment to resonate, and I sit with my feeling of knowing that I am not alone. I am noticing that I am loved and cared for even when it seems as though I am alone.\n I sit at the foot of my altar and scribble on my slip of paper the words that I will speak aloud to let go of my fear of opportunity and of Jake. I fold the paper three times and walk outside into the soft glow of the full moon. I set my iron bowl on a small table I have off to the side of my home as safe distance away from my porch but also still securely in my yard and slightly out of the way of prying eyes from the sidewalk and street. I sit my iron bowl on the table. I place my effigy of what I need to release in the iron bowl and douse it slightly with Florida water. I look to the moon and gently smile, feeling the weight lift from me even as I light the match to set the paper alite. I murmur the incantation to myself three times and whisper “may it be as the universe wills”. As I level my gaze from the moon that looks almost magical, I notice that I have a visitor. It’s a white dog, he looks a little like a wolf. My heart skips a beat with the feeling of fight or flight but then I hear a gentle whistling and someone calling for someone named Winston. The dog looks in the direction of the street and then looks at me with a sad strange look in his eyes. I assume at this point that my unwelcome visitor’s name is Winston.\n I hear Winston’s owner moves round the tree that usually blocks a view of me from the sidewalk. “Oh, I am so sorry. Winston isn’t usually so intrusive. I’m not sure what has gotten into him tonight.” I slowly stand realizing how what I am doing looks and I just want to get in my house as quickly as possible, but I feel a nudge. Hmmm, I guess that must be grandma or maybe my great aunt. I’ m not quite sure they’re both endless busy bodies. “It’s quite alright, Winston?” I questioned to make sure I was correct in hearing his name as Winston owner nods in the affirmative, “Winston was no trouble. I was just out enjoying the moonlight and….” I trail off uncertain on how to even continue. Winston’s owner smiles, “It looks like we have interrupted a possible letting go ceremony?” I look a little confused but pleasantly surprised. “Um, yeah. I was just finishing up when Winston joined me. I don’t make it a habit of knowing a pet’s name before their owner, but it seems that this situation has left me lacking in knowing yours.” Winston’s owner smiles and looks at me with his head slightly cocked to the side, “Well, Sabrina I am the one who lacks manners as I know your name, I’m Brandon. I learned your name in somewhat the same way you learned Winston’s. While walking my dog one day, a young woman was leaving your home and yelled your name out as she was giving you, her goodbyes. I thought to myself at the time what a fortunate opportunity to learn your name and maybe soon I would be allowed an opportunity to make your acquaintance.” I looked down at the fire in the bowl just as it snuffed itself out. I smiled slowly and whispered, “Open my eyes to opportunities that I have missed, may it be as the universe wills”." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Kodachrome\n\nGenre: american\n\nWord Count: 2035\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about a character who sees a photo they shouldn’t have seen." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Ian had put it off long enough. His mother, Lillian, had passed two months ago. Lillian’s clothing, fashion jewelry, and vast collection of expensive handbags had been given away or were for sale at St. Paul’s Consignment Shop. His older sister, Sofie, had done that part.\n\nNow Ian stood in the middle of his mother’s study and looked around. Stacks of boxes surrounded him. Tax records and greeting cards with faded writing, financial statements and old photographs, sentimental letters that smelled musty and utility bills… where to start? This was the hard stuff, the items that could not easily be tossed into the “trash” or “keep” piles. After his father’s death when he was only weeks old, Ian and Sofie, had been raised solely by their mother. This was going to be the most time-consuming, gut punching part of this new stage of grief. Ian had always been more sentimental than Sofie.\n\nSofie had done most of the transactional work after Lillian had died quietly at home. In her sleep. At eighty-two. Even though it felt several years too early, it was the kind of peaceful, pain-free death people hope for. Sofie had done the talking and decision making when they’d met with the funeral home director. She’d handed the priest a printed list of Lillian’s favorite Scripture readings and hymns. She’d made the flower arrangements herself. Ian, still numb, had flown in to Philadelphia to help, but felt like a silent companion to his sister.\n\nThey had 30 days to remove Lillian’s belongings from her apartment at Windsor Hills Assisted Living Center. They were on day 15 and Sofie had to fly to St. Louis for a presentation at a medical conference. It was Ian’s turn to step up to the plate.\n\nAt dinner the night before, Sofie and Ian ate at their favorite restaurant, which they’d gone to since they were children: Valley Green Inn, a short walk from the Wissahickon walking trails. It was where Lillian took them every year for their birthdays, or when there was really any reason to celebrate. Ian thought how rare it was to think of a place that doesn’t have a single negative memory. Within the simple, colonial dining room, everything was always idyllic. It started out that way last night, their first time there since Lillian had passed.\n\nSofie, thin and focused, had her bright eyes on Ian from behind her large glasses. She lifted her gin and tonic.\n\n“Cheers to Mom!”\n\nIan gave a small smile, his mustache rising just a bit. He raised his pint glass of Edmund Fitzgerald porter. “To Mom.”\n\nEach looked at their glasses for a moment, then Sofie cleared her throat.\n\n“So how’s it going in Minneapolis?”\n\nIan nodded and stroked his beard. “Good, good. I mean, for a city its size, there’re some solid opportunities that were out of reach for me in New York.” He sipped his porter. “And here.”\n\n“But what’s happening? Have you had any gallery showings?”\n\nHe gave a light laugh and rolled his eyes. “It’s always about gallery showings to you.”\n\n“Well, how else are you going to sell anything?”\n\n“See, again, it’s not about selling. It’s about creating.”\n\nThere was a silence. Sofie gave an audible sigh.\n\n“Okay, you may think of this as tough love, but things are going to change now.”\n\n“What do you mean?”\n\n“Ian, you are forty-four years old. And I know Mom was still bailing you out financially almost every other year. I was in charge of managing her finances, you know.”\n\nIan pushed back in his chair. “Are you trying to humiliate me?”\n\n“No, no, I’m trying to help you.” Sofie leaned in. “Ian, you’ve got to figure this out for yourself. I believe in you, I know you can do it. But as long as you had Mom as a safety net, you never pushed yourself. You’re incredibly talented. You just have to learn how to make that talent support you.”\n\nThe waiter arrived with their entrees and the conversation switched to memories of their mother, of shared childhood moments both of them still cherished. But as Ian walked outside, he seethed that Sofie had ruined Valley Green’s prior perfect record of holding nothing but happy moments for him.\n\nNow, in Lillian’s study, it was silent. Ian was surrounded by items his mother had kept, for some reason, for decades. He knew he would have no choice but to toss or shred most of it. He took a deep breath and sat on the floor beside a stack of boxes filled with photos. \n\nAs Ian shuffled through loose photos, he developed a system. If the photo was of no one he knew and there was no name or identifying information written on the back, it went into the large black plastic trash bag. If it was a photo of a deceased neighbor or one of Lillian’s friends, it followed the others into the trash. There had been only a few family photos to be salvaged and Ian was relieved to be done with one box.\n\nIt began to feel like a challenge, with each consecutive box having photos that made decisions trickier. A framed photo of Lillian’s aunts from fifty years ago? None of them were still living. Still, they were family. Ian hesitated, then tossed it, frame and all, into the trash bag. In the next few boxes, he was delighted to see photos he’d never seen before of Sofie and him when they were very young. He’d show them to Sofie when she got home.\n\nAfternoon shadows began to fall in the room by the time he reached the last box in one stack. He opened it up and sighed out loud. It was filled with photos of Lillian and their father, Joe Harper, before the children had been born. He had definitely never seen most of them. Ian held each one with care, as if each photo was fragile. It looked like they’d traveled quite a bit: Florida, Mexico, Las Vegas, and Hawaii. They’d been married for almost a decade before Sofie was born in 1977, then Ian in 1980. Ian wondered now why neither of them had ever asked their mother why they’d waited so long to start a family. Maybe it hadn’t been by choice, maybe it had just happened that way.\n\nIan took a kind of comfort seeing that they’d had such a full and happy life together before Joe had died of a massive heart attack. Their mother never talked about it, and they never pried. Ian held one of the photos closer and smiled at his father’s face. Joe had a warm, engaging face… a good-looking man with a thick head of dark hair that Ian now envied.\n\nIan could feel the bottom of the cardboard box. Almost done. Once he was through with it, he was going to put all the saved photos back inside so he and Sofie could look through them together that weekend. Ian turned over one of the last photos. He blinked. It didn’t make sense. It was a photo of a man who was clearly their father. But he was heavier, and his thick dark hair was now salt and pepper gray. He was at what looked like a tropical resort, seated by a pool. He had a cocktail in one hand, and he was holding a TV Guide in his other hand like a fan. Ian could feel his heart beat faster. He looked carefully at the cover of the TV Guide. Miami Vice.\n\nHe pulled out his phone and quickly googled, “Miami Vice”. He stared at the search result, “Miami Vice was aired on NBC with the first episode premiering on September 16, 1984…”\n\n“What the hell?”\n\nIan shot up, photo in hand, and paced. He was four years old in 1984. And his father had died of a heart attack in 1980, so how the hell was this even possible? He grabbed another photo of his father and held them against each other. It was definitely the same person.\n\nIan quickly called Sofie. It went to voice mail. She was probably making her damn presentation. All of a sudden, Ian felt weak and sat in a chair. He realized he’d never seen his father’s obituary or his death certificate. He never thought about it before… why would their mother show it to her children? Ian held his hand to his forehead. What the hell was the story with his dad? Why were they told he was dead… and why would their mother have a photo of him from 1984? Was he even still alive?\n\nIan looked at the remaining boxes of photos, stacked in piles. He flipped on the light and began rummaging through the boxes in something close to panic. He had to know what the real story was. And he spent the next three hours trying to find it.\n\nWhen Ian woke up, he was lying on the sofa bed in his mother’s den, the morning light in his eyes. It took him a moment to remember last night’s discovery and he jumped up to look at the photo from 1984 on the desk. He hadn’t dreamt it.\n\nHe put his phone in his pocket and went to the kitchen to make coffee and see what there was to eat. Most of the perishables had already been tossed, but he saw a package of bagels in the back of the fridge. And a brick of cream cheese that hadn’t hit its expiration date yet. He was set.\n\nAfter he ate, Ian walked back into the study with a mixture of dread and eagerness. He wanted to know the truth, but what was it? Why had it been so successfully hidden from them for so long?\n\nIan looked around the room. Where to start? Then it came to him. He’d never in his life googled his father. Why would he have? He sat on the sofa bed and took out his phone. There were over 200,000 Joseph Harpers. He narrowed the search to “Joseph Harper” “Philadelphia” “Lillian Harper”. Ian saw the photo of his father come up before he had a chance to read the headline.\n\n“Man Runs From Philadelphia County Court…”\nIan’s knees felt weak as he continued scrolling. “Prosecutors say that Joseph Harper fled from a Philadelphia courtroom during sentencing and is wanted for obstructing an officer and four counts of felony bail jumping. Harper was being sentenced for his role in money laundering, racketeering, and falsely claiming to be a financial advisor…”\n\nIan felt sick. He’d been lied to his entire life. His father had never been who he’d believed him to be. It was now impossible not to wonder what kind of woman his mother had been. It was too much. His grief over her death was still fresh and now Ian felt like he didn’t even know who he was mourning.\n\nHe leaned against the back of the sofa and closed his eyes. There was a story to be revealed. There was a hidden history to learn. But… did he want to? They say that before someone dies, their life flashes before their eyes. Ian’s did in that moment. And all he saw were happy childhood memories with a loving mother and a protective older sister.\n\nIan’s ringtone sounded and he jumped. He glanced at his phone. Sofie.\n\n“Hey,” her voice was soft, “how’s everything going?”\n\n“Oh, it’s – it’s going.”\n\n“So, things here are wrapping up sooner than expected. I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon instead of on Saturday.”\n\n“Okay.”\n\n“And, Ian, I’m sorry if I was insensitive the other night.” She paused. “I love you. You know that.”\n\nFor the first time in a while, Ian smiled. “I love you, Sofie.”\n\n“See you soon!”\n\n“That will be great.”\n\nIan put his phone back in his pocket. He picked up the photo of their father and stared at it. He turned it over and saw faint red ink stamped on the back: Kodachrome November 1984.\n\nIan looked around the room for a moment, then tore the photograph into small pieces and put it in the bottom of the large black trash bag." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: The Shaman\n\nGenre: african-american\n\nWord Count: 1432\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story that includes the phrase “I’m free!”" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I never believed in sage burning, gem mooning, or shamans until I met Leah. She was always happy and cheerful, and it wasn't an act. She was wise beyond her thirty-something years and became my best friend.\nWe worked in the medical lab of a major hospital in Ohio. I enjoyed my work, but it brought me little joy. I verified testing results, such as blood counts, checking pee for illegal substances, etc. You wouldn't believe the stuff people put into their bodies, like too many blue pills or poppy seed muffins.\nLeah worked in the genetics lab, and we shared an office for two months during renovations of her section of the tombs (the basement). We got along well, maybe too well, because we'd end up chatting instead of working. Her Afrikaans accent and my Alabama drawl made for hilarious miscommunications.\nThe hospital gave us a twenty-minute break, aside from lunch, each day. We began taking walks on our breaks; it was Leah's idea and was a great routine, we got exercise and fresh air, and I lost ten of my thirty extra pounds.\nLeah is so beautiful; I loved her smile and would tell her jokes just to see it. She loved my Grampa's lame ones; \"Why do they put fences around cemeteries? Because people are dying to get in.\" Her laugh could heal depressed people.\nWe continued our friendship after the building renovations were completed. We were both single, and she was crazy about County Line Dancing. I wasn't, but she begged me to take lessons with her. She finally confessed that you didn't find many people of color in Country Western venues and didn't want to go alone. Leah was six feet tall, very slender, and learned the steps quickly. I was short, chubby, pale, and a slow learner. We went dancing most Saturday nights and had a rule of never going home with anyone, no matter how charming or sexy the cowboy was, because we had a good thing going and didn't want to spoil it.\nOne Monday morning, Leah came into my office wearing one of her signature mischievous smiles. \"Amy, guess what?\"\n\"What?\"\nBefore she could answer, a man so tall that he ducked under the doorway stepped in behind her. \"This is Mikha! My fiance!\n\"We were sweethearts in college but so focused on our careers and lost touch when Micah went to medical school here and I studied in Michigan. He works here now!\"\n\"I decided I couldn't live without her.\" Micah's voice was deep, and what I imagined God's voice sounded like.\n\"Oh my goodness!\"\n\"Amy, we're getting married in a small ceremony, just you and a few others. Will you come?\"\n\"Wow!\"\n\"Of course I will, Leah; this is amazing! I'm so happy for you both.\" I felt a twinge of regret because she was almost like my sister, and people tend to focus on their partner after marriage, as they should.\nMicah seemed to notice my feelings and promised that we would still have our nights out or he would have to go Line Dancing.\nSix months after the wedding, Leah asked me to drive her to visit a friend. She loved driving, so this was an odd request.\n\"Okay?\"\n\"This visit is significant, and I might not keep my mind on driving afterward. The house is three hours from here, so I've booked us accommodations at Bed and Breakfast nearby.\"\n\"Sounds like fun, but it also sounds like a nice getaway for you and Mikha.\"\n\"It would, Amy, but no men are allowed on this visit .\"\n\"Really? Why?\"\n\"I'll explain it later.\"\nThe house was a few miles outside a tiny town in Kentucky, and we drove past it once despite the GPS insisting that we 'turn right.' We found the driveway when I saw an old rusty mailbox at the entrance. The tiny house was set far back from the road and looked rather crumbling from the outside. Several cats scampered off the porch as we climbed the creaky wooden steps.\nA tiny, elderly black woman opened the door. Her smile was a symphony of wrinkles, and I thought she had cataracts, then realized she had blue eyes! She wore a red, green, and yellow dress with a matching turban.\n\"Miss Nobantu, this is my friend Amy.\"\n\"Welcome, Amy,\" then she motioned for us to follow her. We walked through a tidy kitchen with a red and chrome vintage table and chairs, a fifties fridge hummed away, and plants everywhere. I loved it!\nThe next room was her \"sitting room,\" with a fireplace and book-lined shelves. Many small books were most likely printed in the early 1900s. She pointed to a green overstuffed chair and told me to help myself to tea in teapot sporting a red and yellow quilted cozy, then to a plate of cookies. She handed me two books, one filled with delicate botanical art and another titled Arts & Crafts by Peter Magubane. I guessed Leah told her I loved plants, art, and chocolate chip cookies.\nI sat in the comfy chair, and Leah followed her into another room and closed the door. I was soon lost in a world of plants, African art, and the best cookies ever.\nLeah came out an hour later and closed the door. \"She apologizes for not saying goodbye; she had to lie down and rest. She is ninety-eight years old!\" Then she smiled and said, \"I was so worried, but I'm free of it now. It went well, and I'm delighted to announce that I'm pregnant with a boy!\"\nWe signed in at the B&B, a large three-story white house with a wrap-around porch festooned with hanging ferns. The restaurant was on the first floor.\nAfter we ordered dinner and a bottle of sparkling non-alcoholic wine, Leah said, \"Now, Amy, I'll tell you what these sessions are about. Sometimes they contain distressing news, so I didn't want to drive. But it is all fine now. Miss Nobantu told me I am pregnant, which I knew from the test I had taken twice. I'm sorry, but I may not share any more of what she told me. It's a rule similar to the Catholic of confession blended with medical confidentiality.\"\n\"I understand.\"\n\"She is what some people call a shaman or priestess. We recognize these women as special almost at birth, and they are taught to perform ceremonies or rituals and how to make herbal medicines; some see into the future.\"\n\"Oh my goodness! That's so cool!\"\n\"In our culture, when a woman becomes pregnant, she goes to her shaman for a consultation. Their skills and knowledge pass from generation to generation, and I know our beliefs are considered strange to people who don't know our culture. The shaman touches the mother's tummy and learns certain things that will help her gently guide her child to their life's path. For instance, my mother was told many things; among them were the two lives I would enjoy and excel in.\"\n\"Really? I wish I'd had a shaman. \"\n\"My mother was told I have unique talents, or gifts, in healing and music. So, Mama provided knowledge and items to find them by supplying me with opportunities and letting me learn to find my way in life. She gave me books and lessons, and I discovered I loved healing and music. I get much joy from listening to music but have no ambition to learn to play an instrument. I do, however, crave exploring science and medicine. Do you see?\"\n\"So your mother exposed you to the lives that were most powerful and best for you and provided the tools to help you choose.\"\n\"Exactly! And I knew Mikha would be my life partner one day, so when we drifted apart, I wondered if I was wrong. Then he reappeared!\"\n\"And that's why you are always so happy and confident! \"\n\"Yes!\"It's much more complex, but that's the basics. Finding one's purpose is a true blessing!\"\n\"Leah, it was so sweet of you to tell Miss Nobantu how much I enjoy plants and art, and especially chocolate chip cookies! I'm embarrassed because I ate all of them!\"\nShe chuckled and said, \"She told me she bakes them herself, but only for certain occasions.\"\n\"Well, it was wonderful. I enjoyed myself so much that I felt a little disappointed when you came out. I should write her a thank you note.\"\n\"She would like that. But, Amy, I told her nothing about you other than I was bringing a friend.\"" } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Finding Holly\n\nGenre: american\n\nWord Count: 2966\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about a character who sees a photo they shouldn’t have seen." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "It was late evening. We had just finished dinner and as I had cooked, my husband was on clean-up duty. I was in my bedroom, reading. My oldest daughter, Holly, had just vacated the foot of the bed and was en route to grab a shower before bedtime. Though she had her own bathroom inside, she had recently become very adamant regarding privacy. We had a separate room outside off of the carport. I thought it was weird that she wanted to shower out in what was essentially our second laundry room. Granted, it was a private, spacious room complete with a full-size refrigerator, a deep freeze, toilet, sink, and shower stall because... who doesn’t need all of that shit out by where you park the cars?\nI didn’t give it too much consideration, though, as mentioned, she had been getting weird about her privacy recently. She was about to be a freshman, moving on to the High School campus from the Middle School.\n I turned the page of my new book, a tome by Mr. Stephen King, “Under the Dome.” Suddenly, I heard a sharp chime that could only come from a phone, but it wasn’t mine. I glanced up and saw Holly’s phone lying there, unaccompanied by its owner. It was odd since that thing was usually glued to her hand and her eyeballs to it. It was like a lone sock, forever separated from its mate, resigned to a life of solitude at the bottom of a drawer. \nI’m not usually one to snoop through my children’s devices (though we required their pins, just in case). I don’t know what possessed me to do it but I entered the 4-digits and saw a text from her best friend, Katie, with a few simple words, “y not? Go 4 it! Be safe! hmu l8tr” Now curious, I scrolled up and saw what looked like a screenshot, it was of a text between Holly and her then-boyfriend, Colby. Heartbeat increasing rapidly, I told myself it was probably just a joke, you know, “Dude! I just watched a movie where a man's wife is viciously murdered and his son is left physically disabled. Then, when you think it can’t possibly get any worse, the same son is kidnapped and then the man has to chase the kidnapper thousands of miles with the help of a mentally disabled woman... ”\nI figured I’d read the joke; I needed a chuckle. I tapped on the screenshot to enlarge it. As I read the contents of the text within I felt my pulse set off at a trot, a flush rose to my cheeks that rendered them crimson, and adrenaline from fear flooded my body. Rather than a silly joke, Holly had taken a screenshot of a conversation between her boyfriend and herself less than twenty minutes before. In the message, Colby asked Holly to sneak out that night and if she did, would she please consider having sex with him... He goes on to assure her that it’ll be just like when he fingered her, only a little different. First, I re-read the text to make certain my bifocals did not deceive me. Then, I almost snickered—if it’s only a little different then he has problems that are far worse than his feeble grasp of “they’re, their, and there.” It was, at that time that a little voice encouraged me to scroll up. There was a photo; one of Holly that revealed far more of her than I’d been privy to over the past five to seven years.\nSo quickly, I knocked the behemoth novel to the floor, I hurried to the far side of the house, to my husband, Jim, and scrolled back to the screenshot. I held my hand out, phone resting in my palm but when I tried to speak, nothing but an amphibian-like croak came out.\n I watched him as he took the phone and his lips moved as he read the horror on the screen. The tips of his ears went red as if suddenly backlit by candles. Red started at the base of his neck and crept toward his face a millimeter at a time. By the time he scrolled up, I was certain flame would burst from his head orifices.\nComposed-as-a-cat Jim Miller, the unflappable dad starts to sit down at the bar, stands abruptly, tries to sit again, and stands again, apoplectic little sounds trying to escape his lips. I looked him in the eye, “We have about five minutes until that kid gets out of the shower and comes to retrieve her phone. We need to play this shit right-- right fucking now, or we’re going to lose her forever to some pimply kid with braces and whose prick apparently isn’t much larger than ....” I wiggle my index finger and giggle, bent at the waist.\nJim laughs; “Only we could laugh at a time like this.”\n“If you don’t laugh, they’ll eat you alive. United front, then?” I say, he nods. \n“Meet her on the patio before she can even go back in the house?” I nod at him.\nI plodded outside with him, single file, as if to the gallows. We both took our seats. I slipped a cigarette between my lips, dry from fear. I flicked the lighter a few times while the cicadas hummed loudly and fireflies lit up the backyard beyond TFR and the carport. We watch the door to The Fucking Room (TFR), as we’d taken to calling it eons ago. Soon, we heard the lock disengage. My heart speeds from a trot to a gallop.\nHolly steps outside into the honeysuckle-laced evening, the smell of damp earth lying atop it all after the recent rain, wrapped in a knee-length green robe, her feet ensconced in slippers shaped like frogs. She hesitates just for a beat at the sight of us sitting stock-still at the table, looking at her in a gravely serious way, then she grins and begins to walk tentatively toward us, I notice that her long legs no longer bear the scrapes, and bruises of childhood; they were the legs of a young woman. “What’s with the heavy, Parents?” she asks.\nI shove the patio chair across the table from me out sharply with my foot, “Have a seat.” I indicate for her to sit. I casually slip her phone out of the side pocket of my scrubs. \"Explain. Now.\"\nHer eyes go wide like saucers as I slide it swiftly to her. The small smile disappears from the corners of her lip as she glances at the screen, then expels an enormously bothered sigh, the kind only adolescents seem able to. “Well?” She asks, raising a brow. I look at Jim and he nods slightly.\nIt was now or never. If I brought the hammer down too hard, she would likely disappear into Colby's arms, or someone else’s, forever: Remember though, being on the cusp of fifteen: hormones raging, having secrets, getting that glowing feeling when a good-looking boy approached. However, go too easy and she’d probably hand me a baby for safekeeping within the year.\nMy eyes stay locked on hers, unwavering. She returns my gaze, “So,” she snaps.\n“So… I’d like for you to read the contents of... that-- aloud, please,” I stated, “Right now, please, Ma’am.” She flatly refuses and I drop my voice to an almost inaudible tone, “Oh, but you will. You see, at this moment we are reacting calmly but how you handle this very adult situation with all your fourteen years of wisdom will determine how this plays out.”\nShe sits, fidgeting with indignant rage. “Holly, I’m not trying to embarrass you and I know you hate my guts with the fiery, purple passion of a thousand suns at this moment, but, please...” \nShe glares one last time at each of us in turn and begins to read the series of texts aloud, her voice starting remarkably strong before becoming more and more faint, her cheeks burning crimson as she realizes the photo we had undoubtedly seen, as well.\n“What now, “she whispers, anxiety filling her eyes, her long lashes wet with unshed tears. “Well, as I said, that’s really up to you. Obviously, you are grounded… for a week. I want your phone and passcode. I want your tablet and Jim will be removing the laptop from your bedroom as well as the Xbox. You will earn these back by showing acts of maturity.” She rolls her eyes and mutters, “Whatever.” The attitude she’s going for is detached, completely beyond this. She starts to stand.\n“Uh-uh, I’m not done here. I will set an alarm on my phone to go off every hour on the hour. If your ass isn’t in that bed or somewhere in this house, fully clothed—you can totally definitely kiss summer camp goodbye. I will drive you directly to school and pick you up. I will speak to your coach about track practice…” I rise from my seat and start to make my way into the warm glow of the house. My bare feet smack the concrete as I go. I glance back over my shoulder. “Oh, one more thing… this discussion is far from over.” I open the glass patio door and drift down the hallway to my room. \nI close my bedroom door and lock it. I go into my bathroom, grab a towel, and step into the shower stall, it's only then do I scream until my eyes feel as if they will simply pop from their sockets by sheer force. I cry for my sweet little girl, white blonde hair in pigtails and bows, smiling her mostly toothless grin up at me, her hot little hand in mine as we adventure about the park. \nThat night, as I set up the alarms for my phone, I looked at Jim, “Do you think I was too harsh? Did I go all… extra?” I roll my eyes. He smiles at me, pausing a moment to clip his next funky, talon. “No, Babe, but I think you need to really consider what you say to her next. While we absolutely disagree with her on this,—we are always on her side, she’s not alone. We aren’t angry, per se, we’re scared and concerned.”\nI smile at him, “I’m pickin’ up what you’re puttin’ down, Man! I got this shit.” I say jokingly. “Seriously, though, I agree that’s the best approach.”\n“So when is this heartfelt yet heavy chat taking place and where do I need to disappear with Maddie, and Jeremy,” he inquires. \n“I’m thinking tomorrow after school. I’ve got to really consider what to say but if I dwell on it too long, it’ll drive me bug-shit crazy.” I tell him seriously. He snorts laughter and looks at me again, “You’re quite mad, you know that right?” he laughs. “Pick up your nasty toe shrapnel,” I say making a face befitting the remark.\nWhen we get home the next day, the sounds of a normal afterschool day play throughout the house. Purses clunk onto the cabinet, backpacks smack the floor, followed by the sound of vinyl being drug across the wood floor, the critical clickety-clack of dog toenails that are actually Morse code for, “I urgently need to pee, Ma’am!”\nAfter taking the dog out, Jim herds Maddie and Jeremy into the den and tells them that they’re going out for a while and then they’ll grab dinner. “What about Mom and Holly?” Maddie, ever the little kiss-ass good Samaritan inquires in a shrill voice. “We’ll bring them something back!” Jim grins good-naturedly at the younger two children. \n“Right now,” Jeremy asks quizzically. “Right now,” Jim states. “Do I get to pick the place we eat?” Maddie perks up, “Oh, and, can I, I mean, may I, ride in the front seat?” As anticipated this cues Jeremy to start his own grouchy protest. Jim looks at me, clearly sending a fake, but real, but not really real distress call, and ambles outside. I watch Holly meander to the couch and flop onto it. Soon, the hubbub fades as the front door closes, seeming to swallow them up. \nI look at Holly. She looks at me. She straightens her light grey skirt neatly—fans it out on the couch and then allows the rest of her body to droop backward as if her spine was suddenly ripped from her body. I glance at how she’s sitting, unintentionally, I hope. Her lavender cotton panties are on full display. “Cross your legs, please,” I ask. She sneers at me and promptly claps her thighs together and tosses her left knee over her right.\n“I thought we already had the grand inquisition, Mother?”\n“We have… but, consider this a bonus lecture, Daughter. Can you humor a half-deaf Old Bag for a few moments?” Her eyes soften the slightest bit at the old joke. This is it, this is my shot. I felt like vomiting, my palms began to sweat, but I plunged forward.\n“Holly, at this moment you are 14 years old. Yes, you are about to be 15, however, in the eyes of the State, you are 14 years old and as such, a minor. Colby is 17 years old. His birthday is coming up. Say you and Colby drive out to the middle of nowhere. You turn on some Marvin Gaye and…”\n“Mom, this isn’t the '70s!” she looks at me as if completely embarrassed for me. I shrug. “First, just how old do you think I am?” “Mom, everyone knows that song was released in the seventies,” she says, knowing for sure that I drag my knuckles when I walk. \n“Okay then, music you celebrate to… naked.” \nHolly buries her face in her hands. She says nothing so I push ahead. “In the eyes of the State, Colby is considered an adult and you are a minor. Do you see what I’m saying, Holly? Colby could be charged with rape, statutory rape, but rape all the same.”\n“Furthermore, while the act of having sex isn’t that difficult, the emotions that come with it are some of the most confusing to navigate. I know you love him.”\nShe looks up, her green eyes all shiny, “I do.”\n“Does he love you?” She gazes at me and seems to give the question deep consideration. “I honestly... don’t know. He can be kinda weird around his friends.” She shrugs. “Then, like when we’re alone, he’s all sweet again. But we’re making out so I don’t really know if he means it or if he’s just trying to make me feel comfortable enough to… \" she trails off, lost in thought.\n“These are the emotions I’m talking about are complex. They can make you explode with savage joy but they can also have vicious, heart-piercing fangs. When we say we don’t want you to get hurt, this is what we mean. Also, I may as well just toss all my\ncards on the table right now— I have a few questions I'd like you to consider: Do you want anyone else to know about the business you might get up to with Colby?” \nShe shakes her head.\n“See, there’s a cliché involving these little Romeos. In this, it’s completely fucking stupid. Yeah, I know we don’t use the word stupid but this double standard between men getting’ some and women getting’ some is ridiculous and backward and infuriating. If a boy ‘carves a notch into his bedpost’, he’s a fucking stud. He’s The Man!”\n“Sadly, if a woman does the same thing, she’s typically labeled a slut and endlessly shamed for it. I don’t think you want to be a ‘conquest’ or notch in some dude’s bedpost.” I have her full attention so I keep going.\n“On an even heavier note, say the condom breaks or if, 'just one time' he doesn’t use one and assures you it’ll be fine, or if you don’t think you can get pregnant while on your period and have unprotected sex and get pregnant... are you prepared to share your bedroom with a newborn? Is Colby going to help with the baby before and after school?” \"Oh, what the hell? While we're at it, why does he get to go to school and you’re at home reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar for the 500th time-- that day?\" I smile sadly at her and grasp her hand, now smooth, nails manicured.\n\"Or, if you decided to have an abortion, which is absolutely your right and your choice, is he going to hold your hand through it all; through the tears and the pain and the doubt and I'm not referring to just before and during the procedure? If your answer to any of those questions is ‘I don’t know,’ then you are not old enough to have sex.”\nShe nods.\nSee, you enter into a kind of pact, an agreement when you go down that road that you understand all of the variables. I’m not just being tremendously lame—I just want your life to be based on your choices, not on pressure from someone or something else, you know?” \nI look up from my blotchy red hands that I’ve apparently been grasping tightly together throughout the conversation and into her sea-green eyes. She looks like something inside of her has deflated, and changed, or maybe it’s just how I see her. I need a glass or six of wine. \n“Okay, Mom. I get it. How long have you been practicing that one?” Holly laughs. \n“A while,” I admit, “Go on, we’re done here.”\nShe looks jubilant for a moment. “I’m not grounded?” she asks.\n“Oh. No. You are totally still grounded. Go do something grounded people do...\"" } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Square Root\n\nGenre: african-american\n\nWord Count: 2997\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story that includes the phrase “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "“Beep, Beep, Beep” the sound went on in succession “Beep, Beep, Beep, Beep, Beep” so ingrained was the tone she hadn’t noticed it had stopped. So occupied was her mind, abuzz with varied thoughts of the tasks she wanted to complete, and the tasks she must complete. “Miss, are you alright?” The clerk asked as she fell back into the present. “Madam, did you hear me? That will be 1200.79 Francs.” Waiting patiently the clerk eagerly watched her reach into her pocketbook, and slid out the correct amount of currency with expediency, rushing her out of his line, all but shoving her bags into her arms. Once in the car, she reached for the visor, grabbing her notebook. Hastily she jotted down what she’d gotten from Carrefour, now she needed to go to Regabon, then after that Supergros. \nThe street changed to the highway as she headed home with her haul. Placing the items she needed to the side, she emptied the bags putting them where they belonged in her home. Showering she quickly washed, and brushed her teeth. Then in a mad dash, she threw her clothes on. In the mirror she admired herself “Bernadette”, she said, “Don’t you look lovely today?” She’d learned that in therapy, a self-proclamation in the mirror. When she felt down about herself, or when she felt “the incident” start to pull her elsewhere she was to look in the mirror and give herself confirmation. As if her house weren’t confirmation enough, more rooms than she could ever sleep in, and more jewelry than she could ever truly wear. Feigning a smile she looked back at herself meekly, “No that’s not it,” she turned her head from the mirror she couldn’t look at herself. “You’ve got to give me a true smile. Come on I know it’s in you. Back in the mirror, she gave a more elated version of herself. Finding this suitable, she went downstairs heading to her car. \nThe road to work wasn’t far it took about thirty minutes to get there, she’d made sure to equip her car for what she needed when she was finished. Adjusting her mirror she ensured the bags were safely tucked under meaningless items. Work was a madhouse. Surgeries back to back, but she made it through. Her hands were tired but not enough for them to rest yet, more work was to be done. Mid-way through her shift she found time to take a nap, resting in a cot in the staffers' lounge.\nThe lights thrummed in time with the music that flooded the air. The drink in her hand was bitter, but she forced it down trying not to focus on the taste. Like the phasing lights, nerves bounced around her stomach. She’d worn her best jewelry, her best makeup, her latest dress, and all for what? For her to stand at the back corner of the bar? Too afraid to speak to someone? To frightened of intimacy to even get her toes wet. The liquor was supposed to remedy that, it was supposed to make her feel at ease, and help her deal with the anxiety that bubbled up the moment she opened her mouth. Leaving her empty glass at the table, she clacked her heels across the floor, then she tapped at the bar grabbing the keeps attention “Another one. Make it a double.” \nGlasses were stacked neatly at her table, a woman walked by with a tray collecting them. Bernadette reached into her clutch, gripping a few Francs for a tip. The woman’s face was almond-shaped, she had wide brown eyes, with a long neck. She was tall, just about as tall as Bernadette, something rare since she was about 6’2”. A smile appeared in the corner of the woman’s mouth. In the bathroom, they exchanged making out in the third stall. Bernadette learned the name of the girl she had her tongue down the throat of when she had finished their second passionate kiss. “Druja. Or Dru for short.” She said then she slid her hand around Bernadette’s thigh, then further up still, further up until she was beneath the lining of her silk panties. The alarm on her phone sounded, which meant it was time for the next surgery. Groggily she tossed off sleep, grabbing herself a cup of coffee on her way out into the hall. \nAt the desk she looked over the symbols she’d been scribbling, each one was made precisely so. The entirety of the page was filled with them, over and over she’d made pages of them, placing the completed copies in a shredder only after she found them satisfactory. A hand was on her shoulder, and she jumped. “I’m sorry, you know I didn’t mean to scare you. I thought you heard me knock.” Charlot came in, though she wore scrubs parts of her still managed to fill every bit of them. Bernadette did her best not to take notice. “I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you.” Surreptitiously she slid her drawing down into her shredder. Gratification came when she heard the gears begin to grind. \n“I’d been knocking for quite a while, then I asked if you were busy. I swore you answered me.” Charlot had a curious look, then she laughed a bit, which in turn made Bernadette laugh. “Long day Bernie?” Charlot asked. “Longer than I’d like it to be,” Bernie admitted. “Don’t worry the night’s almost through. We can grab a drink or two after, I think I feel the same…or worse.” Charlot let her hearty laughter fill the small office, so infectious was it that Bernie had no option but to join in. “Ok, we will see. I’m not promising anything yet.” Bernie said, scrawling across one of the many documents that needed her signature. “Of course, of course,” Charlot said catching the hint it was time to go back to work. “I’ll leave you to it.” With the eyes of a wolf longing for a prime cut of meat, she watched Charlot waltz back to the door, abruptly she had turned, and at the moment Bernie had her head towards Charlot’s shape, no she was focused on the door. “Bye.” Charlot waved.\nThe steam of the shower always cleared her mind. With a grin she welcomed the hot flow, allowing it to take her trouble with it. Watching it swirl down the drain, she imagined all the bullshit of the day spiraling out. Under the shower, she rinsed her head. There were advantages to short hair, one of many being she wouldn’t drown in a sea of wet hair, while her mind wandered. Throwing her scrubs in her bag, she got dressed in her streetwear. “Bernadette, what do you have planned for tonight?” Charlot said to her, as she was slipping into her dress. Bernadette watched the dress slide down her form, she saw it caress her shape, going down until it covered the silk panties she wore. Charlot had turned around swiftly, causing Bernadette to turn her head a bit, giving her some privacy. “You think you’re down for a drink tonight?” Charlot asked. “Maybe we can get you a man. Verrill has a friend he thinks would be good for you. Someone tall, handsome too. I think Verrill said he is in the tea industry.” \nThe prospect of a night out between her and Charlot had been alluring, but the mix of Verrill and his ‘acquaintance’ took all the blood from her cheeks. Thinking of the alternative, she could say no, she could very well make up an excuse for Charlot, one of the many she had for such an occasion. This was something she contemplated, alongside the gossip that came with it. Despite it being without punishment, Homosexuality was not encouraged. Not like it had been in America. Here they would talk about her, and the rumors would spread, though Charlot always put them to rest for her. On the other hand, if the rumors caught steam, they could lose to her no longer being able to practice, which meant no house, no car, and that also meant… “So what do you think?” Charlot said. She was already dressed, just finishing putting her earrings on. “You’re not even dressed yet? Oh, Bernie.. you sure you want to go out tonight?”\nFor dinner, they’d chosen somewhere new. Bernie had driven herself, choosing to meet the others at the restaurant. The less she had to pretend the better. She also managed to squeeze in a small trip to a shop, grabbing a small dress to show extra effort and give Charlot more to barricade against the gossip mill. Walking in she went to the hostess stand, but Charlot and Verrill already spotted her. “Over here” Charlot stood up to say, a smile from ear to ear was across her face, her white teeth complimented by her red lipstick. The bracelets she wore jingled as she signaled. “Look at you”, Charlot said holding her tight. In Bernie’s ear, she whispered “Nothing too bad yet. This one seems like a catch.” She’d said it fast so as not to catch anyone’s attention, then Bernie said “Good cause I’ve brought my net.” At that the two of them chuckled, sitting at their prospective spots.\nIf she’d been into men, he would have been a candidate. The man was handsome, with strong cheekbones, and a prominent jawline. When he stood up to reach for a hug, he smelled rich like frangipani blossoms and oud. Bright white teeth, perfectly aligned gave the most elated of expressions as he took her in. The flattery was nice, and remembering she was on cue she smiled the way she’d seen other girls do, as they were looked over by their prospective suitors. A blush even managed to brighten her cheeks, this was something Charlot must have noticed, for she whispered to Verrill. The man’s name was Razo. Razo Otumbe. Bernie made a rhyme at dinner “Razo Otumbe, Born on a Monday. Razo Otumbe, Born on a Monday” It helped her keep his name fresh in her mind, with it being preoccupied she found it hard to focus. \nThe wine was poured glass after glass, it was true as Charlot had shared Razo was very endowed. There was not a course he didn’t know on the menu, nor did he find any of the food distasteful, he savored every bite. The conversation he provided was extraordinary, having traveled the world Razo had much to share about his experiences, he was very much into himself, Bernie came to find out after listening to fifteen minutes of his recent excursion to Thailand. When he had finished she promptly excused herself to the bathroom.\nExtravagant smoke doors lead to the restroom. Bernie took a moment at the sink, relieved to not have to pretend, if only for a few moments. Looking at herself she stared in the mirror, connecting with the Woman beyond the reflection. “Just a bit longer.” She steeled herself, “You’ve got this.” Having nothing to do in the bathroom, she washed her hands out of habit, allowing the water to flow over them, giving her thoughts room to untangle. \nThe lights of the night were dimming, through the flurry of the disco, she’d been entranced. Convinced by Dru to accompany her for a rendezvous, with an anxious heart she’d said yes. They didn’t hold hands walking down the street, though Bernie wanted to. Behind closed doors in the intimacy of Dru’s apartment, they’d begun to kiss and run along the form of each other’s bodies. Bernie could trace the small of her back from memory if she’d wanted, that was how long they’d been in the embrace of one another. Throwing her back on the bed Dru ravaged her. In ecstasy, Bernie threw her head back and thrust her hips up. Feeling the sensation coursing through her, she convulsed as the pleasure continued. A hand was now on her breast, she felt it nuzzling her plump bosom.\nA slight prick she felt, nothing major just the end of a nail, then the star pain shot across to her arm. The hands had changed somehow, no longer dainty and nimble, the hands themselves felt like they had grown when she gazed at her chest, she saw a leathery ruby-skinned hand grasping her tit. In fear she’d jumped, unable to escape as the claw gripped her firmer applying pressure to hold her in place. “No…get off of me.” Bernie kicked with her legs, then the beast unveiled a pair of wings, which it used to grab her legs. Half nude she tried to free herself, but the monstrous grip only furthered her into the mattress. With her fists, she beat on its back, as it had its way with her…\n“BERNIE, are you alright?”Charlot said pulling Bernie out of her trance. The water at the sink was running, and spots of blood were in the basin. Looking at herself, Bernie saw her nose had been bleeding. “Oh, my god. Let me grab you some paper.” Charlot moved swiftly, rushing back to her side. Bernie held the paper to her nose, moving herself to a stall for more privacy. “Are you ok?” Charlot asked while Bernie ensured the blood wouldn’t stain her dress. “I’m fine, I just had a nosebleed.” Charlot said, “You should have a doctor look at that.” \nAt the table, she was welcomed like a traveler returning from abroad. “I was worried about you,” Razo said, then he ginned with the corner of his mouth, biting his lip. “I was worried about myself,” Bernie said, then she took her seat. Looking at her watch she saw the time for her prior engagement was drawing nigh. With grace she excused herself, thanking Charlot, and Verrill for their time, and she made a point to act as if her parting was displeasing, due in fact to Razo being there for her. That water cooler would be smoking on Monday morning, full of the ins and outs of the dinner. \nGetting in the car, she went three blocks and then turned down an alley. Being at the dinner, in that damn bathroom almost made her miss it. The dress she began to tear off her, reaching over the seat and grabbing a bag she began to sort through what she needed. Then she tossed it on the seat beside her and opened the sunroof. Bright and bold the moon shone, so close she thought she could reach up and grab it. The sky behind it was clear, stars twinkled slightly, poking through the light pollution. With a quick swig, she downed the bottle of rosemary and blue vervain, then she munched on ginger root. Dousing the amulet in a jar, she pulled it up took the string, and hung it over the mirror. Steadily she drove until a slight glow emanated, when she made a slight turn and the glow dimmed, she eased herself around till it started up once more.\nThe evening rolled on, the gem had a steady glow so she knew she was closer than she’d been. Bold circles of ruby shimmered in the cabin, looking up overhead she saw only the moon, onward she went driving in the direction of the brightest glint until she came up to a sign reading “LOANGO NATIONAL PARK”. Turning her lights down she drove in darkness, parking along the side entrance. Snagging her keys, the gem, and her bag she trekked through the trees. Monkeys called, and birds sang their nightly hymns as she felt her way in the dark. From her bag now and then she pulled a machete, hacking only when she found it necessary. The smell of a skunk filtered the air, so strong was the stench that she felt her nostrils begin to burn. Reaching into the bag she found a small bottle, placing it at her fingertips she rubbed it on her nose, stopping the burn, but keeping the scent. \n“CRACRACRA” At the sound Bernie stopped, she held her breath waiting to hear. “CRAAACRAAA” The sound was a high pitch, warble which was piercing to the ear. Stealthily she crept, the smell was now of burnt matches, so she was getting further away, locating where it was the strongest she continued. The stench of rotting eggs now, she knew it couldn’t be far. Sounds of the jungle had halted, and silence fell heavily on her ears, doing nothing to drown the drum beneath her throat. Ahead of her scattered in spots were bones, the moon caught the top of them, showing the bare alabaster back of a skull. Up the trail fresher prey lined the path a severed arm, deep onyx in color was on a makeshift post. On either side lay something, upon inspection Bernie could make out it was a set of lungs.\n“RRRAAAOORR”, “RRRAAAOORR”, the sound was distorted as it echoed from the cave. Erupting from it the beast expelled itself rabidly. Without thought Bernie grabbed her rope, throwing it in the direction of a red flash. Feet lifted off the ground, she attempted her best to reel in her catch. “Av Kin Noct” Bernie said digging her heels into the ground. “Nhg Vitw” the amulet “KEEEE KEEE” Flapping its wings the entity tried to escape her. Turning itself to face her, Bernie saw its wide singular eye. A yellow iris, with a pupil like a goat. The red wings it writhed with, looked like skin stretched beyond its limit, so thin it almost was translucent. “Av Kin Noct, Nhg Vitw” \nA siren rang from the mouth of the bat-like entity, deafening in pitch Bernie had no choice but to cover her ears, relinquishing her grip on the rope. Upward the imp rose, until it was a shadow against the backdrop of clouds, then up further still where she could no longer sense it. Bernie trotted back to her car reminding herself “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”" } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: The Manicure\n\nGenre: african-american\n\nWord Count: 2985\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story inspired by the phrase “Back to square one.”" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "In honor of the memory of dearly departed friends from Twitter’s writing community, Dawn Hosmer, Laila Doncaster, and Scott Bebe.\nI unlocked the front door and burst into the living room. “Laila!” I called out, barely acknowledging the tempting food aromas coming from the kitchen. “You can’t believe how this jerk almost hit me on the highway. Like he didn’t even see me.”\n“Hi, Mom!” She poked her head full of caramel-colored plaits around the corner. “Are you okay? I hope you like dinner.”\nThe hightop counter was set with two plates of steaming spaghetti and garlic rolls. Laila had even put out a wine glass for me.\n“It looks beautiful.” There weren’t many spills on the counter, and none on the floor. \n“Can you take a picture?”\n“Great idea.” As I scrutinized the scene, the lighting seemed too bluish. “Let me switch to the incandescent lights.” Once I’d adjusted the lighting, I took a photo of her culinary creation.\nLaila’s joy collapsed, a bonfire of pride extinguished. “I meant of me.”\nOh. Shit. “Smile, honey. I’ll take your picture.”\nLaila sighed and shook her head. Then she brought her fingertips to her mouth, and – No! Not again, don’t do it! – slowly tore off a sliver of fingernail.\nThis habit of hers annoyed me. “How many times do I have to remind you to stop biting your nails?”\nLaila yanked her hand away, but something in her eyes broadcast wounded animal. I tsked. “It’s so unladylike.” Then I had a déjà vu moment. Before I could decide if it was worth reliving, I blurted out, “If you don’t stop, I’ll paint sulfur on your nails. You won’t like that, will you?” \nRight before my eyes, Laila seemed to physically shrink.\nAlarmed, I said, “Chin up.” I felt like a jerk. She’d gone to so much trouble to make dinner, and I came down on her, dangling punishments, but bad habits were easier to break before they became entrenched. I reached out to give her a reassuring stroke. “Tell me about your day at school.”\nShe let out another sigh, some kind of erasure of words that would have otherwise contained multitudes. I lost an opportunity to learn something about her. I quelled my panic and went straight back into recovery mode. “Seriously. What did you talk about with your friends? Any cute boys?”\nA faint smile began to glimmer, so I nudged her. “Come on, tell me.”\nShe broke into the unmistakable grin of a girl with a crush. “The Spring Into Motion Dance is coming up at school, and I really want Scott to ask me.”\n“Who’s Scott?” I leaned on my elbows, totally interested and relieved that she was opening up. “What grade is he in?”\n“He’s a senior,” she said, shrugging, pretending to be nonchalant.\n“Mm-hm, and?”\n“I don’t know, Mom. Scott is a senior and he probably doesn’t even know I exist. We’re not in the same classes, but like, we get lunch at the same time, and I see him run track when I have softball practice.” She placed her fork back down on her plate. “Forget it. Never mind.”\n“We’ll come up with a plan to get this Scott kid to know you’re alive,” I said, inclining my head toward her.\n“Never mind. Please drop it, okay?” Laila’s voice faltered and her eyes shifted down to her lap.\nStunned like I’d hurled myself headlong against a brick wall, I said, “Okay. It’s okay. Listen, I’ll wash the dishes so you can get your homework done. Deal?”\nLaila nodded. I downed my wine, thirsty for its redemption. After we ate, I cleaned up. Laila disappeared into her bedroom, leaving me guessing if I’d ever get this motherhood thing down, because as her door closed her off from my view, I couldn’t help but feel the chance to learn the truest parts of her were slipping out of my reach. As I rested my wine glass, my matter-of-factly manicured hands trembled. I swore I wouldn’t let that surface, whatever that was. I sniffled with a tightened jaw and backed away from the sink, but an idea rippled through my mind and quickly vanished. \nLater, after I’d knocked on Laila’s door to say goodnight and gone to bed, the idea floated back. It knocked gingerly at a smudged window of my mind, like how a stranger who’d gotten a flat tire might approach a house with a single light on. \nIdea: A manicure.\nMe: What about a manicure?\nIdea: It might solve Laila’s problems. \nMe: What kind of foolishness is this? I have to be up early. Oh my God, brain, please shut off.\nIdea: She’d have a hard time biting through gel polish. \nI sat up straight. She would, wouldn’t she? I inhaled sharply, getting excited. I could outsmart this lousy habit of hers. Ever since I’d first noticed six months ago, we’d tried mittens in her sleep, then Bandaids, but she’d always removed the obstacle and kept chewing. If only she could see how lovely her hands would be with a professional once-over, she’d stop. Maybe her confidence would improve and she could talk to that Scott kid.\nI let my head crash onto my pillow and snuggled down under my black comforter, with a renewed hope for triumph. Laila’s sixteenth birthday was coming up, and a Mom-and-me manicure would be a unique experience instead of some forgettable trinket. \nMore important, I’d be a successful mom who got her kid to stop a bad habit. \nMaybe she’d even fit in with the popular girls she always envied. I’d wanted to fit in with the cool kids during my high school days. Their parents could afford to buy them sports cars, trend-setting clothes, the Billboard Top 40 releases on CD, summer road trips, and makeup from the department stores. \nI’d needed to study overtime, apply for scholarships, save up for a used sedan, borrow music from the library, work at summer camp, and wear cheap makeup from the drug store. \nI hadn’t gotten a manicure until I was preparing for my first interview after college. It hadn’t been so much for being a late bloomer, but mainly because – I kicked at the comforter and tossed onto my right side. Because – a memory that I’d apparently buried came back to life and I tossed again. My eyes blinked open from the terrible realization that ate away at my chest. \nI used to bite my nails, too. The very thought made my breath hitch. Gosh, I’d forgotten about that. It was really time for my brain to shut up and shut down for the night. \nYet, sleep eluded me. I glanced at the red glowing numerals of the clock on my nightstand. It was barely past ten p.m. Laila was probably still awake, and I couldn’t sleep, so I went to her room and knocked.\n“Yeah?” her voice came through, barely audible.\n“Laila?” I cracked open the door and poked my head in. “I have an idea.” I laid out the importance of grooming and how much fun it is to have someone take care of our hands, make our fingers attractive to boys like Scott. I thought it went over well. When her eyes turned glassy, I figured I should let her sleep.\n***\nAt last, Saturday arrived and I drove Laila to the nicest nail salon in town. As we pulled up to park near a tree that was pregnant with pink buds, I thought I saw a familiar face tucked under an Army green parka hood.\nI squinted, gripping the steering wheel. Sure enough: my kid sister. Laila and I got out into the cool air and warm sun. She had a sly grin, but looked down as soon as she side-eyed me. \n“Kimberly?” I asked. “What are you doing here?”\n“Hi, Dawn, just passing by,” she said, shrugging. “Hey, Laila. You look nice.” Kimberly gave her a wink on the sly, but I saw that.\n“Thanks, Aunt Kimberly,” Laila said, her grin returning. “We’re getting manicures today.” Laila’s shoulders slumped, and she hid her hands in her jacket pockets. I couldn’t for the life of me understand why she wasn’t excited to get those ugly stumps looking presentable.\nIt dawned on me that these two conspired for my sister to join us. “It’s a mother-daughter event, Kimberly.”\n“No problem. I have an appointment, too. I hope you don’t freak out.” She held the glass door open for us. “Happy birthday, young lady,” she said to Laila.\nIt was, after all, my kid’s sixteenth, so I didn’t want to dampen her spirits. If she wanted my sister to be with us, I wouldn’t freak out and be that mom.\nLaila perked up. “Thanks!”\nI wondered how Laila would react to the pungent aromas of chemicals and acetone, but she didn’t complain. Sparkly chandeliers hung from the vaulted ceiling, refracting brilliant light throughout the salon. We hung up our jackets on a rack near the door and checked in at the ultramodern reception desk. \nWe took seats, and I grabbed a ring of color cards on those fake nails. I thumbed through them until I got to an assortment of girly pastels, but Kimberly grabbed another ring. \n“Laila, do you like neon?” Kimberly asked. “This neon green is super cool.” She pointed to the ugliest sample nail. I prayed Laila would opt for something more traditional. \nMy sister was only eight years younger than me, but she acted like a teenager around my kid. She wanted Laila to think of her as the “cool aunt confidante,” but I just wished she’d act her age.\n“Kimberly,” I said, but before I could say more, Laila spoke up.\n“Mom, I like the green.”\nI hated when Kimberly put me on the spot like that, like my only options were to be that mom or give in to Laila’s every whim. But if neon green would stop the nail biting, so be it. “As long as it’s gel.”\nLaila inspected the color card. “It is. I’m getting the green…if that’s okay.”\nI stroked her shoulder, hoping to tease out a smile. “Sure.”\nKimberly chose a mirror finish chrome, and I inched outside my comfort zone, selecting a metallic rose gold. Then we were directed to nail stations. Luckily we were seated in a row, with Laila in between Kimberly and me.\nEllen, according to her name tag, tapped her desktop and Laila placed her hands palm up on the surface. Ellen shook her head. “Palm down, sweetheart. First manicure?”\n“Yeah.” Laila turned her hands over.\nI glanced over and almost couldn’t stomach what I saw. “Laila!” Her nails weren’t just bitten, her cuticles and quicks were slashed with angry streaks of red. There were scabs and dangles of skin.\n“What, Mom?” She returned her hands to her lap.\n“Honey, what have you done to yourself?” \n“Dawn, please,” Kimberly said. “I think she’s embarrassed enough as it is.”\n“Her nails aren’t healthy enough for a manicure,” Ellen said, her burgundy lips pulling into a straight, disapproving line, as punishing as a riding crop. It evoked the memory of standing at the podium of Howard University to receive my diploma. Summa cum laude, and my mom had dismissed my accomplishment, said it paled in comparison to landing a man. Without a glittering rock on my finger, I’d bypassed the most important initiation into womanhood: getting a man to take me off the market.\nI took a deep breath, but it didn’t steady my nerves. I was shaking, but so was Laila. What was I looking at evidence of? My daughter mutilating her hands so badly she couldn’t even get a manicure? My head spun in a cloudy soup, and it seemed much too bright in the salon all of a sudden.\n“We used to bite our nails, too, remember?” Kimberly went on. Her words illuminated what had clouded my thoughts.\n“What did you say?” I asked.\n“Mom!” Laila’s jaw dropped. “You’re such a hypocrite!”\n“We used to bite our nails when we were kids. Remember all those awful things Mom tried to make us stop?” Kimberly eyed me to fess up.\n“Mittens,” I said, having déjà vu all over again, but with a crushing clarity this time. \n“Then came sulfur dips, Bandaids and mittens at the same time,” Kimberly said. “Don’t forget the cayenne pepper. I quit before you did. It was easier for me because I was only copying you. You were one of the cool kids. I thought that’s just what cool kids did. But it took you longer to stop biting your nails…Remember?”\nI did remember, however reluctantly. “You thought I was cool?” I saw Kimberly through new eyes. My kid sister looked up to me, and I’d only ever thought of her as an annoying tag-along.\n“Did Mom tell you why I have to get this stupid manicure?” Laila asked, turning to Kimberly. “She said my unladylike nails were turning boys like Scott off. That he’d never ask me to the school dance with my hands looking like this.” She held her hands up, fingers fully extended for emphasis. \n“That’s not exactly what I said!” I protested, sheepishly. “I meant–”\nKimberly looked appalled and stared with accusing eyes. I felt awful. Had those obscenely insensitive words really come out of my mouth?\n“Jesus, Dawn, that’s something Mom would say.” \nThat hit me like a loaded weapon. I never wanted to turn into our mother, but dammit, Kimberly was right. I never felt like I fit in or got good enough grades for my mom’s approval, and yet my kid sister looked up to me? \n“You used to bite your nails down past the quick, too. Made Mom absolutely bat shit crazy.”\nAs Kimberly unwrapped the layers of my humiliation, my heart throbbed in agony and I could hardly catch my breath. Just like back then. Tears welled up in my eyes, as I looked at Laila’s face. Her sweet cherubic face, pained with…what was this? \nMy mother indeed would have threatened me with some shame, but what would I do? “I think Laila is just feeling insecure, that’s all.”\n“Oh? And tell me, big sister, how exactly is letting your own daughter feel insecure okay?”\nLaila looked back at me with an overwhelming mixture of hope, a prayer for validation and then I knew what the nail biting was about: Anxiety. If I let the light in her eyes go out at this moment, there was no guarantee it would ever come back. Any reasonable person could tell the light of her spirit shone more radiantly than any diamond, than any chandelier. Kimberly’s question was so dead on, I couldn’t defend against it. It wasn’t okay. It wasn’t okay for a kid to feel insecure, unsafe, or so misunderstood by her own mother.\nI swallowed hard, since it was my pride going down my throat. I couldn’t be failing this badly at motherhood. “If Laila can’t get a manicure, then none of us are getting our nails done today. Let’s go for ice cream instead.”\n“And what will ice cream do?” Kimberly demanded.\n“It’s not the ice cream, right?” I said. “We can talk. Laila, honey, I want to know what’s going on inside your head.”\n“I don’t even know where to start, Mom, and it’s not like you’d understand. It’s not a big deal, okay?” Her tears flowed freely from eyes as red as sirens.\nI heard my mother’s voice in my head, whipping me with comparison-itis. I’d never measure up, that even graduating summa cum laude couldn’t outshine marriage. I felt her eyes stare through me like I wasn’t there, and a surge of courage coursed through me. I had the mettle to see myself in my daughter and not hightail it outta there. The state of her nails was an SOS. Whether anxiety was hereditary or learned, I had to do everything in my power to rescue my daughter. That started with acknowledging her inner world as real. \n“Does the tightness in your chest feel like a python is squeezing the breath out of you?” I asked.\nLaila nodded; maybe I did get it. A little more light infused her eyes, prompting me to go on.\n“And you wish sometimes it was an actual snake, so there was proof for people to see, and they could stop saying it’s all in your head?”\nWe held our breath for a second, then she threw her arms around me and buried her face against my neck.\n“Honey,” I said, rubbing her back, “you’re not invisible. I see you. You’re obviously hurting inside, so you’re hurting yourself, and I don’t know why. I love you with everything in me, and I promise you’re not in trouble.” As my voice broke, my heart broke with it. Through those cracks, I felt a more confident and empathetic me emerge. “We have a lot in common, you and I. We have a lot to learn together.”\n“Can we please just go?” Laila begged as her sobs subsided.\nI looked toward Kimberly, no longer as a nuisance tag-along, but as a source of gentle but firm wisdom. “Come with us?”\nShe nodded. We grabbed our jackets and went to the park for ice cream. I’d come back to square one on multiple levels: as a mother, a sister, a daughter, and of equal importance, as myself. A new Dawn, so to speak. We began a much-needed conversation about our right to take up space in this world and be seen. I thought back to the distracted driver on the highway that nearly caused an accident, and realized that not seeing or validating my daughter could have led to a far worse tragedy. One that I would never recover from. All the glittering diamonds paled in comparison to the light in Laila’s eyes." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Storm Chaser\n\nGenre: american\n\nWord Count: 1656\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about a character who risks their life to take a photo." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "It was forecasted to be a simple thunderstorm. And even a simple thunderstorm would do after the uneventful season we’ve had. As a meteorology student in Indiana, it has been perfectly - boring. We get the regular blizzard left over from Chicago and standard rain showers, but it’s not like we get slammed with a nasty Nor’easter or live right in the smack dab middle of Tornado Alley. That’s not to say that there’s no severe weather, no tornado or flash flood that occasionally rips through here, because of course there is. But in the three years I’ve so far been in my atmospheric sciences graduate program, not much beyond pea-sized hail has happened. Even Professor Jansen’s field course on storm chasing has been fairly irrelevant – though he is the coolest professor in the department so I probably would have taken the class anyway even if there isn’t much to chase now. But when we saw the tiny blip of a thunderstorm on our radar, as measly as it was, Professor Jansen decided it was time to take us on a road trip. \n “Don’t expect too much to happen,” he warned us as we rode in the department’s storm chasing Chevy Tahoe. Its antennae have been fairly quiet, barely even swaying in the mostly calm wind, and the windshield wipers only occasionally squeak against the glass in the slow rain. “This area is only under a Severe Thunderstorm Watch, but keep track of the updates closely – these things can get iffy in a matter of minutes.” I think he said it only out of responsible obligation, not that he actually believed it as the virtually nonexistent storm seemed to lighten up even more. \n My friends and cohort-mates, Jasper and Ally, from the backseat sporadically track the radar and notifications issued by the National Weather Service as we roll along the highway. I’m in the passenger’s seat, essentially doing nothing besides staring out the window, just keeping a notepad on my lap in case anything noteworthy should come up but really I’m doodling on it. I’m also in charge of the camera, and I snap one quick photo of the dark blue cumulonimbus clouds before they dissolve away into the plain grey sky – nothing more to see here. I watch the colors of the sky stretch on for miles and miles of grey, in some places starting to break into light blue again, and I start to wonder when Professor Jansen will get just as bored as us and turn back around towards campus. Even Jasper who doesn’t get bored from watching grass grow has zoned out from watching the radar. \n I turn back to the window where, wow surprisingly, the sky is the same drab grey. Under the stratosphere shade, the fresh spring grass has a nice bright contrast to the mist hanging a few inches above the ground, and the amber fields of Indiana harvest ruffle in the wind that seems to have picked up a little. I glance back up at the sky and notice some heavier clouds have started churning angrily. At the same time, a beep interrupts the Top 40 station on the radio and chimes on Ally’s tablet.\n “The National Weather Service has issued a Tornado Watch for the counties of…” the static-y voice announces and Ally paraphrases as much for us.\n “Looks like there’s some rotation picking up just east of here,” she shows us the velocity radar. “Doesn’t look too substantial yet, but there is a slight hook in the clouds.”\n “Could be worth a look,” Professor Jansen says, taking the next exit ramp eastbound. “Got a weather balloon ready?”\n “Got it,” Jasper confirms as we set on the new course, Ally giving directions. \n As we drive further into the storm, it becomes clear the system had intensified – rain slams down, occasionally turning into hail plinking against the car with a metallic denting sound; the wind whips up, making trees bend at weird angles and at times, I can feel it push the car slightly off-lane. The sky is now a strange oil paint mix of blue, green, and black, and it becomes almost as dark as dusk. \n “Ally, how’s that rotation looking?” Professor Jansen asks.\n “Velocity tracker has it starting to spin up but then eventually settling down. No new updates from the Weather Service.”\n “We can keep going then.”\n We are seemingly in the middle of nowhere when the next alert comes in.\n “Tornado Warning,” Jasper announces. “Radar-indicated tornado moving east just below I-294. Looks like it’s coming right toward us within 15 miles.”\n “Any funnel cloud confirmed?”\n “Not yet.”\n “Alright, let’s go, but stay a safe distance away. What’s its path looking like?”\n With Jasper planning out the route, we drive closer to the area the tornado was suspected. At first, it seems like there’s nothing going on – but they don’t call it the calm before the storm for no reason. As we get closer to its trajectory, hail starts pelting the car – at some point, I wonder if it’s going to break the windshield. The wind picks up like never before, causing Professor Jansen to pull off to the side of the road.\n “Trajectory indicates we should see the tornado coming up in about six minutes,” Jasper says. His voice is full of anticipation – part excitement, part anxiety – and he leans forward to look through the window. “Whoa, look at those clouds.”\n The clouds now look like thick black smoke, billowing and swirling in dense layers. \n And then.\n It appears.\n A cone of clouds dipping from the sky rips through the farmlands, kicking up a haze of dust and debris, raging its way across the horizon. Even from this distance, we can hear its low rumble. It’s not some skinny little funnel cloud spinning tight pirouettes; it’s a monster of a tornado, whirling around slowly but heavily.\n All of us are speechless, dropped-jaw and wide-eyed. My heart stops and then races up to the speed of the wind as I roll down the window and snap a few shots.\n “Look at that, it’s huge!” Ally cries.\n “Send the confirmation to the National Weather Service: tornado spotted,” Professor Jansen instructs. “Get the word out for people to take shelter now. Jasper, get the weather balloon out.” \n “I’m going to go take a couple more photos,” I say, jumping out of the car. \n “Be careful, Kevin. It’s still far away now but these things can change on the edge of a dime.”\n I cut across the field, the wind pushing and pulling at me. Out here, I feel the full force of the storm: the rain and hail mix slashes at my face; debris flies around me and makes me duck tree branches, chips of wood, and scraps of metal; and the wind nearly picks me up. Struggling to hold the camera, I shoot the tornado from each angle I can get. I feel so incredibly exhilarated, the thrill and adrenaline of standing in the way of something of such power and force, just far enough on the edge to still escape safely. At some point, Jasper’s released weather balloon zips by before it gets sucked into the vortex, and I realize that edge has kept up dangerously close. \n “Kevin, get back here!” Professor Jansen calls to me. “The wind changed direction – it’s heading right toward you!”\n But I am frozen in my place, stunned and unable to pry my eyes away from the twister. From this close, I can see the strips of shredded clouds building its shape, the pieces of debris flying in and out of the funnel, and I realize – it’s beautiful. \n “KEVIN!” the professor and my cohort-mates scream for me to come back.\n The tornado is almost upon me now. My feet barely touch the ground, and the camera nearly flies out of my hands, but there is no way I’m missing this shot now. The twister fills up the entirety of the camera lens, and I snap one shot after the other. \n “Come back! Hurry, Kevin!”\n “Kevin, I swear, if you get yourself killed, I’m flunking you!”\n Just one more shot, I promise, the tornado turning to its good side and I’m filled with awe, snapping one more shot. Then I realize its good side is the side barreling straight into me. I always thought the howling train sound was just a cliché, but hearing it for myself now, I realize it’s true as my ears pop and realize I can’t hear myself even think: “RUN!”\n So I run as fast as my feet will take me – which I realize is pretty futile with 300 mph behind me. Tornado sirens wail in the distance. At one moment, I’m knocked off my feet and trip into a ditch, realizing I have no time to get out anymore. So instead I pull my arms over my head protectively, hunch down, and pray for the best. \n Just one more shot, I plead. Let me get one more shot to accomplish something in my life. Finish grad school. Get married. Have kids. Move out of the Midwest. Something more than this.\n I brace myself for impact, when at the last minute, the air shifts and gets calmer again. Daring to peek my head out, I see that the tornado has veered off course, making a U-turn in the middle of the field and going in the opposite direction, and I breathe a huge sigh of relief. Ally, Jasper, and Professor Jansen run out of the Tahoe and pull me out of the ditch, exclaiming how glad they are that I’m alright.\n Brushing the mud off me, I look back where the tornado has started dissipating along the horizon, returning to the sky. I take one last photo of the torn-up path through the grass left in its wake, and follow them back to the car." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Bakari...?\n\nGenre: african-american\n\nWord Count: 2979\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about someone stuck in an endless cycle who finally manages to break free." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "**TRIGGER WARNING, this story contains some profanity and sexual content.*\n“BAKARI…?”\n Bakari awoke and rolled over to see the woman he met at the gym last week lying next to him still asleep. “Another night of pleasure.,” he said to himself. Smiling and shaking his head at the same time, he nudged the woman whose name he couldn’t remember to get up and leave. After all he had an early brunch date with Zianne, the love of his life, in an hour. The woman rolled over trying to snuggle with him and he pushed her away. She opened her eyes sleepily and smiling, and said, “Good morning handsome.” Bakari said, “Good morning and goodbye”, as he jumped up grabbing her up with him while still grabbing her belongings. The woman confused asked what the issue was, and he said, “Nothing. Last night was last night.” She stood there stunned and a bit hurt but knew that it would be easier to just leave. As he shoved her out the door, he gave her a quick kiss on the cheek as to say thank you then slammed the door. He ran to the bathroom to jump in the shower to get ready for his date with Zianne. Bakari was a handsome fellow. He stood about 6’2, had the body of a well sculpted athlete and the smooth skin of rich cocoa. He knew he was fine. He also knew he had what he thought every woman desired which was wealth. He started his software company at age 23. He had been a computer genius since age 6. He managed to take a few certifications, got an associate degree in business, and launched his own software engineering company focusing on AI and other tech ventures. Now at 40 years old, and worth 25 billion dollars, he felt like he had it all. He even had a beautiful girlfriend that was a famous model named Zianne Doman. After all, he spent a few hundred thousand dollars fixing her body to become one. After a few moments of admiring himself in the mirror, he grabbed his phone and called Zianne via facetime. She answered annoyingly, “Hey babe, are you even ready yet? Or are you still wiping the essence of some skank you met off you?” Bakari sighed, and said, “I’ll be there in 20 mins.,” evading her second question. On his way to his car, he called Yeni, she was his assistant. “I’m going to run by the office, and I need you to be ready for me when I get there.,” he said. Yeni obliged. She knew that when he called her randomly on his day off that he wanted his special treatment. Yeni, became his assistant through an ex-boyfriend of hers. She had only been in the states for a year, studying abroad away from her country of Thailand. Within the first week of working for Bakari, they slept together in his office. Now this had become a regular act, especially when he had trouble in paradise which was regularly. \n Zianne waited at the restaurant for Bakari to arrive, late as usual. She snapped a few pictures of herself and rolled her eyes at everyone that looked like they needed a makeover. She was wearing a teal bodycon dress, tan wedges, and a matching tan clutch and she looked fabulous. She had her hair styled in a braided ponytail using extensions with hints of teal highlights in it. She knew that Bakari would melt in her arms when he saw her because it was his favorite color and she just looked drop dead gorgeous. Zianne believed that beauty is what mattered and if you got to be redesigned with a few nips and tucks then it is what it is. She met Bakari at one of his tech conventions. She was working for a vendor, setting up the different kiosks when they bumped into each other. He was as bit on the nerdy side but F.I.N.E.! She had accidentally dropped her cupcake on his shirt as they collided. She apologized profusely and when she saw that it was billionaire Bakari Franklin, she was humiliated. She burst into tears and ran away, then tripping and falling to the ground. He ran over and helped her up and told her that it was ok. It was just a shirt. She loved how sweet he was. He had no edge, no thug in him at all. Just a sweet guy. That was 6 years ago. Now, they were the “it couple” for the world to see. It was like she made him look like a tough guy that had all the swag, and he made her feel and look like the luckiest woman alive, but there was no love. Bakari loved the attention he got from women. He had always been the nerdy frail kid. He decided to take on martial arts and fitness to feel healthier and stronger. He wanted a woman to love him for his mind. But when he gained generational wealth and beefed up, the women fell in his lap. So, yea, he slept around. He never really felt anything from these women, just living in the moment of sexual pleasure. Zianne had a way of guilt tripping him. She knew he had a soft spot for being loved and to feel it. So, she sold it to him by telling him how much she “loved” the way he made her feel special. She loved, how he made sure she stayed beautiful, and how he helped a poor little homely looking southern girl turn into a supermodel. She also knew that he loved his women of all shapes and sizes and walks of life. She didn’t care because now she had him wrapped around her finger. All she had to do was cry and tell him that he didn’t love her, and she wasn’t beautiful enough for him. He’d feel guilty, buy her something, take her on a nice vacation, or just come to her beckoning call, and all was well.\n On his way to meet Zianne, Bakari stopped by his office. Yeni was waiting for him on his sofa, in the nude. He smiled at her, kissed her cheek, and said, “You look like you want to have sex. I just wanted a suck.” Yeni, felt a bit disappointed but she proceeded. When he climaxed, he gave her two Kleenex and said to be sure to have his financial statements ready for review on Monday. Then he left her to clean up after herself. He pulled up to the restaurant about 10 minutes late. Zianne was already posing for the hidden paparazzi and putting on the show she usually does. He walked up to her and gave her a big hug; told her she looked amazing and kissed her cheek. Zianne snapped a selfie of the act. She then turned to him and said, “So who were you with last night? I called you and you went straight to voicemail. I needed you. I couldn’t find my favorite bikini to pack for my shoot in Barbados. You know this shoot is important to me. I guess that skank was more important to you.” She stared back at him teary eyed, choking back a sob. “You know you are important to me Zianne.,” said Bakari, pleadingly. “I just got caught up at work. It won’t happen again.” “It better not! Because that means you don’t love me the way I love you.,” Zianne said, as she looked away from him. Bakari stared at her for a moment and ordered his drink. He just felt like he failed her as her man because deep down he wasn’t sure if he did love her or if she loved him. Suddenly his phone rings and its Yeni. She says that a start-up tech company reached out wanted to meet to discuss a merger. They wanted to fly him in first thing Monday for a meeting. As he walked towards the restrooms to be able to hear what Yeni was saying he sees a beautiful young woman leaving the ladies room and they lock eyes. “Yeni, tell them to send me the itinerary and I’ll be there. I need to call you back.” Bakari stops the young lady and introduces himself. She tells him her name is Coral Graham. Coral was short but thick, curvy and had an ass that he could mount. Coral new exactly who he was. He grabbed her hand, kissed her cheek, and stroked her inner thigh while using his two middle fingers to tickle her fancy. He guided her back to the one stall ladies’ room, locked the door, and had his way with her as she allowed whole heartedly. When they finished, he walked out of the restroom back to his table and took a seat without even saying goodbye to her. Zianne was chatting it up with a few fans and taking selfies when she spotted him. He tried to talk to her about his possible new business venture when Coral walked up behind her and said, “Hey Bitch.” Zianne turned and started screaming, “OMG, OMG, Coral girl when did you get here?” Coral glanced over at Bakari and said, “This morning. I wanted to surprise you.” “Oh babe, this is my homegirl Coral from back home in Hernando, MS. I invited her to my shoot in Barbados we are going to turn up!”, said Zianne. “Coral, I thought you weren’t coming until the weekend. This whole week is going to be LIT!” Bakari told Zianne that he was leaving for a business trip first thing Monday morning. Zianne said, “OK.”, nonchalantly and grabbed Coral by her hand, whisking her away to meet some of her celebrity friends.\n Bakari boarded the early business flight to Utah bright an early Monday morning. He could have taken a private flight but, he preferred to fly business to meet people. Women, specifically. He found his seat by the window and opened his laptop. A few moments later a woman looking a bit flustered and frustrated came and took the seat next to him. She looked over at him and said hi through the most beautiful and warming smile. “Good morning, gorgeous.,” he said. Trying to smile just as warming as she did. She never looked his way again. Instead, she took out a planner and started jotting things down. Feeling a bit awkward and ignored he tried to strike up a conversation. “So, where are you flying too?”, he asked. She stared at him and said, “What kind of questions is that? Everyone on this plane is flying to Salt Lake City, Utah from Dallas, TX.” She continued to write. He introduced himself and tried a different approach after feeling his ego bruised. She gave in sighing and said her name was Amora Adams. Amora realized that this guy wasn’t going to shut up for the next 3 hours, so she engaged in conversation. Bakari was a bit intrigued by her curtness and mysterious character. “This woman is sitting next to one of the wealthiest black businessmen in the USA and she is giving me the cold shoulder. Oh, he was already in and ready to play at her game.”, he thought. They chatted up on current events and other issues. Bakari filled her in on everything about himself and what he does, etc. Amora just listened nodded and kept writing in her planner. She had to admit he was handsome and charming, but nothing really stood out to her about him that impressed her. He was so… typical. Once they landed and everyone piled into the terminal, Amora dashed away waving goodbye and yelling nice to have met you. She dashed away so fast she didn’t realize she dropped her planner. Bakari tried to catch up to her as he wanted to leave her his business card and possibly get her number but, she was gone. He saw her drop her planner and rushed over to grab it hoping it held some means of how to contact this mysterious woman. He opened the planner only to realize it was a journal. One thing caught his eye. It was one page with only his name and summary written in it. The summary read, “Bakari…? I just met this handsome, extremely wealthy man, and all he has to offer is himself. He is so far detached from what being a real man is, that he is gabbing my ear off on superficial things about himself. He never once asked what I did for a living or about anything I liked, or was interested in. He only cares about if I am interested in him. I literally watched this man go sneak into the restroom a few days ago and screw his model girlfriend’s best friend then act like nothing ever happened while I was grabbing some food on my lunch break. What a narcissistic asshole. I could never love a man that doesn’t even know how to truly love himself. Why is he even with that supermodel? Hell, I bet he doesn’t even know why. Look at him. Just chatting my damn ear off. This man is so lonely it is pathetic, and he doesn’t even realize it. That is why he treats women like shit. Because deep down, he knows he ain’t shit. So much potential and not enough self-awareness. To much ego and no class. A waste of a good black man…” Those words stung Bakari’s soul to the core. “Fucking bitch.”, he thought. He sat that reading that summary repeatedly until he was gripping the journal so hard that he tore some of the pages. He was so angry and broken that he didn’t even feel the hot tears roll down his cheeks. He sat down in the terminal thinking, why did this woman whom he just met feel so much disgrace about him? Was she right? The only thing he could remember about her was her banging body, natural hair, and warm smile. She was so comfortable in her skin. His phone vibrating in his pocket snapped him out of his trance. It was Yeni. She told him that the meeting was cancelled. They were no longer interested. Apparently, he had missed the meeting sitting at the terminal in deep thought. This broke him even more. He hung up the phone with Yeni only to get a call from Zianne. “Sup.” he answered. “SO, YOU”RE FUCKING MY FRIEND NOW?”, she screamed through the phone. “Papparazi got you on camera leaving the ladies room and Coral coming out shortly behind you, so what you got to say now, Bakari?” “Zianne, it is over between us. That is all I can and need to say.”, he said coldly. He hung up the phone and went and booked another flight back to Dallas. \n A few months passed and things were slowly getting back to normal for Bakari. He had managed to get through all the media of him and Zianne’s breakup, the rumors, and truths of why they called it quits, and finally ignored Zianne’s over dramatic meltdown of how she loved him sooooo much and he never cared about her. Once she realized he wasn’t swooning over her emotions, she quickly moved on to the next. He saw her on the cover of some magazine with the son of some international actor, nothing he really cared to find more information on. One morning, he decided to stop by this French coffee shop for a latte and to have a mental moment when he spotted Amora sitting in a booth by herself. He still had her journal. “Hey you.” He said smiling. She turned looked him dead in the eyes, smiled and said, “Hey Bakari.” Her smile lit up the room, but Bakari didn’t let her know that he adored it. She invited him to sit with her and they talked. They exchanged numbers and made it a regular meeting. Bakari was in love. This woman was so elegant and classy. He wanted to be the man she said he could be. He was potential. He checked himself and was more aware than ever of his ego. Amora made him see as they grew their friendship. One morning after a few weeks of meeting at their favorite spot he asked her to be his girlfriend. Amora grabbed his hands and kissed his cheek. She said, “Bakari I am your girlfriend. Just not how you perceive it. I can never be her. I love you as a friend and nothing more.” He was shocked. He told her that he wasn’t the man he used to be. He stopped the endless cycle of lust and sleeping with women, superficial standards of what he wanted in a woman, and how much he truly loved her. “Amora looked into his eyes and said, “You are not in love with me Bakari. But you have found yourself. You are going to meet the woman of your dreams and you will be ready. But I am not her.” Amora let go of his hands and reached into her handbag handing him her business card for the first time. It read, Amora Adams, PsyD. Specializing in love, relationships, and marriage counseling. Bakari was flabbergasted. He looked at the card for bit and then looked up to her and smiled. “You know what Amora. I am not even upset.”, said Bakari. He reached inside his blazer and placed the journal on the table. “You picked me apart and helped me break free from destroying myself. I will always appreciate you for that.” He gave her a hug, kissed her cheek, paid the tab, and walked away with humbled love for his new being and ready to be the king for his future queen, whomever she may be." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: Louisville Slugger\n\nGenre: african-american\n\nWord Count: 2989\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about someone finding a treasure in an unexpected place." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I got the call when I was at the office. My wife Lachoncy told me about my grandfather Germaine Butler passing away at his nursing home while watching his shows. At ninety four, he lived a long life with six children, thirty some grandchildren and a dozen great-grandchildren including Corey, my seven year old son. \nHis daughter Allison was the only survivor of grandpa’s brood. She called me later that evening.\n“Keyton, you gotta be the executor of his estate.” She told me.\n“Why me?” I asked, cradling my phone between my chin and shoulder as I scooped out my dinner from the pot on the stove. \n“On account y’all are the lawyer.” She huffed. A retired school teacher, Aunt Allison was always huffed when one of us said something she considered stupid. I was a lawyer. First in my class and now a partner in a very successful law firm of Dutton, Huxley and Butler. I was proud of being the only African American partner in the firm. \nThis was part of being a lawyer that I did not care for since working pro bono for the family was not always the best use of my time. But I loved Grandpa Germaine. When I was a kid, he always made it a point to come to my little league games. Even though I had blazing speed when I got on base, getting on base was challenging for me since I was not a very proficient hitter. In high school, I tried football and basketball where being black was supposed to give me an advantage, but that’s now how it worked for me. \nAs it turned out my grades got me a scholarship to law school and the rest was history. I met Lachoncy Whitaker in my junior year and knew the first time I laid eyes on her, I knew she would be the mother of my children. I know that sounds like hype, but deep in my heart, I knew she was the one. \n“So Keyton, how’s things?” Grandpa Germaine would be sitting in his favorite chair at the facility when I got there. I would visit him every Friday night. I would stay for Bingo and help him with his card since his eyesight was fading. \n“I am fine, grandpa.” I would nod as I helped him out of his chair. From there, he would take my arm to steady himself as we walked into the cafeteria where they had set up the Bingo apparatus.\nAfter his funeral service, which was short and only a few folks attended, I drove over to his old house that we rented out to some tenants. I did not know what to do with the place, but I knew there was the attic where he had stored a lot of boxes he and Grandma Bertha had put their stuff. Old stuff. Stuff from when they were parents of six young children. Back then it was difficult for black folks to move into white neighborhoods, but Grandpa Germaine managed to do just that. Whenever I asked my aunts and uncles when they were all still alive, how he managed to break the color barrier as it was known, none of them really knew. Things just happened for Grandpa Germaine and no one really knew how. \nMrs. Timmons greeted me on the closed porch in the front of the two story home. She had lived there for twelve years with her six cats and her son who had some birth defect that restricted his thinking. I never used the term mentally retarded, because it hurt her feelings. She always felt she had something to do with it. \n“So sorry to hear about your grandfather.” She hugged me.\n“It was his time. The good Lord called him home.” I shrugged.\n“Still, he was a decent, kind man.” She put her arms by her side.\n“I am going to clean out the attic.” I told her as I opened the door.\n“All those boxes.” She shook her head.\n“I am bringing a U-haul later on.” I explained.\nThe house had been refurbished into two apartment units from the original open floor design. The staircase served as the physical divider to the two apartment units. I climbed the stairs and marched to the pull down ladder.\nOnce scaling the wobbly ladder, I stood in the attic which seemed to have ghosts leaking out of the shadows since light was not natural up here. Grandma had come up here just before she passed away from cancer to arrange her things in a neat row of boxes. Picking up one of the boxes, I did not want to open it, because she had taken such care to put her things just so. \nThe other side of the attic were Grandpa Germaine’s things. There was no arrangement or attempt to organize his belongings. His things were scattered about in a disorganized heap. I could almost hear him chuckle as I attempted to put things into neater piles, but found the task daunting. \nI moved a box on a makeshift shelf and something rolled off and fell to the floor with a clatter. When I checked what had rolled off the shelf, I saw a baseball bat lying near my feet. \nI picked up the bat. It felt good in my hands as I struck the pose of a batter stepping up to home plate. Holding the bat felt like shaking hands with one of the old Yankees from Murder’s Row that included Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. Weighing just forty ounces, the Louisville Slugger, made of maplewood, felt like a mighty weapon in the hands of a god. I took a swing. So smooth, I wondered where this piece of fine art had been when I tried my hand at playing the game.\nIn history class, I learned that Branch Rickey had signed Jackie Robinson to a contract with the Brooklyn Dodgers. He would become the African American to play in the major leagues, breaking the color bar. His struggle to break such a long held tradition made him one of my true boyhood heroes. \nI took a few more healthy swings of the Louisville Slugger before putting it into the pile with the rest of the things. \nAfter dinner, I drove Corey to his little league game. His coach Henry Wilcox told me that Corey had a lot of potential. I made sure to practice with him at least twice a week, but the firm was taking up a lot of my time lately.\n“Are you gonna get a hit?” Grandpa would call to me as he hung onto the fence before I walked to the plate.\n“I will do my best, grandpa.” I winked at him, but watched three fastballs whiz by me before the umpire called, “Strike three.” \n“You’ll get them next time.” He smiled as I slunk back to the dugout feeling ashamed and disappointed with my futile attempt. \n“Dad, what was Grandpa Germaine like?” He asked.\n“He served in the war.” I answered.\n“What war?” \n“World War Two.” I held up two fingers as we waited at a stop light.\n“He was a soldier?” \n“He was a hero according to Grandma Bertha.” I nodded.\n“He was?” \n“According to her, yes.” I smiled.\n“I’m gonna get a hit for him tonight.” Corey said with enthusiasm. \n“You do that.” I encouraged him. \nMy Uncle Donald told me that Germaine was given a medal after the Battle of the Bulge. Grandma Bertha had the medal put in a shadow box and hung it in the front room so everyone could see the medal they gave him for his bravery. \nAs a boy, I remember how the whole Butler family got together for Sunday dinner after spending a very long hour at church. Those were very happy times for me and I would listen to all the family gossip and who was doing what.\n“They shot him in Nashville.” Aunt Allison was nearly in tears as she spoke.\n“Who?” My mother asked as she poured the gravy over her mashed potatoes.\n“Reverend King.” Auntie Allison sniffed.\n“That man was such a good man. He done a lot of good for us Negroes.” Grandpa Germaine added. \nWe were quiet during that dinner and I felt the weight push down on my head and shoulders.\n“Such a shame.” Grandma Bertha shook her head. \n“Where on earth did you get this?” Roberto Sanchez asked when I laid the bat on the counter of his pawn shop.\n“It belonged to my grandpa.” I answered, “Or at least I found it in his attic.” \n“This is a bat a professional player would use.” Roberto picked up the bat and swung it a few times, “Man, this is a classic.” \n“How much?” I asked as my eyes studied Roberto who was handling the Louisville Slugger, “Maple is the finest wood for hitting the ball.” \n“Really.” I whistled.\n“The manufacturer only made a limited number of these bats, making sure that only the professionals got these beauties.” He put the bat on the glass counter near the cash register.\n“How much?” I repeated.\n“I do not have enough money in my drawer to buy this. I won’t cheat you, man.” He shook his head, handing me the bat. “It’s a work of art.” \nAunt Allison was sitting on her porch when I drove into her driveway.\n“Hey there boy.” She stood up and waved as I approached. “Whacha got there?”\n“A Louisville Slugger.” I answered as I stepped up to her porch. \n“Where dija git it?” She smiled as I handed her the bat.\n“In Grandpa’s attic.” I watched her run her hands over the smooth surface of the dark wood.\nHer smile disappeared. “Some things are better off where they is.” \nHer response surprised me a bit.\n“He gave it up in 1950 when the Homestead Grays played their last game. He was thirty five back then. I was just an infant who hadn’t started walking then.” She shook her head and then lit a cigarette. “He never did tell me the whole story.” \n“Whole story?” I was perplexed.\n“He never told many folks about them days.” She put her hand on my knee as I sat next to her in the chair. “I know’d what he must have felt back then. My oldest brother Joshua told me some of it.”\n“What did he say?” My interest had been piqued. \n“He said dad was a player for the Homestead Grays back when he got discharged from the Army.” She closed her eyes. “They was in the Negro Leagues on account no Negroes was supposed to play in the major leagues.” \n“Why not?” \n“On account them boys was afraid that a Negro would be a lot better than their best.” She laughed, “Ain’t no such thing. I know a Negor, Henry Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s homerun record back in 1974. It was destined to happen.” \nWe both laughed. \n“But seriously, my pa was a star player with the Grays from Washington D.C. In his short time with them, he hit two hundred homeruns. He wouldda hit more, but after five years, the Negro League was no more.” She sat back and let the rays of the setting sun settle in the deep lines of her skin. “He tried out with the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers, but them boys wanted nothing to do with an aging slugger. He wouldda hit a bunch more if they let him, but it wasn’t to be.” \nI sat there stunned. All of the stories we had told around the table on Sundays when he was alive, I had never heard one word about any of this.\n“I can’t believe he never said a thing.” I shook my head.\n“Wanna go for a drive?” Aunt Allison asked. “I wanna show ya something.” \n“What?” \n“You’ll see when you get there.” She put her hand on my cheek. \n“Alright.” I agreed and we walked to my car.\nShe directed me across the city to a place that looked abandoned. She had me park in what appeared to be a vacant warehouse.\n“This is the place.” Aunt Allison said gleefully.\nOn a crudely hand-painted sign hanging over the door read a single word, “Museum.” \n“Hello Mr. Tyler.” Aunt Allison waved to a man in a dirty flannel shirt and stained overalls.\n“Pleasure to see you, Ali.” He hustled over to us. “I was just about to close up. Ain’t got many visitors today.” He put his finger on the sign in pad, “Looks like just one.” \n“This here is my nephew, Keyton.” She said as her head swiveled around the spacious warehouse.\n“Pleasure to meecha.” He shook my hand.\n“My grandpa just died.” I nodded.\n“You don’t say.” Mr. Tyler sniffed.\n“We laid my poor old father to rest, Germaine Butler.” She said, wiping a single tear from her eye. \n“Germaine is gone?” Tyler appeared hurt. \n“It’s true.” She wiped another tear with her handkerchief. \n“My deepest condolences.” He bowed his head and then took Aunt Allison’s hand. Turning to me after seeing the Louisville Slugger in my hand, “And what do we have here?”\nI handed it to him, “Found this in the attic.” \n“Holy Moses. This was his bat. The one he used for the Grays.” Jerome Tyler whistled. \n“It’s yours. I have no use for it.” I said.\n“Son, words cannot describe how grateful I am to you.” He appeared as if he might shed a few tears as he stood there holding the bat. “Follow me. I have a special place for this.” \nI did as he said. He led me to a small room. The walls were lined with glass cases like the ones in a fancy museum. There were tinny old pictures and names encased along with some baseball memorabilia.\n“Here is my shrine.” He spread his arms, “Everything I have collected from the Homestead Grays of Washington in the Negro Leagues. Most folks don’t pay it much mind, but there are those of us who treasure the memories they give to us.”\n“Negro League?” \n“Sure enough. Most of these players were good enough to play in the bigs, but the color of their skin kept them from suiting up.” He walked to a glass case. I could not believe my eyes. Written on a placard, ‘Germaine 'Jackrabbit’ Butler (1945 to 1950) League Batting Champion 1947.” \n“This was your grandpa.” He opened the case and gently, with the love of a true fan, placed the Louisville Slugger among the display so everyone could see it. “He tried out for some of the teams in 1951, but by then he was too old for most of them.”\n“How old was he?” I asked, admiring the display and running my fingers along the cool glass.\n“I reckon he was about forty years old.“ He scratched his stubbly chin\n“Forty?” I was taken aback for a moment. “That means he was over a hundred years old when he passed away last week. I was told he was ninety.”\n“He come out of Virginia where they don’t keep records on us Colored folks. I reckon he was around a hundred years old.” Jerome smiled.\nI looked at my aunt who shrugged, “No one really knew how old he was and to us, it really didn’t seem to matter.” \nAunt Allison was right. The memory of him I was left with didn’t have an age, he just was.\n“I was told he was the fastest man on the team.” Jerome glanced at Aunt Allison and nodded. \nThere was a picture of him in his Grays uniform, much younger than my memory of him.\nHow I wish I could have seen him in action.\n“Keyton, I have to go gets a few things at the store up yonder.” She pointed, “Y’all can catch bus home if you’d like.” \n“I will do that.” I waved as she walked out.\n“Whadda think?” Jerome said proudly\n“I want to thank you.” I sighed.\n“Weren’t me.” He shrugged.\nI nodded and walked out of the warehouse. I heard a loudspeaker about a block away and as I got closer I could hear what the announcer said, “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another game at Griffith Stadium where the Homestead Grays are taking on the Cleveland Buckeyes in the Negro League World Series. Some of the newer members of the team have just returned from the army such as Germain ‘Jackrabbit’ Butler who will be hitting leadoff.”\nI stood there awestruck. Somehow I had stepped into 1945 without any idea how I had done it.\n“Are you going to stand there like a statue or are you going to buy a ticket to the greatest game you will ever see?” The woman ticket agent asked.\n“I’m gonna buy a ticket.” I pulled my wallet out.\n“Six bucks.” She smiled. I put the money in front of her and grabbed the ticket she held out to me. “Enjoy.” \nI walked into Griffith Park where the Grays were taking batting practice in their distinctive uniforms. The seats were filling up. Everyone was chattering with excitement.\n“Heard that Butler kid is as fast as grease lightning.” I heard one of the spectators reply. \nEveryone got quiet as the Cleveland pitcher finished his warm up pitches and Germaine Butler got settled into the batter’s box waving his Louisville Slugger above his head. The sky was a pale blue as if it had been painted by John Constable. There was a refreshing breeze blowing in from right field. I could see the capitol dome in the distance. \nThe dramatic moment had arrived as the pitcher went into his wind up and threw the ball toward home plate. There was a crack as bat met ball. I cheered with the crowd in this field of dreams I had found myself in." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: STUNT DOG DEMONSTRATION\n\nGenre: american\n\nWord Count: 2928\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about a character who risks their life to take a photo." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I was with Lewis when he gave his remarkable and unexpected demonstration. It was late summer when unrelenting desert heat was spent, giving way to more amicable conditions. That clear, sparkling California morning came with early brightness and the promise of many adventures.\n Monday morning, Lewis chose to confound the evil slave system that inhibits true expression from a free-spirited artist—he called in sick. He used a telephone to call the telephone company, telling them that he was unable to work and maintain the telephone system—an irony that Lewis never appreciated. So, with freedom ensured for a day, he was determined to take some photographs. Not mere photographs, though—images, memorable records of life in a small California town. Lewis was my friend, and I accompanied him on this artistic voyage. I work on Saturday. I take Monday off, which is a simple and convenient arrangement.\n Lewis had a dog. A fine old fellow, delighted to break routine for a few hours and participate in our photographic odyssey. So it was then—Lewis, myself, various cameras, all necessary photographic equipment, and our good companion, Old Red the Pit Bull Terrier. Off we sailed on that fine morning to meet whatever challenges lay ahead.\n It must have taken about half an hour driving along quiet country roads before we reached the little turnout where the mighty Chevrolet Impala would anchor safely, waiting for our return.\nThe old, somewhat battered car was a monument in Lewis's life. Dark blue paint was faded in places, but beneath a shabby overcoat beat the heart of an eight-cylinder champion.\n In the driver's door, a small hole was covered with a band-aid—a permanent reminder that Lewis's expertise with a thirty-eight caliber pistol left room for much improvement.\n We fussed with the equipment for a few minutes and released Red. Before his temporary freedom could begin, Lewis needed to deliver a stern lecture on social responsibility.\n Red grinned amiably, having received directives similar to those in the daily routine for many years. Lewis shaded his eyes, gazed at a distant hill, and considered the prevailing light. Red lifted his leg and pissed happily upon a small sage bush.\n Into the hills we went. Lewis was searching for an unforgettable panorama. With no interest in any grand vision, Red scampered ahead, delighting in his unexpected freedom.\nI believe it was an hour or so before we stopped for a break. We broke crusty French rolls and topped them with thick, roughly cut slices of sharp cheddar cheese. A bottle or two of cool dark beer enhanced our simple snack. There is a quality of stillness in these high desert hills and canyons—perhaps echoes from far-distant times when Indians lived in these lands. We sat for a while in peace, each of us absorbed in our thoughts.\n It was time now to move on. Remembrances of years past now gave way to keen regard for narrow, sandy trails waiting ahead. We reached the crest of a rounded hill. Simultaneously, we stopped, each for our own purpose.\n To my left, the rough sloping ground dropped away steeply to reveal a clearing several hundred yards below. A small truck was parked there with its tailgate down. Somewhere in the distance came rippling sounds of music, chattering voices, and laughter.\n Lewis glanced below, then held his left hand in front of his face, fingers spread in a gesture reminiscent of a traffic cop at a busy intersection.\nHis interest was not in the clearing below but the scene before him. About fifteen yards ahead was a natural gully, perhaps twenty feet deep and several yards wide.\nBeyond that, the terrain continued smoothly with short, dried grasses and a few blackened tree stumps, uneasy reminders of a great fire that swept through these hills a few years ago. A jagged outcropping of blackened sandstone rock rose in the middle of this somber field. It was this stony monument that excited Lewis's interest.\n Our soon-to-be award-winning photographer shrugged the pack from his shoulder. With an unflinching gaze upon the rocky vision ahead, he brought the old Nikon to his eye. He quickly assumed many positions—dropping to one knee, switching to the other, lying flat on his stomach, and then rising on his haunches.\n I had no doubt that a perfect photograph would eventually be recorded if, on this occasion, he had remembered to load a roll of film.\n I looked away from his athletic demonstrations to the truck below. A red shirt and a brown shirt could be seen; little else was revealed at that distance. The redshirt waved several times. I waved back to acknowledge the greeting. It seemed that both shirts were now moving steadily upward in our direction.\n Old Red saw that distant movement heard their music perhaps and decided to investigate the source of the disturbance. I grabbed him by his shoulders, calling Lewis to pass me his lead.\nRed is an amiable fellow who wishes harm upon no living creature except possibly the neighbor's cat across the street. However, given previous encounters with nervous people and enthusiastic Pit Bulls, constraining Red until our two visitors arrived was a favorable course of action.\n Lewis came, lead in hand, then, with a flourish, passed one end through the hand loop and attached the spring snap to Red's collar.\n I stared at the lead that Lewis held. His hand passed through the slipknot that he had just formed. To what purpose, though? There was already a hand loop to hold.\n \"Let me have him,\" I said, \"I'll hold him until you finish shooting.\"\nLewis grinned. \"No problem, watch this. I trained him.\" Red and Lewis walked purposefully to the edge of the gully. Lewis bent down, pulled the loop wide, and slipped his left foot through the noose, pulling the lead tight about his ankle. Red was now secured to Lewis's leg, and sure enough, the dog lay quietly beside his master.\n This unorthodox method of restraint had presumably worked to secure Red on previous occasions, so my vague misgivings were probably unfounded.\n Two figures came slowly into view—a woman in a red shirt and a boy in a brown shirt. The woman was attractive, perhaps in her early forties; the boy was about eleven or twelve. I smiled. She smiled back.\n \"Hope we're not disturbing you.\"\n Her voice was husky, slightly out of breath. Red turned and smiled. In fact, everyone smiled except Lewis, who was immobile with the camera to his eye.\nSo, all pieces are now in play, and the end game is revealed.\n Two hikers, two strangers, and one Pit Bull Terrier. There is one more player to meet in this great drama. I started to reply that my friend would only be a moment or two. As I spoke, the last piece on the board was revealed.\n There was a moment of silence, and then suddenly, a short cry of surprise from the woman as a sizeable gray-white jackrabbit bounded across our path, seemingly to materialize from beneath her feet.\n Red took off like a flame of vengeance after the disappearing rabbit. Lewis's left leg became momentarily horizontal—parallel to the ground like a martial arts expert.\n His shoe flew into the air. Instead of tightening around his leg as intended, the lead was wrenched instantly over his ankle.\n There was shouting, cursing, and flailing limbs.\nLewis disappeared from our sight in a small cloud of dust.\n If only a flash of light or peal of thunder dignified his departure, but the only reminder that he ever set foot in this quiet place was a cheap tennis shoe and a small backpack.\nI stared at the woman for many seconds. Although her mouth was moving, no sound escaped her lips.\n The boy, transfixed with joy and admiration, grinned like an idiot. He was the first to speak. \"Oh, cool, way cool. Did you see that, Mom? Did you see the way he did that? Did you see the dog? I just knew they were stuntmen. That dog was trained, wasn't he?\" I nodded in reply.\n \"Oh yes,\" I said slowly, \"My friend trained him personally. Please excuse me for a moment, though—my pal may need a hand.\" I peered over the edge of the gully. About fifteen feet or so below, partially obscured by dry, stunted desert vegetation, I could see the wreckage of a once-proud, potentially award-winning photographer. I scrambled down to the thorny bushes where Lewis was detained. The boy followed close behind me.\n My friend, now attempting to stand, appeared like an evil, enraged troll covered in dirt and leaves as he coughed and grunted. The kid babbled excitedly, unaffected by that horrifying vision. He extolled many heroic virtues of Lewis's daring leap.\n \"Oh, that was so cool, mister. Will you be doing it again today?\"\n Lewis turned slowly and stared at our enthusiastic visitor for several long seconds. He wiped away the blood from his nose with the back of his hand. He meant to say,\n \"Go get the hell away, kid,\" but, trying to clear his mouth from dirt and grass, it sounded as if he mumbled, \"g' day, Kidde.\"\n The boy grinned hugely.\n \"You're Scottish? Oh, that's too much—my mom was born in Scotland.\n Yeah,\" he continued, \"I gotta go tell her you're a Scottish stuntman.\"\n Up the side of the gully, he scrambled to relay the news to his mother. I thought Lewis was going to cry.\n He took the canteen, rinsed his mouth, and splashed water on his face. He glared at me with fury in his eyes.\n\"You sonofabitch,\" he said, \"you push me over the side, then tell that moron kid I'm a Scottish stuntman? What the fuck is wrong with you?\"\nIt took me a while to explain. It was necessary to repeat various details of the event several times before he could accept that Old Red had committed such an unthinkable act of betrayal.\nI sympathized and told him how glad I was that he was not badly hurt.\nMy innocent remark uncorked a further tirade of indignation.\n \"Hurt! Oh, no, please. Everything's just fuckin' fine,\" he said with heavy sarcasm. \"Hell, my ribs are broken, my nose is busted, my hip is dislocated, my mouth is jammed with sand and shit, and a god damned cactus is sticking out my arse. Oh, fuck, no, everything is just great with me.\n \"How about the camera, then?\"\n He glanced down at his faithful Nikon, swinging from the shoulder strap.\n \"Looks okay, I suppose,\" he said. I handed him the canteen and went to retrieve his shoe. I noticed that the lens mount on his camera was bent, probably beyond salvation.\n The shoe was just a few feet from where Lewis performed his magical disappearing act. He was not alone in his ability to disappear, though.\n There was no sign of our visiting mother and son. Suddenly came the worrying memory of Red, the vanishing Pit Bull. I walked behind as Lewis made his way with some difficulty to the top of the trench. There we stood for a minute or so before he pointed to the brow of the hill.\n Mother red shirt appeared with two boys in tow. There were now two red shirts, for she held the lead that secured our highly trained stunt dog.\nLewis was temporarily distracted by a grand vision of revenge.\nIn his mind's eye, Red and the rabbit were secured with a chain around their testicles suspended above a boiling cauldron of tar. Reality soon replaced his fantasy.\n The merry trio was upon us, contributing much laughing and chatter. After introductions, Mary told us that she had come with her son Larry to finish a school nature observance project. They intended to grill a burger or two when Mary realized neither of them had any means of lighting the coals.\n \"Yeah,\" said Larry, \"we hoped you would have matches or something.\" He continued,\n\"As soon as I saw Mister Lewis with his dog, I thought you guys were from the movies, but when I saw him dive into the bushes, I knew you must be stuntmen.\"\nLewis placed a fatherly hand on the boy's shoulder.\n\"I used to do a lot of training like that, son. But now I just like to keep my hand in. Not stunts for movies, though; my training was for the real thing.\"\n I stared at the re-invented Lewis. I listened as he told tales of bravery and devotion to duty. No longer was he a featureless installation engineer pathetically enslaved to the phone company but Agent Lewis, a fearless operative for a secret branch of the U.S. government.\n Young Larry was lost in admiration, riveted to every word. Mary, with her head tilted slightly in confusion and disbelief, was probably not convinced.\n\"It was a wonderful demonstration,\" she said slowly.\n We chatted for a while, then walked together in pleasant camaraderie down the slope to Mary's pickup. Relaxing for a little time to savor burgers and hot dogs while enjoying the pleasing company was a welcome respite.\n I wanted to provide some exercise for the two cameras that I carried. Of course, Lewis really could not continue, though he protested otherwise. Mary devised a simple solution. She elected to drive the battered Lewis to his house. Vehicles would be exchanged later, and an opportunity perhaps to down a beer or two and commiserate with my old abused friend. Their truck soon found a path leading to the road.\n A cloud of gray dust eventually obscured the vehicle as it prepared to confront civilization again. I was not alone, though.\n Red was to be my companion for the remainder of the day. We were free, no longer squeezed between the thumb and finger of other people's schedules.\n It must have been at least five hours before we returned to Lewis's house. By the doorbell was a piece of paper folded several times and taped to the door—a note telling me that Mary and Larry had gone to dinner with Lewis. There were also instructions to replace the front door key and to please leave Red in the house.\n The small manufacturing company for whom I worked accepted a tendered bid from a government agency.\n This situation required me to work many overtime hours for the first six months of the contract. I saw little of Lewis during that time.\n As the weeks faded into months, Summer's pleasures were soon forgotten as winter suddenly approached. Lewis approached even more suddenly one Monday morning at about six am as I made ready to leave for work. He uncharacteristically refused offers of coffee and toast. No idle insults or chatter told me something was not right. Suddenly, I was overcome by a great foreboding. He was grinning like an idiot, humming a mindless tune. A feeling of sadness and despair threatened to overwhelm me. Obviously, the stress of telephone installation and maintenance had taken its inevitable toll. He was pushed to the edge of a mental breakdown. I put my arm around his shoulder.\n \"I truly am so very sorry, man,\" I said. \n\"Perhaps a week or so, do nothing but rest. The company will manage without you for a while.\" Lewis stared at me for some time.\n \"I truly am so very sorry as well,\" he replied. \"I truly am so very god damned sorry that you are such a deluded asshole.\"\n All was instantly well with the world again. The righteous, obnoxious, indignant, and surly Lewis of old had returned. He paused for a few moments.\n \"Can't seem to reach you anymore, jerk, so I decided to drop by to see you. Tell you that I'm getting married.\"\n\"You can't. I mean, you don't know any women.\"\n I stared in disbelief for several seconds before a coherent conversation could resume. I grabbed his hand and shook it vigorously.\n \"That's fantastic. Congratulations! When's the date? Who's the girl?\"\n Lewis grinned, moving from one foot to the other, giving an impression of embarrassment or guilt. Many seconds elapsed before he continued. \"As a matter of fact, old buddy Mary and I decided to get married.\"\n Mary? I ran through a mental list of Mary's that we had known. No Mary of any marrying potential registered with me.\n He rolled his eyes toward the ceiling, shaking his head.\n \"When was the last time we got together, last time I saw you?\" he asked.\n Unable to recall, I shrugged my shoulders. \n\"Remember that desert hike months ago? Remember when I fell down the embankment? Do you remember Mary?\" Suddenly, the images were recalled.\n \"Oh, yeah, of course I remember. Old Red kicked you into a ditch. That woman and her kid took you home.\" Lewis nodded and sat down.\n \"We've been seeing each other, dating for three or four months now. We both decided to get married. Thought that maybe you would be the best man. Not going to be a big formal thing—just a few friends.\"\n I realized that at least an hour had evaporated in pleasant reminiscing. My friend pushed himself up from the chair and walked towards the door.\n\"Gotta go, buddy.\" Turning back suddenly, he stopped for a few seconds and then said,\n\"How about next Wednesday? You and me both call in sick. We'll go into the desert, take a few photographs.\"\n I nodded. \"Sounds good to me, pal. Meet at your place in the morning, pick up old Red, and head out?\" Lewis smiled slowly.\n \"Give you a call this evening then, bout eight.\"" } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: More to Me\n\nGenre: american\n\nWord Count: 1153\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about a character who risks their life to take a photo." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "“GET INSIDE!” Jack could hear Ben, the chopper pilot, yelling over the incessant whuppa whuppa whuppa of the blades as he leaned out of the opening of the medevac so far he was more out than in, but he had to get the shot. It was his job. As they approached the ground and the dust flew everywhere, a bullet went right through Jack’s hat. The force of the bullet ripped it right off his head. Even so, it didn’t alter his approach to his work. When he was working, he used the camera lens as his eyes and today what he saw through that lens was absolute carnage under a dusty haze, which made it look like a dream. Or, rather, a nightmare. He continued snapping pictures as one man after another was dragged, carried or ran out of the jungle toward the chopper. Soldiers were running backwards shooting their guns, providing cover for the troops who were being carried or were too bloody and disoriented to protect themselves from the gunfire bombarding them as they made their way to the chopper. Jack shot it all as one by one they were loaded into the medevac. Once everyone was in, the pilot pulled the chopper up and flew back to base to the deafening sounds of whuppa whuppa whuppa and missiles whizzing by barely missing them. As they flew over the jungle of Vietnam back to the relative safety of the base, Jack thought to himself how beautiful it looked from far above and how unnecessary this all was. Once landed, the pilot jumped out of the chopper, and in a rage ran around to the other side yanking Jack’s shoulder back to stop him as he was walking toward triage. He could feel a trickle of blood running down his head from where the bullet grazed him. \n\n“Who the hell do you think you are? You arrogant jackass. I personally don’t give a shit if anything happens to you, but I’m the one that’s gonna catch hell if you don’t make it back. You can ride along with me, because I have no choice but when you hang out of the chopper like you just did back there, I can’t make quick movements because you’ll fall out! And that limits how I fly, and I can’t have that. I need to be able to maneuver to avoid incoming fire. I need to focus on getting those boys out of that god-forsaken jungle. If you make that one ounce more difficult for me I will push you out myself, and I won’t come back for you. Do you hear me? This may be a game for you, but it’s life and death for us.” Ben pushed him aside and walked away from him. Jack was shocked and ashamed of himself and realized that what he does here may put someone else in danger. He grew up a little that day. It was 1974 and the war would soon be over but he was only a 22-year-old kid fresh out of journalism school trying to make a name for himself.\n\nFrom that point on, he was aware of everything he did and everyone around him so that he didn’t get in the way or cause any problems. He got amazing pictures of an untenable war that were sent through the AP wire and were picked up in papers all over the world. Those pictures made him the most famous photojournalist of his time. Beautiful, ugly, haunting images of a war nobody understood and fewer and fewer people wanted. \n\nAfter that, he was sent on assignments all over the world. He covered wars, civil unrest, political coups in every far off corner of the globe and drug cartel activity that decimated small border towns, and he risked his life every day to bring the truth to people.\n\nHis coworkers and other correspondents called him a badass, but he didn’t think of himself as particularly brave. The people he was shooting were the brave ones, and he tried to convey that through his photography. \n\nHe had a life filled with risk and danger for over a decade but then he met a woman in one of those war-torn countries and fell in love. He brought her home, married her and they started a family. She never asked him to stop going on assignments but as the years went by and kids got older, the lure of getting that picture that perfectly encapsulated a moment in time began to be less important to him than Davey’s baseball game or Beth’s ballet recital. He decided to leave the dangers of photojournalism behind him, and he opened a photography studio in town.\n\nYou'd think that it would be easy, but it was hard. It was almost harder than dodging bullets in some far off land. After a while though he got used to the quiet and while he missed the adventure and even the danger to a degree, he did enjoy shooting the happy events of people’s lives. And he loved being able to be home with his wife and kids and soon no one remembered, not even himself half the time, that he used to be a badass who hung out of medevac choppers in Vietnam. \n\n*****\n\n“Papa, what are these?” Jake called out to his grandfather from the other room. “I don’t know, Jake. What are you looking at?” replied Jack as he walked toward the back bedroom where his grandson was. Jack was old now and walked with the help of a cane and hadn't taken any pictures of anything other than his family for a long time.\n\n“These pictures. Why do you have all these pictures of protests and soldiers,” asked Jake. As Jack walked into the room, he saw that Jake had taken all the pictures out of the closet and the Pulitzer Prize he had won for his photo series on Vietnam. As he looked at his grandson, who he knew only saw him as an old man who never did anything very exciting, he decided to finally talk about what he did when he was young. \n\n“You know, Jake, I didn't always walk with a cane and need bifocals to see. I was young once, if you can believe it.\" Jake looked at him like he knew it had to be true but wasn't quite sure. \"There’s more to me than the worn out old man you see when you look at me,\" said Jack with a smile and a distant look in his eyes. \"It’s kind of funny that your mom is so protective now that she doesn't even like me using the stove without someone being here but there was a time when I was a little wild, kind of crazy, and went on lots of adventures,” said Jack as his grandson listened intently to story after incredible story." } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: I Don't Know You\n\nGenre: american\n\nWord Count: 2720\n\nPrompt:\n\nCenter your story around a photo that goes viral." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "James had already forgotten about the dust up with Lisa by breakfast the next morning. It was par for the course for his ex, as he’d told all his friends so many times.\nAs usual for breakfast, the dining hall was not crowded. Besides, James was still half asleep without his coffee. So he didn’t notice the uncomfortable looks he got from his few acquaintances who were present. The same went for his walk to French class, where only the few others who were unlucky enough to have an eight o’clock class were out and about.\nIt was only when he arrived at Madame LaSalle’s room and spotted the empty seat next to Laurie, his latest crush, that he realized anything was wrong. He’d been chatting Laurie up amicably for a couple of weeks now and she’d been giving out encouraging responses. But now, for some reason, she looked horribly uncomfortable.\nJames took note as he smiled at her. “Bonjour, mon amie,” he said with his trademark shy grin as he took the chair next to her. “What’s wrong?”\n“I…don’t know you,” Laurie said, and she snatched up her books and moved to a spare chair in the back of the room.\n“What the…” James looked around, trying to figure out what had happened.\n“Dude, this ain’t 1952,” said Brian, who was glaring at him from the next row. “You don’t hit girls. Ever.” He leaned back and cast an eye toward Laurie’s new seat. “I sure as heck don’t, Laurie.”\n“What the hell are you talking about?” James demanded.\n“It’s all over campus, James,” said Julie.\n“As well it should be,” added her boyfriend, Tim. “Shame on you, man.”\n“What’s all over campus?” James looked around again and, now that he was looking for it, he realized everyone was glaring at him.\n“The picture, that’s what,” said Catherine, who was seated behind him. “Of you slapping Lisa.”\n“What?!”\n“It’s posted everywhere,” said a guy from the back row; James didn’t turn around to see who.\n“You’re gonna hear from Judicial anytime now,” said Brian. “They’re gonna eat you for lunch, dude.”\nJames had just enough time to register that comment before Madame LaSalle breezed in. For the moment, at least, the others would have to stop berating him in English anyway. So James was left to stew in his panic over just what they were talking about. ‘Judicial’ was campus shorthand for the Student Conduct Judicial Committee. No one needed to explain to James what happened when a student was called before them; it invariably meant the case had already gone too far for the student to have any hope at beating the rap.\nIt didn’t take long for him to put the pieces together. Last night at the dance planning committee meeting, he’d remembered hearing a shutter click while Lisa was screaming at him. He could only guess exactly which moment had been captured, but that hardly mattered. At least the other committee members knew the truth, but in the horrible forty-five minutes he had no choice but to spend right where he was, that was of no consolation.\nJust what did “posted everywhere” really mean?\nWhen class was over and James was allowed to slink out of the room with only a few more dirty looks, he saw what it meant. Every bulletin board in the humanities building, every public notice post outside, every window that ever had any sort of event announcement taped to it…there was James, a gleam of utter contempt in his eye, grabbing Lisa’s arm tightly while she looked just as scared as he did angry, almost like she expected him to eat her alive. Every copy had the same message scrawled beneath the image in handwriting he didn’t recognize: “Are you going to tolerate this sort of treatment of women on our campus? Tell James this is not OK!”\nJames wasn’t thinking straight at all now. He couldn’t be sure just how many more dirty looks he was getting, for now he made a point of not making eye contact with anyone as he wandered around campus trying to see just how widespread the damage was. He didn’t know when he started tearing the flyers down, but at some point he realized he had a fistful of them. It seemed but a drop in the bucket, but it was the only thing that helped even a little bit.\nHis world only came back into focus when he felt his phone buzzing in his pocket. Terrified that it might be a summons to Judicial, James pulled the phone out. It was Allie, the chair of the dance planning committee. At least she knew what had really happened…didn’t she?\nJames was taking no chances on that. In lieu of a hello, he burst straight into a defensive spiel. “Allie, I didn’t hit her! You saw what really happened, didn’t you?”\n“James, yes, of course I did! Relax, I know you didn’t do it!”\n“Relax?! Whoever did this has the whole campus thinking I hit Lisa or worse!”\n“Not if they know Lisa, they don’t, but look, I get it! I’m sorry I told you to relax. You’re right, I wouldn’t be able to relax either. But listen, I’ve already called Dean Prosziewicz and she’s got people going around campus collecting the flyers. You haven’t taken any down yourself, have you?”\nJames looked at the clutch of crumpled flyers in his hand. “I’m afraid I have, a few.”\n“Yeah, okay, I would’ve too, I’m sure. Listen, do you remember where you got them?”\n“Some of ‘em,” James lied.\n“Make a list. Have it ready when Dean Prosziewicz calls you. That’ll probably be as soon as her office has the other flyers.”\n“Wonderful. I don’t suppose she knows who took the picture?”\n“Not yet, but I talked to her about that too. We’ll find out.”\n“How?”\n“Better if you don’t know by now. Look, I know this sucks for you, but just try to lay low for the moment. Or you’re welcome to come to my room if you’d like some company.”\n“Could I? Please?”\n“I’ve just said so, didn’t I? I have class at ten, but you’re welcome to stay here.”\n“Thanks. I’ll be right over!”\nAs he slipped the phone back into his pocket, James realized now he’d have to figure out for real where he’d snatched the flyers from. That wasn’t as hard to do as he’d thought at first; he just had to retrace his steps as best he could remember, and take note of which places he passed still had a copy of the flyer and which didn’t. On a couple of them, he was even able to match the remaining fragment taped to the windows to the missing pieces of the flyers he'd grabbed.\nOne by one he wrote down the locations on the ones he knew for sure, and took his best guess on the others. On each stop he focused laser-like on his sleuthing and writing down his findings, ignoring the comments that greeted him. “James, you scum!” “Rape anyone yet today, Jimmy?” “I see you around my girlfriend, you die, dude!” By the time he shuffled off to Allie’s dorm, thanking his lucky stars that it was a coed dorm and he wouldn’t be raising further suspicions, he felt almost inoculated against the abuse. Almost.\nA couple of Allie’s floormates gave him the evil eye as he knocked on her door. But she made a point of greeting him with a hug and an “I’m so sorry about all this, James!” She cast a dirty look at her nosy friends and ushered him into her room. “Believe me, there’s going to be plenty of eating crow over this when it’s all over!”\n“I wish I could believe that,” James said, handing her the flyers. “What did Churchill say about a lie getting halfway around the world before the truth can put its boots on?”\nAllie gave him a sympathetic nod. “But everyone loves thinking they’re the one person who wasn’t fooled, you know? And everyone who was in the room last night knows what really happened.”\n“One of them took the picture, though.”\n“About that…” Allie began. She was interrupted by her phone, which she picked up from her desk. “It’s Dean Prosziewicz,” she said. She tapped the answer icon. “Hello? That’s great, and I’ve got the other ones he took down himself. Yes, he’s here. Oh, good idea, but can I request they be female RA’s? Exactly, yes. Okay. Thanks!” She hung up and set the phone back on her desk. “She’s sending a couple of RA’s over to escort you to her office. Don’t worry, it’s good news.”\n“And they’ll be female RA’s, so people will see women are safe around me?”\n“My idea.” Allie allowed herself a rather grand pat on the chest. “She said they’d be male ones, and I figured that’d send the wrong message.”\nJames knew Katrina and Sandy, the two RA’s, only to say hello. Nevertheless, on the walk across campus with them flanking him, he felt compelled to speak up. “I didn’t hit her, I swear to God!”\n“We know,” Katrina said. “But it’s best that you don’t say anything until you get to the dean’s office.”\nJames more than willingly did not. He also stubbornly avoided eye contact with the many passing students, so he didn’t know they mostly looked confused rather than disgusted at his unlikely escorts.\nHe’d never met Dean Prosziewicz before, though he knew her on sight. So he was as surprised as he was relieved when she greeted him with a smile and shook his hand. “Thank you both,” she said to Sandy and Katrina as they took their leave. “James, have a seat,” she added, pointing to a chair in front of her desk.\nWarily he sat down, and bit his lip. “I swear I didn’t –”\n“I know,” she said. “Allie told me all about what really happened, and she put me in touch with half a dozen other students who were there. I’ve been on the phone all morning confirming her story. But I will need you to give a statement. If it matches the others, you’re in the clear.”\n“But whoever took that picture of me will still get away with it,” James said miserably.\n“Maybe not,” she said. “But first things first.” She set an iPad on her desk with a dictaphone app open, and pressed the record button. She recited the date and time, and directed James to state his full name, and then to give his account of events.\nAnd so he did. “I’m on the Snow Ball planning committee, and – ”\n“The Snow Ball is the end of semester dance?” Dean Prosziewicz interjected.\n“Right. And we had a meeting last night. Just as the meeting was getting started, my ex-girlfriend, Lisa – she’s the one in the picture with me – she turned up at the meeting.”\n“Is she on the committee?”\n“No, she hates dances. That’s why when she turned up, I knew she was there to protest the Snow Ball. Just before Allie was going to call the meeting to order, Lisa goes to the podium and starts ranting about how dances are an invitation to seduction and rape, an archaic tradition that has no place on our campus, and she pointed at me and said, ‘My ex over there knows all about how I feel about this. How dare you support this, James!’ Now, I’m used to tirades like that from her, so I get up and go up to her and say, look, Lisa, you can yell at me about this later if you want, but now is not the time and you’re out of order. She calls me a misogynistic bastard and yells, ‘I always knew you were one of them, really!’, and she tried to slap me. I leaned back to dodge the slap, and that’s when I grabbed her arm, to stop her from trying to hit me again. That’s when someone must have taken that picture, but I don’t know who it was.”\nHe felt slightly better with the truth on the record now. But not much.\nThree hours later, James was once again hunkered down in Allie’s room when she burst in, looking delighted. “We got him!”\n“The photographer, you mean?” James stood up from Allie’s bed, feeling almost hopeful but afraid to feel too much of anything.\nShe nodded. “Once we knew the number of flyers with the picture, we just had to check the records from the photocopier in the student union.”\n“Right!” James said. “Everyone has their own access code.”\n“Then they just had to see whose code it was,” Allie confirmed. She opened her phone to read the text message from Dean Prosziewicz. “Brian Banks,” she said. “I don’t even know who he is! He’s not on the committee anyway.”\n“I do.” For the umpteenth time that day, James felt like he’d been hit by a truck, even if it was tinged with a sense of shallow victory this time. “He’s in my French class. It all makes sense now.”\n“Does it?”\n“This morning, Brian was the first one to attack me over this…well, almost the first one. The very first was Laurie Pinard, you know her?”\n“Yes, she was in my freshman seminar. Lovely gal.”\n“I think so too, and I think the feeling might be mutual. We’ve been flirting a lot in French lately, and Brian must’ve noticed. He made a point of telling her he respects women this morning, when I got to class.”\n“God, and men who say things like that never really do!” Allie clenched her fists in rage at the guy she didn’t even know.\n“But I’ll bet he told Lisa the same thing,” James said. “That’s why she turned up at the meeting last night. He probably convinced her to come shake things up. All my friends know what she’s like, and most of them have seen me try to calm her down like I did last night. Of course he knew I’d do that.”\n“All this to impress Laurie?” Allie said. “That’s horrible. I hope he gets expelled.”\nBrian was not expelled, but he was suspended for the semester and placed on academic probation for the next one. Lisa got off with a warning when she confessed that Brian had paid her $100 to make a scene at the meeting. For James, the next two days were a barrage of apologies and pitying looks and more assurances that “I never believed a word of it, man,” than he could count. He accepted them all with a sad smile, while savoring his relief and worrying privately that maybe the other shoe hadn’t fallen yet.\nIt had not, in any case, fallen yet when he arrived at Madame LaSalle’s next class on Friday at eight o’clock. “James!” Julie said, snapping to attention when he walked in the door. “I’m so sorry! Can I give you a hug?”\n“Me too, but I won’t make you hug me,” quipped Tim.\n“Same here, James,” said Catherine.\nJames reluctantly let Julie hug him, and acknowledged the other apologies with a smile. “Thanks, everyone,” he said, forcing himself to tamp down his wary shyness with a look around the room. On that sweep, he saw Laurie was smiling at him and tapping on the empty chair beside her. He acknowledged that with a nod, and then helped himself to another empty chair on the other side of the room.\nClass was a pleasant affair, with even Madame LaSalle giving him a sympathetic look here and there, and praising his participation. When it was over, he collected up his books and left the room, careful not to look back at Laurie.\nBut he had a feeling she would chase him down in the hallway, and he was right. “James?” she said, and he felt her hand on his shoulder.\nReluctantly he turned around. “What?”\n“Just wanted to say I’m sorry, okay?”\n“Thank you.” He turned back around and set off again.\n“Are we all right, then?” she asked him.\n“No,” James said without looking back. “You were right, Laurie. If you thought I would ever hit a girl, you don’t know me.”" } ]

[ { "role": "system", "content": "Create A Story Based on the Users Inputed Genre, Word Count, and Story Title\n\nthe story should follow the title but be creative." }, { "role": "user", "content": "Story Title: The Kiss\n\nGenre: african-american\n\nWord Count: 2758\n\nPrompt:\n\nStart a story that begins with a character saying “Speak now.”" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "\"Speak now.\"\nTrust me. I tried but to no avail. I was speechless. My mind was all jumbled, and I had no words. There was a vibe between us, and our chemistry made my emotions boil over. It was like I stepped out of my body and was an onlooker as the scene unfolded. My brain began to retrace the events of this past summer, and it all led up to this. She kissed me!\n*******************\nThe year was 1993. I was fresh out of school for the summer break. My freshman year of high school was in the books. This girl, right here, could not wait to drop my bags in my room and head to the park to enjoy the eighty-plus-degree weather. It was a scorcher. Yet, the freedom from the school year warranted me to celebrate.\nMy family's duplex apartment was situated directly in front of the park. Perfect. I could step onto my back balcony and see when the park was buzzing with patrons. I entered the front door, dropped my bags, and headed out of the back door. On the balcony, I spotted my girl, Pen, sitting at our favorite picnic table.\n\"Hey, Girl!\" I yelled to Pen.\n\"Come on!!\" She yelled as she gestured me over with her hands.\n\"I'm coming!\" I yelled back as I descended the two flights of stairs.\nPen was my downstairs neighbor, so we had so many stories of the mischief we had been through. These days we were pretty close. She was my best friend, in a small group of people that I gave the friendship title. We hung out every day, and today would be the same.\nMoments later, I joined Pen at the green picnic table inside the park. There we sat, our butts on the tabletop and our feet on the seat. We kicked it, sharing stories and filling each other in on the last day of school shenanigans. Today's topic of discussion included: last-day good bye's and the inappropriate stuff we signed in people's yearbooks. We laughed until our stomachs hurt, and tears were coming down our eyes. We always had a good time together.\n\"Hello, ladies,\" A tall, dark-skinned man greeted us as he walked over to join us at the picnic table.\n\"Hey,\" we both replied, turning our heads around to see him towering over us.\n\"What are y'alls names?\"He asked us in his deep voice and southern accent.\n\"I am Pen,\" my friend answered.\n\"I am Sammy,\" I followed.\n\"Pen and Sammy, Nice to meet you. Allow me to introduce myself, I am Mr. Wayne, but you can call me Q if you want. Either is fine. I am the director of this year's Parks and Recreation Summer Camp. Will you two be attending?\"\n\"Yes,\" both of us responded.\n\"Awesome. Maybe you two can help me set up?\"\nWe agreed and showed Mr. Wayne, excuse me, I mean Q, where the equipment and board games were stored in the shelter. We told him about previous camp counselors, the good and the bad, and shared a list of ideas we would like implemented. We finished setting up the equipment in time for the summer camp students to pile in. Mr. Q introduced himself and went over the first day's procedures. We introduced ourselves and our school year and shared a unique fact about ourselves. The first day of camp went by fast. After we introduced ourselves and played a few games, three hours passed, signaling the end of camp for the day. All in all, I returned home that evening feeling complete.\n***********************\nOn the first day of summer break, you always promise yourself that you will sleep in, but you don't because your body deceives you into thinking you need to be up. I lay in bed, lost in my thoughts, as the sunrise crept into my room. Restless, I pulled myself out of bed, ate cereal, showered, and started my day. I grabbed my ball, and out the back door, I went. It was early, so the court was all mine. I loved the moments when I could spend time alone on the court. It was just me, the ball, and the net. Swish!! I had to admit, I was getting good with the ball. My shot was on point, my footwork was swift, and my stamina was building. I was the ish!\nI got so lost in my workout that I did not notice when Pen joined me on the court. She caught the ball as it bounced off the rim and flew past me.\n\"Good morning, superstar,\" she said with a grin.\n\"Good morning, Pen,\" I replied as I chuckled.\nPen had started calling me \"superstar\" at the end of the championship game. That night I was on, I had a triple-double and scored the winning shot to win the game. Ever since then, I got some fans.\nPen held on to the ball and walked toward our spot. I followed, joining her at the picnic table. As usual, we started our chitchat session, and as we laughed uncontrollably, they walked up to us.\n\"Good morning, Pinky and the Brain,\" Mr. Q greeted us as he joined us at the table.\n\"Good morning, \" we replied in unison.\n\"What are you doing here so early,\" I said as we scanned the mini crowd that joined him.\nThere was a mini Q, a brown-skinned girl close to my age, and a younger brown-skinned girl. They all were dressed for summer, dawning a short and shirt ensemble.\n\"Early camp starts today. These are my nieces, Skylar and Teagan, and my nephew Colton. They will be staying with me for a month,\" Mr. Q said as he pointed to each of them.\n\"I am Sammy, and this is Pen,\" I said as I pointed to myself and then to Pen.\n\"Y'all can come and sit with us if you want,\" Pen replied as we climbed down and sat at the table the right way.\nThey joined us, occupying the space on the other side of the table. Pen and I shooed Mr. Q away, and he went along fulfilling his daily duties. A-w-k-w-a-r-d silence. Everyone sits at the table, waiting for anyone but them to begin the conversation.\n\"So, where did your uncle say y'all was from?\" I asked to break the silence.\n\"We are from Mississippi, \" Skylar replied.\n\"Oh my God, I love your accent!\" I responded excitedly.\n\"I love your accent, too,\" Skylar replied.\nShe smiled. I smiled, and everyone else joined the conversation. Pen asked if she had an accent too, and they all said yes. When Colton talked, Pen blushed. I could tell she liked him; she was hanging on every word he said. We conversed about likes and dislikes. We covered food, color, music, favorite movies, celebrity crushes, and all the get-to-know-you-better information. They fit right in. Colton was hilarious. He loved cracking jokes and kept making us all laugh. Teagan was Colton's little sister, and she was a girly girl. She loved all things Pink. Skylar was a baller. She was Colton's and Teagan's cousin. She was a basketball fanatic. She loved Janet Jackson, and she was a chill person.\nWe sat there talking for so long that we missed all the morning camp session activities. Before we knew it, Mr. Q came to retrieve his nieces and nephew to go home for lunch. None of us wanted the moment to end, but we agreed to hang out during the evening camp session.\n********************\nThat evening, Pen and I met at our table. We chatted about our new friends from Mississippi. Yes, they were all cool. We talked about how Colton made us laugh, how sweet Teagan was, and how chill Skylar was. We were so excited to hang out with them again that evening, but Mr. Q returned to the park alone. I have to admit, I was a little sad, and I could see on Pen's face she was bothered as well.\n\"Where are your nieces and nephews?\" Pen asked.\n\"I apologize, their aunt wanted to spend some time with them, but they will be here tomorrow.\" He explained.\n\"Okay, cool,\" I said.\n********************\nThe next day, I was shooting hoops, and Pen was at our usual spot. I was so into the workout that I missed it when she arrived. It startled me when I heard her voice.\n\"Hey,\" she said.\n\"Oh, hey, Skylar,\" I replied while tripping over an invisible source.\n\"You good?\" She joked as she chuckled.\n\"Yea, I'm good,\" I said as I chuckled a little too.\"\n\"You know my friends call me Sky.\"\n\"So, what should I call you?\" I asked in a snarky manner.\n\"Sky,\" she replied softly.\n\"Yea, so are you saying we are friends now?\" I asked, with a smile on my face and eyebrows raised.\n\"Huh, yes,\" she said as she pulled my sweat towel from the side of my shorts and threw it at me.\n\"Aye, Yo, I am just making sure. I like to know where I stand.\" I said as I laughed.\nWe cut up for a bit more while playing some one on one. It turned out that she really WAS a baller. Sky had hella skills. The way she moved around the court was effortless. I watched her drain a three. Crispy. Nothing but net. Her form was on point, and her shot range was, oh my God, wide. I think I got hustled; it was the game point, and she beat me with a left-handed lay-up. We talked more as we walked to the table to join everyone else.\n******************************\nA couple weeks passed, and Sky and I were hanging tough. We did everything together. Pen started acting strange, but she was chill when Sky and I hooked her up with Colton. After that, you could not pay them to care about anything but each other. On top of that, my friend DJ had been bugging me to hook him up with the new girl, Sky. I didn't want to, but I ain't a hater, so I told him I would.\n\"Sammy, push me on the swing, please?\" Sky asked with a big smile on her face.\n\"You, just a big ole kid,\" I responded as I laughed at her.\n\"Come on, Sammy?\" She replied with a frowny face.\n\"Aight, come here,\" I replied, grabbing the swing to steady it.\n\"Thanks!\" She squealed as she slid into the swing I was holding.\n\"How high do you want to go?\"\n\"As high as my name,\" She answers.\nI gave her a good push, and Sky moved her legs back and forth to help the swing gain momentum. She swung and swung, laughing every time she got higher. She went so high that the chain of the swing jumped a little. Sky let out a little screech, and I reacted by slowing down the swing.\n\"Stop swinging your feet,\" I called up to her. She did, and I grabbed the swing a few times, slowing it down until I could stop it.\n\"I got you Sky,\" I said as I secured her and the swing in my hands.\n\"Wow,\" she said as she breathed heavily, relaxing on me.\n\"I got you,\" I repeated.\n\"You do,\" she responded as she lifted her head to look back at me.\n\"Yea,\" I said as our eyes met.\nAt that moment, nothing existed outside of us. It was just me and her. We were stuck. I could feel my heartbeat increase. I could feel her warm back pressed against my front as she rested on me. We stayed like that for what seemed like an eternity.\n\"So, what are y'all up to?\" My friend DJ asked, interrupting the moment between us.\n\"Skylar tried to jump the bar on the swing,\" I said as we broke eye contact and looked at him.\n\"Yes, and I probably would have if you hadn't stopped me,\" she said, smiling.\n\"Glad I could save you from yourself,\" I continued as I laugh.\n\"Oh really,\" She said, giving me a nudge in my stomach.\nWe spend a moment laughing and recalling the swing session. DJ interrupted us again and told me to come to talk to him. I did, even though, I was dreading the conversation. He asked me if I had asked her about him yet. I had not, so he kept begging and pressuring me to ask her, so I did.\n\"Sky?\"\n\"Yes, Sammy.\"\n\"Umm, I have to ask you a question,\" I said hesitantly.\n\"What is it?\" Sky asked.\n\"DJ thinks you are cute, and he wanted me to ask if you will go out with him?\" I blurt out.\n\"Well, I don't know. Let me think about it.\" She said, leaving me on a cliffhanger.\n\"She said she had to think about it,\" I said, trying not to reveal my frustration.\n\"What is there to think about? Either she likes me, or she doesn't. Ask her again.\" He said with cockiness.\n\"He said either you like him or not. He told me to ask you again.\" I said, getting more frustrated.\n\"No.\n\"Why?\" I said.\n\"He is not my type.\" She replied as she left the swing and walked toward the table.\n\"She said No, DJ.\"\n\"Man, why not?\" He responds now, sounding upset.\n\"She said you were not her type.\"\n\"That is bogus. Y'all are weird anyway!\" He shouted as he jumped on his bike and rode up the street.\nI joined Sky at the table. We didn't talk. We sat there in silence. I guess she was trying to process what happened like I was. I don't know why, but I felt so sorry for even asking her that. I didn't want to make DJ mad, but I may have upset Sky. I was confused. I was so unsure about my feelings toward Sky. These feelings felt new and different from anything I had felt before. I wanted her to say anything to me so that I knew she was okay.\n\"I'll talk to you tomorrow, okay?\" Sky said as she stood up.\n\"Okay,\" I replied as she walked away.\n************************************\nIt had been three days since I saw Sky. I went to the park every day hoping she would show up, but no Sky. I felt like I could not breathe. I was on autopilot. Pen and Colton tried to talk to me, but I would just leave. Janet Jackson's, \"Where are you now?\", played on auto-repeat filling my room with despair. All I knew is that I wanted to talk to Sky. I wanted to apologize to her and tell her what I was feeling. I needed her to know, so Friday, I showed up again.\nShe showed. Sky walked toward me. She grabbed my hand, pulling me up from the table. She did not talk. So, I just followed her. She led me out of the park and then stopped.\n\"Take me to your house. We have to go the front way, okay?\" Sky said as she looked me in the eyes.\n\"Yes,\" I said, now leading the way, and our hands never falling apart.\n\"You can sit on my bed if you want,\" I said nervously to Sky as I sat on the bed.\n\"Thank you,\" she said softly, sitting on the bed.\n\"Sky, I am so sorry for what I did. It was stup- \"\n\"Speak now.\"\nI tried too, but no words came out. Sky grabbed my face, and she kissed me. I kissed her back. We kissed. Electricity went through my body. Those feelings I had felt that day in the park, came rushing back. I let out a soft moan, and Sky was breathing heavily. We went with it. We let our bodies take control. As we lay, we solidified our feelings for one another.\n\"Sky, I never felt this way about anyone,\" I confessed while kissing her.\n\"Me neither,\" she responded.\n“Remember when I said DJ was not my type?” Sky asked as she paused. \n“Yea, why?” I respond. \n“That is because you are my type,” Sky said as she kissed me again. \n\"Is this love?\" I asked.\n\"I don't know, but I like it.\"\n\"I love you, Sammy.\"\n\"I love you too, Skylar.\"\n\"What is going to happen when you leave next week? Will you ever come back?\" I asked Sky.\n\"I don't know. Let's just be present at this moment,\" Sky said as she took me in her arms again." } ]