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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: Can't Stop\n\nGenre: contemporary\n\nWord Count: 1631\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story that includes someone saying, “You can’t run forever.”" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "My hospital room is cold, my sheets too thin. The TV across from me plays through the millionth infomercial, with me staring at it, mouthing along with the words I now know by heart. Three days. I've been in here for three days. I feel fine physically. Mostly, anyway. Certainly well enough to leave. But apparently that's not what the doctors are worried about anymore. Until I show some sign of improvement, they aren't going to let me leave. Not since I slipped up and spoke my mind for once. Now they're talking about transferring me to another facility.\nI've tried faking it, acting far better then I feel, but I simply don't have the energy anymore. I've been chugging along for far too long, I can see that now. But I still don't know how to stop. I still want nothing more then to just get back out there, back into my routine.\nThe door hinges squeak as someone enters my room. I haven't told my parents that I'm here, so it can't be them. I don't have any friends. There's no one to visit me, so it must be a doctor. Coming to take me away.\nI force a smile onto my face, giving it one last shot.\nThe smile falls from my face when I see my coach standing in the doorway.\n\"Oh, hon.\" She says, in a voice so soft and gentle, so kind, that my eyes well with tears.\n\n\n\nWrapping my knees in KT tape has become a daily routine. I recently discovered a cream that goes with it, soothing muscle pain, which very quickly was added to that routine.\nBoth of these routines were established to support a hobby, along with the ankle braces, electrolyte drinks, iron supplements, and protein shakes. Numbing the pain of running is almost as consuming as the running itself. One run in the morning. One at midday. One before bed. Showers after each one, and then a protein drink and an electrolyte drink. Iron pill in the morning. Three Tylenol at night so my sour muscles will quiet down enough to let me sleep.\nA painless day is a bad day. A failure of a day.\nI can't imagine not running. Taking a rest day. What would I even do? Read a book? Sitting still for that long sounds like torture. No, I'd much rather be out all day moving. Sitting still inevitably leads to thinking, and I've been avoiding that since I started running a year ago. And I've been pretty successful, thank you very much. This past year has gone by in a flash, and it's been my best year yet. Hardly a bad thought I can remember.\nToday, though, marks my first day of running as more then a hobby. I have officially joined my universities track and field team.\n\nThe team corrals in the schools weight room to start our first day of conditioning. I'm anticipating it to be like the rest of the first week of a new semester--getting to know each other and going over syllabi. And I'm not wrong. We start with a hellish get-to-know-you game that involves trying to memorize everyones names--I forget everyone's names, even my own for a moment, but that's okay. I'm not here to make friends. I'm here to run.\nThe next meeting goes much better. Treadmill for thirty minutes, strength training for another thirty, with a short rest in between. I don't rest, though. I stay on the treadmill in between sets. Coach gives me a look, one that says she sees me. Knows I'll be an asset to the team.\nFor the next month, I settle into this routine, adding it to the running routine I'd already established. A run in the morning. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays its conditioning in the midmorning. Get home, shower, run again before lunch. Then yet another run before dinner, with the usual protein drinks and gatorades, and supplements in between.\nI'm so busy I don't have time to stress about the first real track meet.\n\nMy first race, a sprint, came and went without a hitch. I won, of course. I won my second sprint, too. and my third. And so on and so forth until the last game of the season. My last sprint, where I was sure to ring in an undefeated season.\nCrouched at the starting point.\nHeart beating fast.\nProtein shake and iron pills roiling in my stomach. The nerves hadn't hit all season, and now here they were. I suppose it was inevitable.\nThe starting shot range out, and I was off.\nSomething was wrong, though. I could feel it right away. Not wrong enough to stop me, but... wrong.\nI was accustomed to tunnel vision during a race, but this was more literal then usual. My vision had narrowed to what was directly in front of my, my peripheral shrouded in black.\nI kept running.\nMy heart was beating even faster, thudding in my ears and my throat and my head.\nI kept running.\nNow the black vision was accompanied by white spots, dancing across my line of sight, obscuring the crowd around me, the contestants in front of me.\nIn front of me?\nNo, the sprint was almost over, no one should be in front of me.\nI pushed harder. Why was this so much harder then usual? This should've been a cinch. It had been all season.\nMy field of vision shrinks even further, the white spots exploding like fireworks. I can't see anything, but I keep running, I have to win. The tip of my shoe catches on something--maybe the heel of another contestant, maybe the grass beside the track, I have no way of knowing--and my knee locks. I fly forward, there's a flash of pain, and then... nothing.\n\n\n\nI can't stop the tears from falling. I don't know how to. I've been running for so long that they haven't had a chance to fall in the first place. And then here comes my coach waltzing in with tears in her eyes as she looks at me, freeing the tears that I've fought so hard to keep at bay.\nShe closes the door behind her as she rushes to the side of my bed, taking a seat on the bed, grabbing one of my hands.\nFor a long while she doesn't say anything. She just looks at me, brushing through my hair with gentle fingers, working out the knots that have accumulated from three days in bed.\nWhen she does finally speak, her words aren't what I would have expected. Not empty condolences, not commands to get well soon. She doesn't ask when I'll be out of here. Instead she says; \"I should have kicked from the team that very first day.\" Her voice cracks on the word day. More tears stream down her already blotchy cheeks.\nI just stare at her.\nWas I really that bad?\n\"I know that's not what you want to hear right now.\" She continues. \"You want me to ask when you'll be well enough to race again.\" I do, I really do. I need to get back out there. \"But you can't. Race again, I mean. I'm sorry hon.\" Were the doctors not telling me something? I wiggled my toes. I could still feel them. That had to mean my legs were fine, right? I could still run. I had to be able to run.\nI spoke for the first time that day. \"I can run.\"\nAnother soft head shake.\n\"No, no, that's not what I mean.\"\n\"Please, I'll get better soon, don't--\"\n\"I knew from the first day you walked into conditioning that my assistant made a mistake.\"\n\"No, he--\"\n\"Please, let me finish.\" She turned into my coach again when she said this, rather then the mother-like figure that had walked into the room. \"You should never have been allowed on the team. I should have said something then. I had a friend in high school who was a lot like you. Always busy. Swimming was her poison, though. I didn't see it at the time, the life draining from her face. The energy leeching out of her.\" She made eye contact with me again, a fresh wave of tears pouring down. \"Graduation was the last day I saw her. She cut everyone out of her life after that. Even her parents. Joined a swim team in college and just... kept going.\" I was enraptured in her story. I had no idea where this was going. What it had to do with anything. But I couldn't tune her out. \"After your last race I looked her up. She died two years ago.\" She paused brushing my hair to wipe my face with the sleeve of her jacket. I hadn't even realized I was still crying, but now I was hyperaware of it. \"I can't let that happen to you.\"\n\"I'm not dying, my leg just--\"\n\"You know that's not what I'm talking about. Your leg is the least of your concerns. You've been running for a long time, and not just literally. But you can't run forever, hon. It's time for you to learn to slow down.\"\nHer phone starts ringing in her pocket. She pulls it out, glances at the screen, and then back at me.\n\"I'll be here for you while you learn how to do that. I'll be back tomorrow, but I have to go now.\"\nShe answers her phone, bringing it to her ear as she leaves the room, closing the door behind her.\nI'm sure she keeps her promise to come back the next day, but I’m not there to see her. When my doctor next comes to check on me, I ask to be transferred." } ]

[ { "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 or Out\n\nGenre: contemporary\n\nWord Count: 2173\n\nPrompt:\n\nMake a race an important element of your story." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Later that month, Harris Darrow would reflect that it was a turning point in his life, the key to a door he hadn’t realized he’d been looking for, a treatment, if not quite a cure, for the vague malaise that had been following him like a shadow since birth, but at the time he thought it was the end of the world when he got mugged.\nHis date stood him up at the Gargantua Club, in Lowtown. Not his usual haunt. Not his usual neighbourhood. The vibe of the cracked bricks and littered streets, in the concrete shadow of the freeway above, didn’t mesh with his lower-middle-plus-class suit. But maybe that was a sign of how desperate his dry spell had become. He didn’t catch a lady’s eye but he did grab the attention of a trio of gents, proportioned roughly like front-end loaders, with enough chrome to match.\nAll in all, it was a very polite affair. He left, they followed, and they asked him for his things. And, he complied. There was no doubt in his mind they could have torn him in half – especially the one with the industrial-grade pneumatic arm. Better to just give up his wallet, phone, AR visor, and blazer. They left him his shoes, and a word of advice to stick to his world.\nHe’d have taken them up on it, only he was lost. He didn’t have access to any maps, couldn’t call anyone, and PubliTrans, he learned, had a much more restricted schedule in these parts of town. And as a (merely) lower-middle exec, he definitely couldn’t afford a private car. So realizing he was lost, he refused to accept it, and he took a wrong turn.\nWalking deeper into the twisted nest of alleys, and ever further from the coils of freeway above, which demarcated the world of the almost-haves – his world, with his mediocre job and comfortable slippers and streaming subscriptions – from this pit of the never-will-haves, brought him down a tight set of crumbling steps and into a cramped avenue. The buildings running along it looked forlorn, and the pavement was cracked so hard it must have buckled at some point. But his hammering heart eased up a bit when he saw the people milling in the street.\nThere were maybe two dozen of them, roughly lined up, stern faced, and all paying attention to a mustached man in a muscle shirt, a man with metal legs that had the vague malice of military design. Like a platoon with their drill sergeant. Only, this must have been some kind of diversity army, because the “soldiers” looked like they actually came from all walks of life.\nThere was a pinch-faced old woman clutching a big leather purse and a snot nosed kid in a tattered Triplezilla t-shirt. There was a guy that looked like he carried all his worldly possessions with him under his faded green coat, and an exec-looking guy who wore the latest suit by Hobbard – a suit Harris couldn’t afford if he saved for three years straight.\nAnd then there was a young woman with a cyber hand, an animated cobra tattoo on her neck, and a violently violet faux hawk. She spared a glance at Harris and frowned.\n“You in or out?”\nHe had no idea what possessed him to say, “I’m in,” and next thing he knew he was lining up beside her.\n“Okay people!” shouted the drill sergeant man. “You know the drill: kill your internet, turn off your AR, and if you have enhanced prosthetics and are able to do so, put them in low-power or maintenance mode.”\nPeople started flicking their devices off, and the ominous red lights on the sergeant’s legs began pulsing a mellower yellow.\n“What is this?” Harris whispered.\nThe cobra tattoo woman put her synthetic hand into sleep mode and arched an eyebrow at him. “First time?”\n“Um…”\n“Turn your devices off.”\n“I don’t have any. I was mugged.”\nFor some reason that made her grin. “This is a race, Chuckles.”\n“A race? What race?”\nShe grinned again, and then fell into a crouch when the sergeant called “On your marks!”\nHarris’s eyes widened. “What race? What’s going on!?”\n“See you at the finish line,” she said. And then at the sergeant’s signal, she bolted. They all did, leaving only Harris and the metal-legged leader.\n“Buddy,” said the sergeant. “You want an answer? You gotta move it.” And then he started running too.\nHarris sprinted after them. The answer didn’t matter so much as the fact that he was still lost in Lowtown, and if these people weren’t exactly friendly at least they weren’t hostile.\nThe run wrecked him. Within minutes he felt a burn searing up and down his sides, and pain in his feet and knees, all of which might have been bearable if he wasn’t also gasping, and fighting to keep his lunch from escaping. His diet of NutriBod pills sure sculpted his body to look like he worked out, but it turned out that really was only skin deep.\nHe could barely follow the rearmost of the racers, but just when he thought he was going to pass out, or that maybe getting mugged again was preferable to continuing, he turned a corner and ran into the group. The sergeant caught him before he could stumble, people clapped him on the back, and cobra-tattoo gave him water.\nAnd to boot, they were at the Parkville-Henderson intersection, which was loaded not just with shops, but also had regular PubliTrans service. He was saved.\n“Who won?” Harris asked between gasps. He flopped onto a concrete bench and relished how the cold stone chilled his heat-spiked skin.\nThe cobra-tattoo woman smirked. “That’s not how it works.”\n“What do you mean? It’s a race, isn’t it?”\nShe shared a look with the sergeant guy before answering.\n“Not all who wander, and all that,” he said. He gave her one significant nod. “Onboard him.”\n“It’s not that kind of race,” she said, taking a seat beside him. The other runners parted ways, as though they received some unspoken signal. Some went back to the roughest parts of Lowtown, others went left or right, and – yup, Harris called it – the exec guy had a private hovercar descend from on high to carry him back to heaven.\n“I don’t get it.”\n“I know.”\nHarris scowled. “Very helpful.” She chuckled. “I’m Harris, by the way.”\nShe took his hand. “Diana.”\n“So, Diana. Help me get it.”\n“This is the subrace,” she said, taking a sip of water. “You only race against yourself. You just happen to do it in the company of others who are doing the same.”\n“Subrace? Sounds like kind of, um… isn’t that offensive?”\n“Are you offended?”\nHarris blinked. He wasn’t sure. He thought it sounded like subhuman, but he worried he didn’t get it, like maybe it was something clever, like the constant damn aptitude opportunities at the office that all but governed quarterly performance reviews.\n“So if you’re not racing to win–”\n“–You win on your terms. You can’t lose unless you choose to.”\n“Fine, fine, whatever. If you’re not really racing against others, then why do it?”\n“No,” she said, with a vigorous shake of her head. “You don’t ask. If someone tells you why they race, that’s fine, but you don’t ask. And nobody asks you either.”\n“Oh. Sorry?”\nShe finished her water and tossed the bottle into the recycling. “Racing is invite only, and Pedro gave the green light, so this is your official invite: are you in?”\n“But why? I just kind of bumbled in. And I’m not very good.”\n“Bumbling in is pretty much how all of us joined subracing. And as for being crap, well, there’s only one way to improve.”\n“Sure,” he said, surprised at how quickly he made his choice. “Yeah, I’m in.” Maybe it was the strange comforting soreness that was already seizing his body, a fresher rush than any of the latest pills. Maybe it was Diana. “How do I find you guys? Same place, or is there a website, or?”\n“No,” she said, with another of those vigorous head shakes. “No websites. No online presence at all. Never. It’s word of mouth exclusively.”\nShe gave him the details of the next run, and then leapt off the bench and merged into the crowd before he could ask her for a coffee or contact details.\nThe next meet was three days later, and he found himself looking forward to it. Office-time dragged by extra slowly, and after he got replacement devices he tried looking up subracing. No shortage of hits, but indeed none of them in any way related to the Lowtown thing. Then he dug up an old gym membership and did some genuine jogging to shore up his form.\nThe next race was in the steelworks district of Lowtown. He saw a couple familiar faces and lots of strangers, but no Diana.\n“You make it if you make it,” metal-legged Pedro said by way of explanation. “Focus on you.”\nHe ran. It was a longer race and it wrecked him again, because he had no idea how to pace himself, but there was something liberating about being untethered from his devices, from the world. He took particular joy in shutting down his health tracking app, which seemed best suited to telling him what supplements to buy next.\nWeeks went by, races were run. Usually Diana was there and sometimes she wasn’t. And while she was good chatting, she wasn’t into coffee – but running took the sting out of that.\nPedro was a constant. The others, somewhere in between, but strange faces grew familiar. There was never much talking, but if you ran a stretch with someone – conquering private mountains alone, together – there was camaraderie.\nIt became more real than office life, where the gossip was always about which manager to avoid and which to woo this week. His co-workers spoke of “the race to the top” and the one time Harris mentioned he’d “actually been racing, like by running on the streets,” he might as well have just farted by the water vending machine for the reaction he got.\nBut he was undeterred. He liked subracing. Never thought he would, but he did. And he was confident others would too, if they just tried it. He saw an opportunity here to do something he never thought he’d be able to do: to help people.\nHis department had been suffering flagging performance and his boss’s boss wanted to find “the next big viral”, so Harris got the green light for a pilot project.\nHe installed a supercorneal stealth camera in his right eye, and caught the next race – at the historic Lowtown U riverside campus – on film. At the office, the film guys made an exciting cut of it, the sound guys added a thrilling track, and the story guys came up with an inspiring redemption arc for the enigmatic Pedro. Then the marketing guys sprayed and prayed, and the e-gods listened, because the thing caught fire.\nHarris couldn’t wait to tell the others the good news.\nThe next meet was dead though. Nobody else showed up. Not Pedro, not Diana, not anyone. Even when Harris spent an hour waiting, just to make sure he got the right time. Even when Harris scoured the neighbourhood, just to make sure he got the right place.\nHis heart spiked. How was he supposed to find out about the next meet? Diana told him it was word of mouth only, and so far that had rung true.\nHis stomach sank. She’d also told him “No online presence at all. Never.”\nThat turned out to be painfully true, for he never saw Diana – never saw any of them – again.\nWithout any new footage, he lost control of the project. It made too big a marketing splash to throw away, so the corporate machine pivoted and turned it into a guerilla ad for an as yet unmade movie about marathons in the post-apocalypse, and about how sports can catalyze a people and build a foundation for civilization to thrive, and then later based on focus groups they added zombies and scrapped the sports thing.\nHarris fell into a slump that lasted a solid couple of months. He decided to walk around his block one evening to clear his head, and somewhere along the way he found the endless blaring of tunes in his ear irritating, so he muted them. And the ads that appeared mid-air kept distracting him, so he turned off his AR. And then, his hands remembering old patterns long gone unused, he turned off all his peripherals and went offline. He didn’t really know Pedro, but if he was honest, he liked the redemption arc the writing guys came up with for him. Well, before marketing turned him into a cyborg dictator.\nUnshackled from reality, Harris ran." } ]

[ { "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: Live at the Five Spot\n\nGenre: coming-of-age\n\nWord Count: 2880\n\nPrompt:\n\nSet your story before dawn. Your character has woken up early for a particular reason." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Ethan assumed he dreamt the jazz club and the beautiful woman, until he saw the revolver on the floor of the basement. He looked down at his hand, his knuckles scraped and raw, and smiled.\n\n It had all started because of the damn gray wall. Earlier that morning, he had stood at the edge of the basement, blinking the sleep away. Four hours only made it worse somehow, his body craved rest. The basement, cluttered with scraps of metal and wood, stank of damp mold, bringing back memories of high school water polo, and the old locker room.\n\n Flicking on the single overhead light, an ominous fear threatened to drown him, he would never play music anywhere other than this cement-walled room, his dreams cursed to live forever in the dark, never to see the light of day. He wanted to be part of something larger, surrounded by great musicians while he laid down the heartbeat of the music. Instead here he stood, only the walls and the cold metal furnace to hear him practice alone. \n\nIn a thick hooded jacket and a knit beanie against the chill, he walked past his drum kit to the gray wall, pounding his hand against the cold, unblemished cement. He hated this wall, staring at it for hours on end. It had become the physical manifestation of the obstacle he felt every day. Could he ever be good enough?\n\nAll his failures rose up, combining together brick by brick into an unbreakable wall of shame. Criticisms from his drum teacher, the gig where the audience ignored the band, the rejections from auditions. And then the letter, still on his desk upstairs. “Sorry to inform you… maybe next year…” The words rose up on Ethan, large thick letters in black and white, huge fists hitting him again and again. And then the line that cut through him like a bullet, ‘after more practice’. He had read that line from Berklee College of Music over and over. As if he hadn’t been practicing every day, drumming until his hands bled and his elbow hurt so much he couldn't even hold a cup of water.\n\n He looked at the wall, and the easy turn he could make to give up. His dreams broken against realities of rent, and bills and life, too much of a coward to ever get through this terrible, oppressive wall. Ethan breathed out, his breath turning to fog, as he pulled the tape out of his bag, and then the poster.\n\n He continued to take classes, otherwise his Dad wouldn’t pay for his rent on this apartment, with this sad basement. That didn’t leave enough daylight hours to fit in the practice that he needed, and his job, so he fought against this wall and his demons of despair in the dark mornings. But yesterday, in between his shift at Hook & Press, and his evening class at the University, he took a few minutes at the Warbler Record store and found this new decoration. \n\nEthan carefully taped the left corners of the poster, before unrolling it across the rough cement wall, pressing it tight as he taped the right corners. This poster had called out to him from the rack. A black and white image of a New York City jazz bar from the 1950s, the Five Spot. The photo taken from the stage, showed men and women crowded around cocktail tables filled with glasses, while above them all, a man played a saxophone. Thick smoke filled the room, while shadows of the rest of the band edged the picture. \n Ethan put his finger on one woman in a white jacket, staring directly into the camera. Dark shadows surrounded this angel, her arresting gaze calling to him. Her face made him buy this poster.\n\nHe stepped into the pool of yellow light surrounding the drum kit and sat down at his five piece trap set, with two tom-toms, a floor tom, a kick drum, and a snare. He gently fingered the ride cymbal, and the hi-hat, the cold metal inviting him to play.\nLooking up at his wall, he frowned at his poor installation of the poster, it hung crooked, the right side slightly higher than the left. But somehow it energized this dim space. His watch read 5:15 AM, a few hours to practice before he had to get to work. \n\nFrom a long black leather pouch he selected two drumsticks, the instruments fit perfectly into his calloused hands. He tapped once on the snare drum to his left, stepped on the pedal to tap the kick drum, then hit the fat floor drum to his right. Dust exploded into the air, little particles glittering in the air around him like thousands of tiny fireworks. He ran through some simple exercises to get loose, then closed his eyes for just a moment, thinking about what to play first. \nHe started in on a standard he knew well, ‘In Walked Bud’. Tap, tap tap on the cymbal, and then rat-a tat-tat on the snare. In his mind he could hear Monk on the piano, next the saxophone came in, sweet and long. \n\n Then the music in his head exploded around him. A loud horn, along with voices surrounded him as the poster in front of him expanded to fill the whole basement, and then his whole world. \nSuddenly, he was in a dark windowless club, small tables along his left came into focus, each filled with well dressed men and women, laughing amongst the glasses and ashtrays. More tables were scattered through the middle of the long narrow room with a bar glittering in the back, bottles reflecting the dim, yellow light. White-shirted waiters moved in and out carrying plates and trays. A heavy scent of cigarette smoke and stale whisky assaulted him. A man on a saxophone leaned in from Ethan's right, blowing a hard high note. Electrified with shock, Ethan dove to the left away from the apparition. \n The music stopped in an instant, and he found himself on the carpeted floor of the basement, next to his drum kit. His heart raced, and his whole body buzzed.\n\n“What the heck!” He shouted into the empty room. Ethan stood up, looked around at the still, cold basement, before walking to the poster on the wall. Could he be dreaming? He reached out to feel the poster. In his vision he had sat in that room, part of the band from a picture taken 70 years ago in a different city.\nHe looked around the basement, a faint smell of cigarette smoke lingered in the air. He once more put his finger on the image of the beautiful woman in the back. Are you there too?\n\nHe sat back on the stool and taking a deep breath, began playing again. The room flickered like an old movie reel starting up. His eyes wide he stopped and the room turned back into the quiet basement. Beginning to sweat, he peeled off his sweatshirt and knit cap, shaking his curly hair out. Now in a tee-shirt and jeans, he launched once again into his drums. Ethan flew right into jazz bar, the noxious cigarette smoke and vertigo combined against him, and he had to close his eyes tight to stay upright. \n\nContinuing to play, he looked over to see- yes, John Coltrane! standing next to him, blowing into an alto saxophone. Ahmed Abdul-Malik squeezed tight on the small stage with his bass. The piano bench sat empty, so Ethan turned around to his left to search for the band’s drummer, Roy Haynes. Ethan couldn't see him, but then he looked down at his own hands, his thin arms moving easily and in rhythm. Ethan’s hand slipped and he missed a note. He had taken Roy Haynes place in one of the greatest jazz bands of all time!\n His expanding grin threatened to break his face in two. He looked out into the crowd. The elegant young men wore dress shirts and sport jackets, the woman in tight cocktail dresses. Then he saw her, the woman from the poster here, in front of him. Their eyes caught, and time stopped.\n\nShe wore a white, short jacket over a white top, almost glowing in the dark room. Her eyes sparkled under dark short hair, and then she smiled a him, an electric shock of connection. A change in the music caught Ethan’s attention and he had to turn away. Ahmed signaled him to end the song. Ethan did a short riff and then they all stopped playing. \n\n“We’ll take a short break.” Ahmad huffed into the microphone. Ethan held his sticks up ready to play again if the dream world began to fade, but it continued. Alone on stage, he stood up to see where the other band members went, but they were gone, lost into the dark, smoke filled room.\n\n“You’re amazing.” Ethan turned to his left to see the woman standing near him, her voice the thick sound of a brush on a drum. “I haven't seen you here before?”\n\nThe same age as him, her grey- green eyes looked older, and harder. \n\n“I’m a fill in…” Ethan mumbled, overwhelmed by this angel come to life\n\n“My name is Courtney, maybe you can buy me a drink?” Her hand raised up, waving glamorous, red tipped fingers.\n\nEthan just nodded as his mouth didn't seem to work. A waiter came by and handed them both cocktails, and then faded into the crowd, the musty smell of whisky drifting up from the glasses.\n\n“How long have you been playing?” She said, as Ethan watched her lips move, entranced by the bright red lipstick\n\n“My whole life! I’m trying to get into a music school.” Ethan stepped down off the small stage, to get closer to this beautiful woman. “But I don’t have as much time to play, as I’m working and taking classes at school, too.”\n\n“You’re so good.” Courtney’s head tilted. “Why don’t you just play music all the time?” Her question hung in the air like a ringing cymbal.\n\nEthan didn’t know how to answer this, his greatest fear. What would happen if he only played music, and then failed? He would have no back up plan. His Dad’s worries had extended to him.\n\n“What do you do?” Ethan tried to change the tune.\n\nCourtney’s chin dropped as she looked up at Ethan through long thick lashes. “I’m a party girl...”\n\n“If I could,” Ethan looked back at the small stage, “I would make music all day and all night long.” \n\n“Hey, who is you?” A large man appeared out of the dark shadows behind Courtney, he wore a black suit jacket over a white shirt with a loosened collar and narrow tie. His dark hair slicked straight back from his large forehead.\n“He a friend of yours Courtney?” Speaking in a thick accent, his jaw lifted up and protruded forward like the bow of a ship.\n\n “He’s in the band Carlo, he’s the drummer.” Courtney slid in between Ethan and the huge man. \n\n Carlo looked at Courtney, and then with dead, fish eyes he glared at Ethan, square shoulders raising up to block out the light. \n\n“Why don’t you go back to playing your be boop music and stay away from my girl.”\nCarlo pulled back his jacket. Confused, Ethan admired Carlo’s hand-tooled leather belt, until he saw the curved handle of a revolver tucked into it.\n\nEthan stepped back, away from the gun while Courtney smiled, her eyes crinkling in apology, as she sipped at the cocktail glass\n\nA middle aged black man in a tweed suit and a dark fedora meandered up on stage and sat down at the piano. Ethan knew it could only be one person, the man whose legendary live recording at this club, the Five Spot, made it famous forever in jazz history, Thelonious Monk. Ethan readied himself at the drum kit and waited for his signal to begin. He knew had to play better than ever in his life to provide a steady beat for these amazing musicians.\n\nMonk began, the tinkling opening notes of ‘I Mean You’. Ethan leaned in and began to play. Performing in front of an audience, he put part of his soul out for the world to see. Watching the audience nod along with smiles and recognition filled him with pure joy.\n The loose, smooth flowing band differed from any group he had ever been a part of. Coltrane took off on long rambling solo’s, while Monk left the piano to dance around him on the tiny stage. Ahmed had no room for his bass, and regularly knocked into the drum set. Ethan struggled to focus on his rhythms, each musician veered off melody into their own imaginative, fantastical world before landing back together perfectly, like magic. He slipped and missed a beat once, getting a look from Monk, and then again, his hands wet from sweat.\n\nThe song ended, and Ethan finally breathed out, he didn’t know how long he had been holding his breath. He had never worked so hard. A hand on his shoulder, Ethan turned to see the gentle face of Coltrane just inches from his own.\n\n“Epistrophy-” Coltrane’s arched eyebrow turned into a question mark.\n\nEthan knew the fast, complicated opening of the song, but hadn’t practiced it for over a year. Voices raised in conversation reminded him of the audience listening to him, waiting for his certain failure. His mistakes would be a disaster, ruining the band’s sound for these legends around him. His whole body clenched in anxious panic, he knew he couldn’t keep up with these legends. He should just leave, run from the challenge.\n“I can’t…” Ethan began.\n\n“You’re playing alright, man.” Coltrane spoke like a bass drum, deep and resonant. “But you’re tight. This music is too important to take so serious. Let go and just play.” Coltrane nodded and stepped back.\n\nEthan squeezed the sticks tight, and nodded, the words ‘just play’ drumming a fast staccato beat in his heart. He heard in Coltrane’s words the truth, he belonged here, at the drum kit, on stage.\nHe spun the sticks in his hands, pulled back his shoulders and began, turning his fear into music, rhythms and beat. He floated above himself disconnected from his physical body, watching the audience, their mouths open, their eyes totally engaged. \nEthan got the nod from Coltrane and now took his turn to solo. Conservative at first, he remembered the words and just let go, his hands erupting into a chaotic, thunderous explosion of drums and cymbals, a swirl of sound surrounding him, lifting him up. Ethan felt pure bliss and knew he had to do this, even if he had to live in a box on the street. Drumming will be his destiny. The song ended and Ethan’s body, as a drum himself continued to vibrate from the rhythms.\n\nA scuffle in the audience drew his attention. Courtney, her face clenched in a snarl, threw her drink, then he saw Carlo reach back and slap her.\n “No!” Ethan screamed pointing into the audience. No one moved, or even cared. Courtney’s eyes caught his, pleading and desperate.\nEthan had always avoided violence, scared to fail even at that simple physicality. He had to make an attempt, even if people thought he was a fool, had no chance of success. The connection he felt with this woman spurred him to do what he had never done before.\n\nHe dropped his sticks and jumped into the audience, curly locks flowing behind him as he swam through the crowd, dodging tables and waiters to get to Courtney. Finally at Carlo, he continued his momentum diving forward, and just like a shot in water polo, he used his whole body to deliver a wild roundhouse. The punch connected solidly into Carlo’s ear, his whole body moving down sideways with the punch. Ethan had never hit anything so hard. \n\nCarlo turned back and he saw a spark of life in Carlo’s dark eyes, and a smile on his face. He didn't see the gun rise up toward him until the huge black barrel aimed at his his chest.\n“No!” Courtney cried, as she pushed the gun up.\nEthan dove sideways, falling, the room around him flickering, darkness filling in from the edge of his vision as a gunshot echoed around him. \n\nHis face pressed hard into the dank carpet. A sharp pain in his right hand spurred him to open his eyes. Cracked metal scraps of the revolver scattered across the floor, no longer menacing in the glare of the light. Ethan turned to see the poster, torn from the wall, remnants dangling from one corner, the cement around it cracked.\n\n Ethan knew he could never go back to be a part-time drummer. He would be a denizen of the night, living in the jazz clubs and bars of the world. He had tasted what could be, and would fight all he could to get there again. \n\nUntil then, he had work to do. Ethan climbed back on the drum stool, closed his eyes to hear the first few notes of ‘In Walked Bud’ and began to play." } ]

[ { "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: Old Man Buckhart\n\nGenre: coming-of-age\n\nWord Count: 2891\n\nPrompt:\n\nSet your story before dawn. Your character has woken up early for a particular reason." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The mugginess of night receded. A thin veil of blushing daylight clung to dark ridge tops under weakening clouds. A swift storm had moved through a few hours before. In its wake, soft gray shrouds rose among the hollows to greet the gathering dawn like resurrected spirits from some ancient sepulcher, accentuated by the ghostly refrains of an L&N steam engine pulling through nearby London, Kentucky.\nLefty lay awake most of the night, mesmerized by the lightning but also lulled to drowsiness from time to time by the rain on the tin roof of the porch. During times of wakefulness he strained for any sign of The Old Man's return. \nHe had taken an automatic liking to his grandfather, Jerry Buckhart. Although he had never met him until two months ago, they had whipped up a quick bond. The Old Man bragged about Lefty's hard work, something he never heard from Poppy. Also, the man's jovial attitude and dapper ways appealed to the twelve-year-old. The Old Man was somewhat rotund and clean-shaven with the exception of a gray walrus mustache stained yellow under his nostrils from many years of pipe smoke. He sipped, occasionally and privately, from a silver flask with his initials 'JB' finely etched on one side. Lefty, who caught him a few times taking sips from it, was somehow drawn most to the mystery of the flask out of all of his other finery. He knew the flask contained alcohol. He wanted to try it, but his Mam discouraged alcohol in their home, knowing Poppy had a fondness for \"the drink\" as well. Despite his age and nips from his flask, The Old Man's blue eyes remained clear and sharp. He kept his fading red hair, which had once been light and wispy, covered with a black bowler hat. His starched shirts were crisp, white, and buttoned all the way to the top. The white shirts cut a stark contrast to the rest of his ensemble: a black woolen frock coat with silk lapels, pin-striped pants, a black cane with a silver cap, and black wing-tipped shoes that he liked to keep shined with a high gloss.\nIn fact, The Old Man made sure Lefty kept the shoes shiny. He bought Lefty a shoe shine box and talked Mr. Delph into letting him shine shoes this summer at the barber shop down the street from Weaver's Pool Hall. The Old Man could be quite persuasive. Another business venture, an idea put forth by The Old Man, also helped Lefty make a little extra dough. Lefty provided water to the industrial league baseball teams that played in town on Sundays. He sold cold water that he got from the spring house at the quarry. And, because these were such great ideas, Lefty sometimes loaned The Old Man a dollar or two here and there.\nWith a couple of extra bucks in his pocket, Old Man Buckhart had strolled off toward town in the shimmering heat yesterday morning. His awkward whistling, made so by the gap between his front teeth, lilted among the dawn chorus of birds along the dirt road leading away from the quarry. No one had heard nor seen from the old, strange bird of a man since. \nLefty and two of his brothers slept on the porch that night because it had been too hot to sleep in the house. They had closed the windows because of fierce winds and rain. He had marveled at the lightning as it played in the darkness, briefly turning midnight to midday and exposing trees in the flickering light as they swayed crazily, bending like dancers to the beat of rain on the leaves. If a little rain blew in on them on the porch, so be it, the natural fireworks display was worth it, and at least they would be cooler than in the house. \nLefty also wanted to be aware if The Old Man returned in the middle of the night. His stomach soured at the thought that his grandfather could be dead. His imagination ran wild with thoughts of The Old Man falling into a deep ditch and hitting his head on a rock or getting struck by lightning. He just hoped The Old Man survived. Somewhere. \nWith dawn glimmering on the horizon, anxiety drove Lefty to get to work milking the cows and bringing in wood for the cook stove. Another reason he needed to finish his chores early was to be able to make it to the railyard baseball games early this afternoon. An L&N team would be playing a team from a Clay County Coal Camp today. He took in a deep breath of the heavy humid air, which carried loamy scents of damp earth and the musky aromas of farm animals.\nAs Lefty went about his chores, the world awoke and began to unfold. Frogs sang in the waning darkness, enlivened by the storm, which had been a rare occurrence of late because of the intense heat. By noon, summer would regain its composure and assume dominance, wiping away any remnant of cloud or rain from the night before. A shadowy owl flew over on silent wings, seeking rest from its nightly foray. He was unsure about the portent of that omen, but he would ask The Old Man about it; then it hit him: if he saw him again. His heart sank.\nInside the house a different kind of tempest continued to brew from the night before. Carrying an armload of wood inside to set by the cast iron cook stove, he braced himself for the oncoming torrent. He knew Mam and Poppy had been into it; he had heard the arguing last night despite the storm. Lefty shuddered as he entered the house. Poppy's gaze. His father rarely spoke, but the hard, brown eyes expressed volumes.\nThe Old Man had not arrived for breakfast. In fact, he hadn't made it home at all last night. The room, dimly lit by two coal oil lamps, made his parents' moods seem even more severe. Poppy sat at the head of the kitchen table glaring through the screen, his eyes watching the road, waiting for The Old Man to darken the door. Palpable tension settled in Mam's shoulders and around her eyes as she made the kids file by the stove one at a time. They offered up their plates to receive a cat-head biscuit and a ladle of gravy. Lefty took his place at the end of the line along with his siblings, a total of five boys and four girls. One by one they sat at the table and began to eat. No prayers, even though this was Sunday. Not that they were that religious anyway. No one dared to utter a word. They silently passed a jar of molasses around the table. The scraping of forks, an occasional cough, the popping and crackling of the wood in the cook stove were, at various times, the loudest sounds in the room. Minutes, like the molasses, poured out slowly.\nMam remained at the stove scowling at her husband who had yet to touch his food. She waited like a coiled copperhead ready to strike if he uttered one word about her father. Lefty pondered his Mam as he slowly ate his breakfast. The Old Man once told him that she had been his favorite. He said Lizzie would not shirk her duties like her brothers and sisters. The others had turned their backs on him. Almost a year had passed since the death of Mam's mother; Lefty never knew her. He had surmised that The Old Man's ways had taken its toll on her. His Mam had remarked once that The Old Man stuffed his sins and shortcomings in a poke wherever he went, but even Lefty noticed that Mam's hard heart softened when he arrived two months ago from Harlan County, hat in hand with nowhere else to go.\nA peculiar jaunty sound, distant and haunting, emanated from the semi-darkness; the odd tune crescendoed as it approached the house from the woods along the rock quarry's boundary. Whistling mingled with off-key vocals and drunken humming the closer The Old Man came to the porch. It reminded Lefty of an old, broken pump organ that had been thrown out and abandoned in the yard too long: broken, forced, and wheezy. He vaguely recognized the ditty. \"Hard-Hearted Barbry Allen.\" The Old Man loved that old folk melody, although he butchered it every time. Lefty exchanged furtive glances back and forth with his siblings. None wanted to draw ire from either parent, who remained locked in their stances: Poppy's steely eyes toward the door, and Mam's glower affixed on Poppy.\nFinishing on a high note, the Old Man slung the door open and stumbled across the threshold wearing not a stitch of clothes. Every face in the room expressed differing degrees of shock, surprise, or revulsion, except for The Old Man and Lefty. Poppy's scowl deepened. Mam looked as if she would be sick. His sisters, Janie, Viney, and Sybil, hid their eyes; the youngest girl, Norma, slid under the table. Lefty's brothers, Junior, Willie and Arvil, stifled giggles and began elbowing each other; his other brother Ross held his breath, his reddened face looking as if it were about to burst. Lefty felt a sudden pang of sadness, but could not pinpoint the exact source. \nOld Man Buckhart had made an abrupt arrival, like some strange creature emerging from the gloaming. He seemed perplexed that anyone would even be awake much less having breakfast at this very moment. His expression was made more comical by the twitching of his gray, walrus mustache and the puzzled widening of his now dulled, blue eyes. He tried to maintain some bearing and composure, finally realizing that he stood completely naked in front of the entire family and now swayed slightly before them: a cock robin with his broad, hairy, red chest and fat paunch perched atop bird-like legs, which seemed to wear boots made of mud. His thin hair was plastered flat atop his head. Dark circles sagged under both eyes. He made no sudden moves to cover himself, but seemed to search the air in front of him for some type of answer.\n\"Whelp, The Old Man's back!\" Ross's words exploded like a gunshot through the room, which seemed to shrink by the second. He was the only kid smart-ass enough to remark on the situation. Lefty nudged him sharply with an elbow. Ross kicked back under the table. \n\"Charlie, Lizzie, I—\" The Old Man stammered to find the right words.\nLike a spring, Mam uncoiled and closed the space between her and her father, brandishing the ladle like a mace on her approach. Gravy flew in all directions, most of it splattering The Old Man as she jabbed the utensil at him. Drops of gravy ran down his chest, which heaved from the sudden onslaught; he staggered back a couple steps. She advanced.\n\"You ain't ever goin' to be satisfied. You'll never be content!\" She hissed, their faces now so close that their noses almost touched. \"Do you know what you've—\"\nRoss sniggered. She reeled around to face everyone at the table.\n\"Eat your shittin' breakfast!\" Mam's voice filled the room.\nThe children immediately returned to their food, even Ross, who still wore a devilish grin. Poppy's face, by contrast, seemed set in stone. The visage never changed.\nThe Old Man, seeing an opportunity for escape, began tottering to the room where the boys slept. \"I suppose I'll just go ahead and retire to bed.\" \nSilence.\nSeemingly disgusted with the whole situation, Poppy stood, grabbed his ladder back chair, and carried it out the front door without a word. He sat under the old poplar tree at the furthest corner of the yard with his back to the house. His lanky form silhouetted in the growing morning light, he pulled a hawk-bill knife from a pocket in his overalls and began whittling on a branch he picked up at his feet. Lefty wondered if Poppy's thoughts shifted to knife trades and political gossip he would swap at the courthouse this week. After all, he had been on the receiving-end of Mam's wrath more than he had ever wanted. And because of that, maybe Poppy resolved that it was wiser that he had not been the first to cast a stone at Old Man Buckhart. Maybe he was glad that her anger was directed at someone else for a change.\nMam moved back to the kitchen, grabbing a large, black pot from the side table. It contained the day's soup beans which soaked in the cast iron dutch oven overnight. She slammed it on the remaining open burner, water and beans spilling onto the surface. She grabbed two pieces of wood and shoved them into the stove, then began preparations for cornbread.\nThe room emptied. The boys filtered outside in directions away from the chaos of the homeplace. Willie and Arvil scattered to the woods to find a good fishing hole, while Junior and Ross headed toward town looking for mischief. Lefty lingered, following his sisters. They would most likely find solace in God. The girls gathered in their room where Janie had ushered them.\n\"Yuns get ready for mornin’ service. I'll walk us.\" Janie asserted. She busied around the room getting church clothes ready.\nShe received lackluster response. Viney, shaken by the adults’ behaviors, lay on the bed they all shared, her face to the wall. Sybil sat on one corner of the bed, a scowl on her face as she tugged a brush through Norma's tangled hair. Norma sat on the floor in front of her. \"Ow, Sybil! That hurts!\"\nDenvil lingered at the door, hoping to find some comfort from the girls.\n\"Get out, Denvil! We don't want you in here.” Norma exclaimed as Sybil kept fighting with her hair.\nSybil’s voice carried venom. “Go on, Devil!\"\nLefty drifted away from the girl's room. He hated the way his sisters and brothers twisted his name. The baseball players and The Old Man called him Lefty, along with a few kids at school. He couldn’t wait to get to the baseball fields today. The team needed its water boy. He stopped to listen to the hard snoring of The Old Man coming from the boys' bedroom. He felt sorry for him; after all, the odd fellow had nowhere else to go.\nLefty sneaked through the kitchen to the door and slipped outside. He paused behind a tree before making his way to the spring house. Through the window he watched his Mam work in the kitchen. She opened the window. No breeze entered. Sweat mingled with her tears. She didn’t hear Lefty nor see him, at least he thought so; she never acknowledged him. He noticed that she allowed a few tears to make their way along the creases in her face. She peered at the sun crowning the ridge of the quarry, her face bathed in a deep, remarkable golden light. She spoke to herself. Maybe it was a prayer or a confession. He felt it deep.\n“Good Lord, what have I done? Is this a mistake? I will not let this happen again. Not the cards, not those old, dirty dice, not the billiards, and certainly not the bootleggin. That’s the last thing I need in this house.”\nIn a soft, slow voice, she sang to herself: “I shall not be, I shall not be moved. I shall not be, I shall not be moved. Like a tree planted by the waters, I shall not be moved.”\nShe released a long sigh.\n“Lord, you know I worked on Charlie. You know I kept him from drinking and womanizing since he got back, at least for now. And for Charlie Jackson to come back here and beg for forgiveness is as close to a miracle as I’m liable to see. Lord, I swear to you, I will bring that old man to heel too, if it’s the last thing I do.”\nSome cogs clicked into place for Lefty. Five years ago Mam said Poppy hopped a train for Idaho, remarking that he was just some old hobo out west. Poppy maintained that he worked on a sheep ranch for two years. Now that Lefty thought about it, Poppy seemed a changed man after coming back home, at least changed enough for Poppy. He tried to avoid his father as often as possible.\nWhen Mam moved away from the window, Lefty went to the spring house hoping she had not noticed him. He started thinking about today’s baseball games and changed focus. He prepared two buckets of cold, clear water from the spring to take to the railyard baseball players. This mid-June day was going to be a scorcher. Struggling with the buckets along the road from the quarry, Lefty tried his hardest not to spill any of the precious water. He would probably make good money. Making his way along the railroad tracks toward the ball fields near the tobacco warehouses and stockyards, he could almost hear that change jingle in his pockets. In the trees, jarflies chanted in the morning sun, continuing their daily summer ritual on this longest of summer days." } ]

[ { "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 Fate Worse Than Death\n\nGenre: contemporary\n\nWord Count: 2500\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story in which a character is running away from something, literally or metaphorically." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "It was the third time Arizona had stopped for gas in the last two days. She always went inside to pay, since she always had to grab some type of caffeine now. She was surprised how quickly her life had changed, and exactly what parts of it were different, than they had been on Saturday.\nHer sister was peacefully asleep in the passenger’s seat while Arizona pumped gas. That was almost all Micah did now. Arizona wouldn’t complain about it. Asleep, but alive, was just fine by her. While she sipped on the overpriced energy drink, she stared off into the distance, and her eyes fell upon him. Death didn’t look exactly like she’d expected him to.\nThe black robes and scythe that Arizona had always imagined weren’t even close to the image before her. He wore blue jeans and a muscle top, though he didn’t have much to fill it out with. He looked sunkissed, which had almost made her laugh during their first encounter, because she couldn’t imagine Death bathing in the sun. He crossed his arms and shook his head in her direction. Arizona looked to the ground while pretending she hadn’t seen him. They had a deal. He had assured her that he was honorable, and stood by his word, but she could tell he was tired of her trying to exploit that honor.\nHis voice brushed against her skin as clear as the wind. “Eventually, you will have to return. You can’t do this forever. You have a life to return to.”\nArizona hung the pump up and slid into the driver’s seat, buckling in. She turned the heater on to get rid of the chill of his voice. Micah turned and opened her eyes. She yawned. “We almost home?”\n“Almost,” Arizona lied. “I found another cool mall to check out. They have a two story book store.”\n“Cool.” Micah closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep once more.\nArizona sighed as she pulled out onto the road again. They were getting further and further from Norwalk. She’d hit the border of another state sometime soon. She would have done so already if she’d stayed in one direction the past two days, but that never crossed her mind. The only thing she’d been focused on was staying away from home. She wouldn’t even touch the county if she could avoid it, let alone the city.\n“You can’t run forever.” Death’s voice again.\nArizona turned the heater up and focused on the road.\nSaturday had been the first day in a long time that Arizona and Micah had the same day off of work. Micah had been pissed because her night sucked, so when Arizona suggested they take the day to relax and spend time up in Strongsville, her sister jumped at the chance. They went about once a month. Arizona always drove, because Micah hated highways and Arizona hated how long it took when they used the state routes and back roads. Everything should have been perfectly fine.\nThe trip to Strongsville was the same as it had always been. They grabbed coffee and shopped, spent money they shouldn’t have, watched a movie, and left while the sun was setting in a misguided effort to make it back to Norwalk before it was dark. Micah curled up in her seat despite Arizona’s complaints that if she had to stay awake to drive, Micah should have to as well. She spent about an hour after her deal with Death wondering if Micah being awake might have changed things. Maybe if Micah had been awake, she could have saved herself.\nThe truck didn’t come out of nowhere. Arizona had seen him, and she did her best to get out of his way. She was willing to put the car in a ditch to avoid an accident, but it didn’t work. The guy didn’t slow down, or move, so his truck just rolled into the ditch on top of them. She went unconscious, but it hadn’t been for long, since the wail of ambulance didn’t enter her earshot for another ten minutes. The guy that hit her fled on foot.\nMicah’s face was littered with broken glass from the windows. Her neck was clearly broken. Arizona searched every possible place for a pulse, holding her own breath while she waited for her sister to release one. She prayed for even the smallest sigh or gasp. Nothing came.\nDeath appeared as Arizona crawled out of the car, scraping her knee on the glass in the window that hadn’t found it’s way into her sister. At first, she thought he was a bystander that came to help her as he offered his hand to pull her up. Looking into his eyes revealed he was much more. He didn’t smirk or grin, the way she thought Death would. He actually looked saddened, touched by Micah’s misfortune.\n“She deserved more peace than this,” he sighed, kneeling to crawl into the car. “Plenty have crossed the rainbow bridge today. I’m sure they’ll love to keep her company.”\n“The…rainbow bridge?” Arizona knew that phrase, but with everything that had happened, it took her a moment. “That’s for dead animals.”\n“Uh-huh.” Death made it look effortless as he pulled Micah’s lifeless body from the car. Being a celestial being had to make everything easier, Arizona later figured. Micah looked like she was in a deep sleep, aside from her clearly fractured neck. Death looked to Arizona. “They should be here in time for you.”\n“You can’t take her.”\n“I’m sorry, honey. I have to. It’s my job.”\n“But-but-” Her mind raced with thoughts, and her voice froze, until she blurted out, “But we’re not done yet.”\n“No one ever is. Where do you think the idea of unfinished business comes from?”\n“Please,” she begged. “Can’t this wait? Can’t you take her at home? She can’t die like this. I can’t be the reason she dies!” The wind of the night stung at her face as tears streaked her cheeks. “Please.”\nDeath nodded. “Alright. I see no harm in that. I will wait until you return home.” He laid Micah down on the ground, pressing his hands together as light began to encase his hands. “You have my word, which is as good as my soul, that I won’t take her until you make it home. However, she won’t be the same. Her soul will still be tired. She won’t be able to keep up with you forever, so don’t keep her away too long.” He mouthed something to himself before a radiant light engulfed all of them.\nWhen Arizona blinked away the momentary blindness from the light, she saw that they were safely parked at a dollar store on the route. Micah was asleep in her seat, just like she’d been before the accident. Arizona jumped out of the car to examine it. There wasn’t even a scratch to indicate that anything took place. It looked better than it had before the accident. Everything was just fine.\n“Micah.” She tried to wake her sister. Micah just continued to sleep. That was okay, Arizona assured herself. Alive and asleep was great.\nShe checked the gas gauge. Half-full. She’d stop at the next gas station and top off. The gas she did have left would at least get her back up to Strongsville. Where she went after that was a mystery, but she knew for certain that she would never touch Huron County again.\nAfter three days of driving and living off of energy drinks, the need for sleep was starting to call to Arizona. She pulled into a Walmart and parked at the very end of the lot. The sun was high in the sky, beating down through the car window enough to keep her warm without the engine idling.\nMicah had slept no matter what. Arizona hit a few curbs here and there, and had even fought a crazy Karen at a gas station over something she didn’t even remember anymore, and Micah hadn’t even roused. Aside from opening her eyes and asking Arizona how close they were to home every ten or twelve hours, Micah hadn’t done much of anything. She didn’t eat. She hadn’t made a single comment about needing to use the bathroom. She didn’t even move too much in her sleep, just turned from one side to the other.\nArizona curled up in the driver’s seat for a quick nap. She didn’t dream. She didn’t even realize she’d fallen asleep until someone rapped on the window and scowled down at her. She thought it would be a cop telling her to move, or maybe an employee. It was some guy in scruffy clothes panhandling. She flashed her mace first, and when he didn’t see that as a threat, she reached for the dagger that Micah carried in the car. That sent him sprinting away. Arizona checked the time on the dashboard as she started the car up again. She’d slept for two hours. She felt like she could sleep for a lifetime and it wouldn’t be enough, but two hours would have to do.\n“You can’t run forever.” Death lounged in the backseat of the car like he’d been invited. He didn’t even wear his seat belt. “What about your cats? What about your job?”\n“I can get a job anywhere,” Arizona replied, focusing on the road and not on the entity that sat behind her. “I’ll call my neighbors to take care of the cats.”\n“When you don’t return, they’ll think you’re a horrible owner.”\n“Or they’ll think something awful happened to me.”\n“What if they find out nothing happened? What if they find you online?”\n“I’ll change my name. I’ll move to another state. I’m young. I can do anything I want.”\nDeath nodded, leaning in so he could rest his elbows on the center console. “Is this truly what you want? To stay running forever?”\n“I want us to be fine.”\n“She is unconscious for the majority of your time together. I granted you this gift so she could rest at home, not so you could take the shallow hull of who she was on a cross country trip. Go home.”\n“No. You can’t have her.” Arizona slammed on the brakes, almost missing a red light.\n“I come for everyone, honey. It is never personal. If it were, there would be much less evil and many more immortals in the world.” He was gone as sudden as he’d appeared.\nArizona took a deep breath as she pressed on. One more hour of driving and she’d hit the border to Kentucky. They had family there. Distant, and somewhat estranged, but family all the same. One of them would be able to help her find a job if she couldn’t get one on her own. She just needed enough to keep up paying for gas. She could be a server anywhere, flashing smiles and maybe a bit of skin for cash. That would make it easy to keep going.\n“Are we almost home?” Micah asked. She didn’t even open her eyes this time.\n“Almost.”\n“This is the longest drive ever.”\n“Yeah.”\nMicah was silent, indicating she was asleep yet again. At least Arizona wouldn’t need to rent hotel rooms on the trip. That would help save money for gas. She finished the energy drink in the cupholder next to her, making a note to stock up on them at the next gas station. This would be her life, she’d decided. This was the new normal.\nIt happened again. Night hit, and Arizona was exhausted in the driver’s seat. She needed to rest, but she didn’t feel it was safe. She considered night to be the prime time for Death to strike, even though she knew he wouldn’t touch Micah until they made it home. She felt like she could only sleep during the daylight. Arizona told herself that as soon as the sun rose, she’d rest. The moment sunrise hit, she could curl up and sleep for the whole day. By then, she’d make it to a family member who could at least spare a couch or a floor for the day.\nThis time, the truck came from behind. It was visible to everyone paying attention. Arizona was too focused on what her next move was to even understand that the horn blaring behind her was supposed to be a warning, not some asshole riding her because she was going a little under the speed limit. It was a semi, rather than a regular personal truck, and by the time she noticed it, there was no defensive driving in the world that would save her. One moment it was bright lights and the next, she was staring at her own dead body on the ground, with Death shaking his head beside her. Arizona’s body was crushed in the car. Micah’s wasn’t even visible from this angle. Seeing her own body was such a strange experience. She wanted to reach out and touch her skin, her face, to reassure herself that she was dead.\n“You won’t feel anything,” Death explained. “Your hand will just go straight through. You can’t touch anything in this world.”\n“Where’s Micah?” She wondered, looking around them. She could see the ghosts of a few squirrels that had run out into the accident. The guy that had hit them wasn’t dead. He sat on the side of the road, crying into his phone about how he had just killed a young lady. A young lady? Just one? “Did she survive?”\n“I wouldn’t call what happened to her surviving.” Death crossed his arms, nodding towards an ambulance on it’s way. “They’ll see that she’s breathing and rush her to the hospital.”\n“And then she’ll die?”\nDeath frowned. “She can’t die, Arizona. You never went home.”\n“But you’re Death. You can take her whenever you want. You are-you’re-” She felt like she was supposed to be choking on her anxiety, but there was nothing to choke on. She didn’t breathe anymore. She could sense emotions, but they didn’t feel the same. “What happens now? She just remains like that forever? Comatose to the world?”\n“She will become a medical marvel. Eventually, they will deem her an organ donor. They will be amazed that she continues to live once they start going for the vital ones, like her lungs. Her heart, her brain, her lungs; they will all go to others and the doctors will be amazed to see her still alive. Asleep, but alive. That’s better than passing, isn’t it?” He sneered at her as he said it.\n“You made the deal with me. Can’t we just make a new one?”\n“I cannot make deals with the dead. Only with the living looking to escape or delay death.”\n“Is there anything I can do from here?”\n“You can do what all the dead who made mistakes in their life do.”\n“What’s that?”\n“Watch others make the same mistakes.”" } ]

[ { "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: Hang It On The Moon\n\nGenre: coming-of-age\n\nWord Count: 1123\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about someone pulling an all nighter." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Hang It On The Moon\nThere was once a little girl born under a waning crescent moon. Her father, an amateur artist, presented her mother with a custom hand-painted art work of the infant sound asleep cuddled on the arch. The picture hung over her bed all of her childhood years. She carried it to her college dorm room and to her first home when she started adulting on her own with the first job of her career as a space scientist. While others romanticized about the full moon she felt an unwavering attachment to that slender hook of a moon.\nPerhaps it was the influence of that curved crescent cradling the innocent infant but she can not remember a time when she was not a scientist interested in the heavenly bodies. Her trips to the library with her mother as a preschooler had her searching out books on planets and solar systems and the beautiful aurora borealis. Her grandfather brought her striated rocks to study from the quarry he managed. Santa brought planetariums, microscopes, chemistry sets, geology books, and math toys every year. Posters on her teen-age walls were of the Saturnian system and lunar maps not rock bands and smoldering hot movie stars.\nSo the child had moon dust in her lungs and stars in her eyes. She was a child of the cosmos, a ruler of the skies...\nFirst personal connections with outer space probably had to do with having more opportunities than most other kids to see the night sky. Her parents were in college or graduate school for most of her childhood and since her father worked until three or four in the morning as a member of the military, the household was naturally shifted to the night-time hours and all engaged in cheap forms of entertainment, such as low-tech stargazing.\nThe mystic of the moon was a natural draw. Never sleeping much before midnight, she'd stay up at night thinking, or staring out a window, and this evolved into thinking too hard about what was up there. The silvery beams beckoned.\nKnowing it was either planetary science or insanity, the aspiring researcher doubled majored in astronomy and geology. From there it was a simple straight shot besides connecting with anyone in the field and developing entrepreneurial skills to be prepared to be able to write winning grants and presentations.\nTo become successful get a High School Diploma and of course Bachelor's Degree. Then Master's Degree and on to Ph.D. followed by Postdoctoral Appointment(s) and finally Principle Investigator which equals a Real Job. Simple step by step how to be a space scientist.\nThe official job title is research scientist. Research scientists make a living by developing ideas and serving as principal investigators on grants and contracts. Grants one has to win to stay employed. Research scientists can work in universities, national labs or other institutes. A theorist or experimentalist does scientific experiments and computer calculations, as well as manage project budgets and people.\nResearch specialties can be in planetary science and astrophysics. A planetary scientist is someone who studies solar systems and also anything found in a solar system, like planets, moons, asteroids, meteorites, comets or dust. Planetary scientists are generally hybrid experts in astronomy, geology, chemistry, physics, and/or biology. Astrophysicists focus more on how physics is applied to astronomical objects like stars, galaxies, the interstellar medium, etc.\nAs happens to most young women she met a young man. Not having a lot of time outside her field of study to meet others, he was in the same line of work. Common to the nature of the course they didn't have control over where in the world they might be called. Still they fell in love and put the moon into service as their go to liaison. When finally able to co-exist the natural progression happened and now they have the crescent moon art work hanging above the crib of their own little asteroid. Maybe the next generation of moon gazer?\nNot into STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) like this little girl? Who she is is not important. Like the phases of the moon tracking across the night sky it is the career path she chose to make her astral dreams reality.\nLet's reflect upon the luminous moon of earth and all the meanings it has for humankind. How many volumes have been written in prose, poetic verse or song about the celestial body?\nImagine moonstruck lovers on lovers' lane gazing at the full serene moon making pledges to one another. He'll lasso the shimmering moon for her, get her everything she wants. They may sing to each other the moonlight serenade. Struggling once in a very blue moon after parting then longing over moon river to be in each other's arms again. Fighting the moon and the sky not to give up the relationship after trying their best. Finally running out of moonlight as they want to spend as much time with the other before they walk out forever.\nHow many have howled at the cloud shrouded harvest moon feeling wild and free? Or crept in shadows of the spectral moon looking for hope in hopeless situations? Searched for a sense of reality in a dream-like world under a paper moon? Shame blamed the moon for loss of innocence? Shot the moon when love changes like the seasons?\nFor millenniums everyone has been drawn towards the beacon at the window to talk to the man in the moon hoping he will understand how it feels to be away from the one they love or how hard it is to over come life challenges. Will he see the duality of human nature how the world often sees the worst in us? Can you hang your heart out on that hook of the crescent moon knowing he'll watch over it for you until you are ready to trust it to another?\nThe moon proves you do not have to be whole in order to shine. Even if only a slice is showing the whole moon is there. Just as it gravitates the oceans it can pull you to its ever beaming reflection of sunlight and tug at your heartstrings. If you are to love, love like the moon loves. It does not steal the night, it only unveils the beauty of the dark as it keeps its silent watch.\nEach of us is like the moon - cratered with imperfections and concealing a dark side. The moon keeps secrets. Tell it whatever weighs on your heart. Hang your troubles on the moon. It may give you a wink and float them away. It may cradle you like an innocent child and lull you to sleep in peace." } ]

[ { "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: Nine times I ran and the one time I got away\n\nGenre: contemporary\n\nWord Count: 1008\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story in which a character is running away from something, literally or metaphorically." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The first time I ran from you, I thought I was in love. We had just met maybe half an hour before, and I was late for a meeting with my English professor. I was young, eight years younger than you, and barely an adult. I broke away from our first kiss and ran so I would make the appointment. When the meeting was over, I called you to tell you where you could catch me. It felt so much like love at first sight.\n\nThe second time I ran from you, I was frightened. Not of you, not yet. We were on an adventure and the railroad crossing sign was on. I wanted to wait, you wanted to cross. You yelled at me for being cautious. You said I was a coward and stupid and ridiculous. I turned and started walking away until the horn of the train drowned out your words. Maybe if I was faster I would have gotten away. You crossed a second time to catch me and apologize for yelling. Maybe if you were slower I would still be whole.\n\nThe third time I ran from you it didn’t work. I needed to get away so I went to my job. My coworkers asked about the marks on my neck but you had decided to come by so I told them the marks were only hickeys, not bruises. Yes, I lied, I’m surprised at how closely they resemble fingerprints too. The excuses were already tumbling out so easily. You bought something every two hours on the dot so you weren’t legally loitering, just enjoying an eight hour meal. Eventually my coworkers stopped asking and you became a fixture at the only table that had the best view of the kitchen.\n\nThe fourth time I ran from you asked to run from you we were at a crosswalk. This is when I still had friends, and talked to the people who cared about me. They told me they didn’t feel good about you. The light was still red, but when I told you I wasn’t happy and needed a break I found myself in the street just as a car was speeding past. You told the paramedics I jumped forward all by myself and spent all my money while I recovered in the hospital. I told the paramedics I couldn’t remember a thing, maybe I did jump, because they hadn’t kicked you out of the room and I was worried about the scene you would make if I asked you to leave.\n\nThe fifth time I ran from you wasn’t able to run from you, we were married. I was pregnant. I don’t remember, exactly, what had happened to make you upset, only that you were too close and I was backed into a corner and your face blocking the open door behind you was the last thing I saw before passing out. I woke up with bright red eyes from burst blood vessels and a sore throat and told my mother I had thrown up a little too hard. I still don’t know if she believed me.\n\nThe sixth time I failed to run from you I had a baby to protect. My bag was packed and I had no plan but a list of shelters and three dollars for bus fare. You caught me. Of course you caught me. What was I thinking? I wasn’t smart enough to get away. I deserved the scar you put on my leg. And the cane you bought me was pretty, so I told everyone at work it was a hiking accident and avoided my parents. To this day I can only go as fast as a brisk walk.\n\nThe seventh time I ran from you it was court mandated. I pretended not to know who had put in an anonymous call to CPS. I told you moving back in with my parents with my baby was a requirement. I told you the lawyer was for the both of us. You were the one who ran then, once you caught on, along with almost everything in the apartment. I had just enough left in the bank to pay rent one last time so I could clear out what was left.\n\nThe eighth time I ran from you I didn’t have anywhere to go. You were on my front porch because you had run out of money. You were knocking over and over on a door I was so sure you could kick in if you wanted to. You were calling my phone over and over until I blocked your number, then you just yelled loud enough for me and all the neighbors to hear while I sat in a closet with 911 on the phone until a police officer scared you away. I lost faith in the power of a restraining order that day.\n\nThe ninth time I– actually, this time, I think we can consider it you running. From me, from life, who knows? You asked to see my child. I laid out a list of requirements I knew you would never meet, made sure the daycare and the school and my parents all had copies of the restraining order in case they needed to call the police. Soon after that, your mother called to say you were dead. I still felt like I was running. I looked over my shoulder and kept my child in the house and didn’t go anywhere just in case you were trying to trick me. It wasn’t until I had the death certificate in my hands that I felt like I could breathe.\n\nThe tenth time I ran from you it was only a dream. In my dream we were young again, not married yet. Except this time I saw you for who you were. This time I wasn’t afraid or ashamed to ask for help. The tenth time I ran from you, even though it wasn’t real, was the time that worked and I woke up feeling free." } ]

[ { "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: Heart Run\n\nGenre: contemporary\n\nWord Count: 2643\n\nPrompt:\n\nMake a race an important element of your story." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The story I’m about to tell you is absolutely true, nearly every word. In 2002, I suffered my first myocardial Infarction or what most people refer to as a heart attack. I was only 47 at the time. Six months later, I entered the 5K Heart Run. I know most of you might say it was nothing more than a fast jog, but for me I was running hard for my life…\nIt was late spring and runners from around the local area had gathered at the parking lot in front of the University of Alaska Anchorage Administration Building for the annual Heart Run sponsored by the Red Cross and Providence Hospital. This will be the fifth time I have entered this 5K run/walk, but it will be my first time wearing the red hat. Runners and walkers who have had heart problems will wear the red hat. \nStanding in the kitchen of our duplex, drinking my coffee as kids were eating breakfast when I felt a sharp pain in my chest. I grabbed my chest and called for my wife Amy. She ushered the kids next door where grandma and grandpa’s half of the duplex and then came back to where the pain had gotten worse.\n“It’s only indigestion.” I told her.\n“No, we need to go to the doctor.” She led me toward the car.\nI did not argue, but I figured I would go and let the doctor tell me there was nothing to worry about. \nShe entered the room where I sat waiting. Handing me a vial, she ordered, “Drink this.” \nI did.\n“How are you feeling?” She asked.\n“Still got chest pains.” I reported.\n“The ambulance will be here shortly.” She pressed a red button.\nI am not a runner. I am slow. My lack of speed kept me from being the first string on my high school football team. My job was to run and block the linebacker on an end run so the half back with the ball could run. I always got there A second too late and saw the linebacker demolish the halfback. Coach would yell at me. The halfback would yell at me. We would lose because of me. \nOne of the things the United States Air Force made us do was run A mile and A half to prove we were fit enough to serve our country. We had to complete this run in fifteen minutes. We would line up on A track with the sergeant holding A stopwatch and shout out, \"On your mark, get set, GO!\"\nI would finish this run with just seconds to spare, long after my fellow airmen who were standing on the side of the track with their hands on their knees. Si nce airmen is not gender specific, when I refer to that term, females are included, A fact which would draw some unkind comments from my peers. No matter how much I would run to prepare, I did not improve my time, not even by one second, but it got me to jog almost every day. By the time I was discharged in 1992, I continued running two miles with my Labrador Retriever, Jordan about four times a week in Armstrong Woods near Guerneville, CA. It was something I looked forward to, because we would run a two-mile loop through the redwoods. \nWhen we got done, I would take my inner tube and backpack to the shores of the Russian River. I would get in the tube with my backpack in my lap, grab Jordan by her collar and let her take me across the river where I would sit on a beach and do my homework for my classes at Santa Rosa Junior College. Surrounded by the redwoods along the riverbanks, the gentle flow of the river, and watching Jordan greet tourists who had rented canoes two miles downriver. No one ever expected to be greeted as part of their canoe experience.\nI put on my MP-3 player to some tunes I had loaded for this run. The course started around Providence and winds around a hill up to Alaska Pacific University which would be the halfway point and the end of the uphill climb. Seeing the small university had been a welcome sight in my previous 5K Heart Run experiences, but for this one, I was just hoping I could make it. The hill was not tremendously steep, but when you are running, it can really wind you even if you have been running regularly. \nI put on my red hat and plugged in my earbuds. My first track would be “Born to Run” by Bruce Springsteen. Clarence Clemons cut with his famous saxophone solo as I got ready. It was a cool spring day. A week before the last of the snow had melted, but there were still a few places where the last vestige of the icy snow still clung stubbornly to some shady wooded areas. It was a good day to run overall as long as the moose kept away.\nOver the intercom, I heard a voice in the speakers around the starting line, “Welcome ladies and gentlemen to the 2003 Heart Run. Please take your places at the starting line.”\nAbout a thousand participants took their places along the starting line marked by a paper arch with balloons attached. All participants had to pay a fee to enter the Heart Run with the money going to research for heart disease. It was still hard for me to believe that I had a heart attack six months ago.\n“You are young and fortunate.” The heart specialist told me when he entered my room. “Your heart has no permanent damage. As a matter of fact, other than the increase of enzymes, we had trouble detecting you even had a heart attack. You were lucky this time.” \nWas I? Both of my young children look at me as if I was an alien in a flying saucer. \n“You have to sit in a wheelchair.” Amy pointed.\n“I can walk fine.” I was a bit short since I was used to being strong and able.\n“Daaad.” My youngest daughter insisted. So I sat and let Amy push my wheelchair. \n“You have physical therapy.” Amy reminded me.\nSo three times a week, I drove to the hospital for an hour of physical therapy.\n“Please sir, slow down, not so fast.” One of the nurses scolded me. I was the youngest patient in the class of over a dozen men recovering from heart disease.\n“I can go faster. I exercised almost every day before my heart at---” I could not say it. I stood there as tears rolled down my cheek. “I will slow down.” \n“Ladies and gentlemen, on your mark, get set…GO!” \nOne thousand people of all ages moved in a wave as the Heart Run began. I was positioned in the back so my slower pace would not get in the way of the younger runners who would be finished before I got over the hill at Alaska Pacific University. \nIf you have never been to this part of the world, there is far more wilderness than people and there is only one highway. If you wish to find a place off the highway, you will need to fly into the village. \nAs I moved comfortably with the folks in the back, I saw the buds on the deciduous trees begin to sprout leaves while the knotty Alligator Pine intermixed in the woods just off the road appeared like gnarled gnomes guarding woods. After preceding past the main part of the University of Alaska Anchorage campus, the hill appeared. Some contestants were already finding the imposing grade a bit of a struggle. I drew in my breath as U2 sang about a place where the roads have no names. My sides began to ache for lack of oxygen, but I pressed on. Looking around, I noticed that those wearing red hats were beginning to thin out. \nWhat if I finished first as a red hat? I had never dreamed about finishing first. That was something someone else did. The hill grew steeper. It was getting harder drawing a breath. I kept up my steady pace, but I wondered how long I’d be able to continue.\n“C’mon son, I can walk faster than you are running!” The drill instructor yelled in my ear as I lagged behind the rest of my company. \nAs I struggled to catch up to them, now one hundred yards behind. The gap kept widening.\n“C’mon son, what is wrong with you?” He screamed in my ear. His beratement made it even more difficult to breathe. “I know I can walk faster than you are running!”\n“So can I, sir.” I managed to squeeze out, coughing as I spoke. \nI looked to see what he was going to say next, but he was gone. I had no idea that he had doubled over laughing at my response. \nAs I craned my neck, I still could not see the university at the top of the hill that was not only the halfway point, but the last of the hill that was nearly choking me. I had decided that no matter the outcome, I would be proud to finish the run just six months after my myocardial infarction as it had been called in my medical records. \nWith each labored step, I passed more and more people who had given up and started walking. I had promised myself I would run every step of the three plus mile run and mark the date with the word “completed” right next to my name.\nHuff.\nI can just about see the university parking lot halfway.\nPuff. \nSome people were already on the other side of the road on their way back.\nHuff.\nI wondered what would happen if I ran across the road and joined them.\nPuff\nThere were judges all along the route who would be watching for someone cheating like that.\nHuff.\n“It’s my third heart attack.” One of the patients at physical therapy confessed during a break. His name was Bruce and he had a daughter who was my daughter’s age. “You?” \n“My first.” I answered.\n“I remember my first.” He chuckled, “Do you smoke?” \n“No, I quit a few years ago.” I nodded.\n“Good for you.” Bruce smiled, “When I get done here, I get in my car and light up. Guess number four isn’t far behind.” \nWhen I registered for the Heart Run, I heard Bruce passed away from number four. \n“This is for you, Bruce.” I managed to say as the parking lot at the top of the hill opened before me. I was still moving on foot in front of the other. For Bruce and for all those like me who had encountered heart problems at a young age.\nLike my dad, George, Sr. who at forty-seven succumbed to congenital heart failure. None of my two children would ever meet their grandfather. I left with only my imagination on what a great grandpa he would be to both of them. \n“And for you dad.” I could feel my eyes burn with tears as I ran through the university parking lot. \nOne of the volunteers kept saying, “Halfway through. You’re halfway through.” as I passed her feeling suddenly very stout hearted as I continued through and out of the parking lot. \nA light rain began to fall as I started my descent down the hill behind the others. \nI had made it up the hill. The rest would be easier. I could feel the wind against my skin. I made it. The rest would be easy.\nBut it wasn’t. While the exertion of scaling a hill was no longer part of the run, the fact that I was still running was enough stress on my healing body. My legs began to ache with each step, but the pain of nitric acid splashing against my leg muscles was a small price to pay when I considered how things could have turned out. \nYoung children went flying by me and I began to feel somewhat distressed about this. Cars honked as they passed us. People leaned out the window shouting words of encouragement. News cameras were posted along different parts of the course. They would be reporting this event for their television stations, and I had to look good in case I wound up on the evening news.\nStill my legs and chest ached with each step I took. I was over halfway finished; I could not stop now. I could hear the loudspeaker at the finish line. I closed my eyes. Could I dare think that I was closing in on the end of the run? \n“Do you need to test?” One of the nurses at Physical Therapy asked holding out a strip and pin.\n“No, I’m not diabetic.” I shook my head.\n“Are you sure?” She gave me a dubious nod. \nI watched the others jab themselves with the stick to draw a drop of blood to put on the test strip sticking into a meter.\n“I do this every morning.” Bruce explained as he read his meter. “Crap, high again. My doc is gonna kill me.” \n“Mine too.” One of the older patients hooted. \n“Maybe we even ride the same train to hell.” Bruce laughed as he removed the test strip and tossed it into the trash container. \n“How are you doing?” One of the volunteers asked as I passed her station.\n“Fine.” I smiled.\n“Water?” She held out a cup.\n“No thank you.” I shook my head. I learned one time that drinking water can end up making me vomit when I run. \nA few minutes later, I am on the last leg of the run. I see people standing in the parking lot of University of Alaska Anchorage with their hands on their knees gasping for air. I would watch the evening news to find out a runner on a college cross country team had finished the run in first place. \nAs I approached the last part of the run, I noticed that I was the only runner I could see with a red hat on.\nMy wife was at home with the kids. There was no one waiting for me. It was alright; however, I had run the Heart Run for victory over heart disease. This time. \n“Congratulations, you’ve finished.” A volunteer at the finish line announced as she handed me a button stating it as fact.\nI finished. My legs ached, my chest stung and the rest of me felt as if I had been hit by a truck. As I stood there, I felt a surge of pride holding the small token I had been give.\n“Did you have fun?” A mother asked her young son nearby who was wearing a runner’s bib.\n“Itsokay.” I managed to say as she took a hold of his hand and they walked away.\n“Don’t lie, kid.” I thought to myself, “Tell you mom, ‘it was a total pain in the ass.’”\nIn the crowd, I saw Bruce wave at me. I stood there stunned for a moment before I blinked at the setting sun. Just like that, he vanished. I let my head loll a bit before removing my hat. I picked up a Sharpie from one of the tables and marked, “4/22/2003, Completed.” \nRecently, I went through some of my stuff and found that old hat. It had faded from red to pink and then finally to bleached white. I looked at what I had written with a Sharpie over twenty years ago, before tossing it into a garbage bag. Some memories live in your heart long after the souvenir is gone. Such would be the case of my Heart Run hat. \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: Tired\n\nGenre: contemporary\n\nWord Count: 1523\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story that includes someone saying, “You can’t run forever.”" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "“You can't run forever,” I heard myself say aloud.\nPhysically. Idealistically, nor emotionally. \nYou can’t outrun memories, feelings, regret, nor the past. \nThe past lives with us forever. It is who we are. Without the past we are nothing. Without the future we are never becoming. Becoming what? Well, that is the question. Can you ever truly become someone if you spend your life running? \nYou can’t outrun your problems.\nYou can’t outrun your choices. The best you can do is accept the consequences. \nKnowing this, and unable to heed my advice is something I can’t run from.\nWhy?\nWhy is it that I can't do what I know is right?\nRun, run, run. I am running?\nFrom what?\nWait?\nAm I running to?\nIf so, to what?\nAm I moving too fast?\nAm I moving too slow?\nMy mind is like a whirlpool, eddying in a chasm of doubt, and uncertainty. \n“You can't run forever.” I utter in disappointment. \nIt’s time to make a stand. \nI look through the window, across my well manicured, yet native garden, and beyond the rundown and crooked wooden fence into the distance. The future. No! The difference between the distance and the future, is that I can see the former. \nA light rain and a heavy mist leave me feeling pensive. \nWhy do I do this?\nWhy do I find reason to doubt my course? \nIs the life I am living not enough?\nI am married. Deeply in love, and am loved in turn. I have a beautiful child, and a nice home. I have all the material possessions that I have aspired to attain. No more, and certainly no less. Yet, there is a yearning that boils within. It impels me forward, yet holds me back. It entices me, yet I am forewarned. Scared perhaps. All I know is that I am not chasing things. Possessions, don’t please me like others. Clutter, physical and emotional, confuses me, makes me feel inadequate. I am chasing feelings. I desire connection. To whom or to what, and for why?\nI have everything. Don’t I?\n“Daddy.”\nMadilyn comes running into the room. Full of glee and happiness. Her smile caresses me like a soft summer breeze. “Daddy, look what I drew.”\nIt was then I noticed a piece of paper in her hand. I reached out, picked her up and she nestled in my lap. She held the paper out in front of us. It was a drawing of our family, standing in front of our house. \n“Do you like it daddy?”\nI smiled at her smile. I embraced her, and squeezed her tight. “I love it.”\nShe smiled, squirmed out of my lap and went running through the door. Running into the future. “Mummy. Mummy, daddy loves the picture.”\nThe sounds of happiness, and her little feet faded, and I returned to my pensive mood. \nMaddy is my world. She means more to me than life itself. Without hesitation I would sacrifice my life for hers. I have always wanted to be a father. Growing up without one was the motivation to be the best father I could. Not that I knew what that meant. Then, or now. All I knew was that love was at the center of being a good parent, and a committed husband. \nI have made mistakes, and I have regrets. I don’t trust people who say they have no regrets. Such a statement is brash, bold and ill-considered. I mean, to live, and have no regrets. It’s not normal. \nI have heard people say, I “I have no regrets, because I wouldn’t be where I am today without those experiences.”\nSurely, and this is purely a personal observation, you can feel proud of where you are, or what you have achieved in life, and have regrets. One doesn’t cancel out the other.\nThere are times when I wish I would have given someone more of my time. There were words I wish I never said. Actions, I wish I never took. But, my regrets don’t define me. No, it is not these I am running from, though I feel them deeply at times. \nMy childhood was bland. I grew up in a normal family. I was a boring child. As far as I was concerned my childhood was normal. I have always been emotionally secure, and thankfully have not suffered mental health issues. I have always been grateful for this. These are most certainly not the cause of the mild malaise which I find myself in. \nI am financially secure, not rich, but I have enough money to pay my bills. Even though things get tight at times, it is not this that has caused my current mood. \n“Hey baby.”\nIt is the sweet voice of my wife, Eloise. She kisses me on my cheek, and hands me a hot drink. “Thanks, babe.”\nShe sits next to me and holds my hand. We love to hold hands. There’s not a lot of talking when we do this. Our closeness is enough to remind us of our love, and I love her so much. She is witty, and sharp. Funny, and impulsive. She is everything that I am not. \n“Where’s Maddy?”\n“She fell asleep.”\n“She has had a big day.” I squeeze her hand. \nHer voice is at the right pitch and tone. She reads a situation well. Her voice is always at the right pitch and tone. “Are you okay?”\nI nod. “I am just thinking.”\n“What about?”\n“Us.” \n“Us?”\nI squeeze her hand tighter and return the kiss. “I love you.”\nShe smiles and nestles head on my shoulder. It is not this I am running from. As far as I am concerned I have the perfect life. Well, almost. I am searching for something. But what? Before I contemplate further I finally admit to myself the one thing that has displeased me for some time. Work. \nI left school when I was fifteen, and I am now hitting half a century. I have toiled non stop. I have rarely travelled. In that time I have established a life for myself, a good life, stable and secure, but I fear that time will pass me by before I experience the world as I should. Leave no stone unturned. Embrace every moment. The cliches have worn thin. It is time to make a stand. \n“Actually,” I say, “I am not happy at work.”\nShe squeezed my hand as a sign of her acceptance. “I know. I can read the signs.”\nI smirked. Of course she could, she knew me too well. \n“You can find another job.”\n“But what about the bills?”\n“We’ll be fine. We will make it work. We always have.”\n“What about the house, and Maddy?”\n“The house will be fine, and Maddy has us, so she will definitely be fine.”\nI wasn’t running from anything. In fact, I had spent my life running so fast that I never stopped to think about what I wanted. I just responded. I did what I was expected to do. I caused no fuss. I am a law-abiding citizen. I vote. I give back to the community. I am socially oriented towards others. I provided for my family. I pay taxes. But these obligations and more, had come at the expense of me. \nA colleague once said to me, “look after yourself.” \nI said, “that is the plan. I am my priority. That is my focus this year.”\nShe patted me on my shoulder and laughed. “You won’t last a day.”\nShe was right of course. Now, I am on the ve of returning after a well-deserved break, if I do say so myself, and I am anxious. I have never felt like this before. I don’t want to return. I want to walk away. \nI am tired. \nPerhaps, I justify to myself. Perhaps If I don’t do as much. Let loose of the reins and let someone else take over. If I can hide myself, then perhaps I can make another year. Yes, after some deliberation I convince myself it can be done. I made a plan. My plan is to say no. If I say no often enough then they will stop asking me. They ask because I say yes, so surely the plan will work. It has to. It must. \nWe stare out the window for a long time. Her closeness made me feel connected. It made me feel appreciated and wanted. Yet, like a volcano, I could feel the rumblings of a speech coming. So, instead of trying to run away from it, I waited. Patiently at first, and then not so. I didn’t know what she was going to say, but I knew it would be honest and to the point. I knew her thoughts would echo mine in some way, I just didn’t know how. Then, when she uttered her words, bodies settled into one another, and we stared through the window, across the green fields to the tree line, as the sun burned away the mist. \n“You have to make a decision, for you can’t run forever.”" } ]

[ { "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: Requiem for a Runner\n\nGenre: contemporary\n\nWord Count: 1008\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story that includes someone saying, “You can’t run forever.”" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Rubber soles slapped the damp pavement as heated breath dissipated in the chilled morning air. The fallen leaves had turned hazel underfoot as the last of autumn gave way to winter. There was no need for music; every step was the beating of a drum, and the shrill bird calls like a melody in this symphony of sweat and toil.\nFour minutes.\nAaron picked up the pace. His lungs and heart begged for mercy, his legs a slave to his mind. The world record for fastest one mile would be his and he would torment every fiber of his being to make it so.\nThree minutes, fifty two seconds. Nine seconds off the pace.\nTime.\nFrustrated, Aaron came to a halt at the street corner less than a hundred yards from his home and stopped his watch. He stood, hands on hips, and struggled to catch his breath. Three miles in under thirteen minutes was 13.85 miles per hour. It was faster than the majority of people could sprint for a hundred meters, much less five kilometers. Still, Aaron needed to reach a pace of 16.2 miles per hour if he wanted to have a chance at upending the world record.\nAaron placed his hands behind his head. His legs trembled as he sauntered towards their one-story, three bedroom home. His wife would be awake by now, and a pit began to form in his stomach as he approached the door.\nAaron heard the latch click as he removed his waterlogged shoes. He would have to try again when the streets were dry.\nIn the kitchen, sitting at the round oak table, was Melanie. She was wrapped in a snug robe sipping an oversized mug that read, \"OK, but first, coffee\". Aaron silently hung his thin rain jacket on the coat rack and went to pour himself a cup. Steam rose from the mug as it filled with the invigorating elixir.\nSeveral tense moments passed before Melanie asked, \"So, are we not speaking to each other again today?\"\nAaron stayed quiet, stirring a dash of sugar into his coffee.\n\"Are you even going to try to make this marriage work?\" Her words bit at his soul like the sting of a wasp.\nAaron furrowed his brow. \"Perhaps we could make it work if you stopped hating me.\"\n\"I don't hate you, Aaron,\" she scoffed. \"We've had a difficult few months; we need to work together.\"\nAaron couldn't even take a sip. \"How can we possibly work together? You've looked at me like a stranger since Jaylin left! We haven't had sex for two months, every conversation turns into an argument, and any time I show a hint of an emotion you don't like, you scold me like a child!\"\n\"Because you act like a child, Aaron!\" Melanie screamed. \"You acted like a child when we had a child in our home! I needed a husband! I needed you to be a man, not scream and curse at our foster son because he wasn't what you wanted him to be!\"\nHot coffee splashed over the ceramic mug as Aaron forcefully set it on the counter. \"All I wanted him to be was respectful! To respect you and me, to listen, to learn from us, to give a damn about what we were doing here! We were both miserable; at least I did something about it!\"\nMelanie's voice lowered, \"And you drove him away, calling him a hateful little asshole, reminding him of what he already knew–that he had no one.\"\nThe pain was palpable. Their faces were wrinkled with it. A despair deeper than death crept into that kitchen, its shadow choking the life from their souls. A faceless wall had been erected. Hatred indeed had moved in where love should be, but who hated who was more difficult to tell.\nAaron stormed out of the kitchen and once again put on his running shoes and jacket.\n\"You can't run forever, Aaron,\" Melanie called after him, and the door slammed shut.\nRubber soles slapped the damp pavement as heated breath dissipated in the morning air. Every step was agony. There was no rhythm, no melody, no symphony. A dense, eerie silence lay over him like a thick fog.\nFour minutes.\nAaron hadn't bothered to start his watch. This was just a run. It was what he was good at, after all. His parents had been runners, and they taught him well. Shame that he never got the chance to tell them how much he hated them for it.\nThree minutes.\nAaron made a left turn. A car honked. Wind struck him from the side, chilling his face. His breathing became rapid and his eyes burned with tears. She didn't understand. No one could understand. Melanie loved Jaylin, and truly he felt like their son, until he didn't. Still, she saw the best in Jaylin even when he lashed out, lied, threw things, and cursed at them. Aaron couldn't understand her love for Jaylin. What was worse, he couldn't understand why that same love was now absent for her own husband.\nTwo minutes.\nHis legs screamed for reprieve, but he did not listen. He could not hear them. His heart should have been burning with exhaustion, but he could not find it. Or maybe he never had one. He promised Jaylin they were forever. He told him that he loved him. Now he was a reprehensible father, an angry husband, and a liar.\nOne minute.\nFinally, Aaron came to stop on the bridge overlooking the river. He and Melanie use to come here, once upon a time. The days seemed sunnier then, and life was full of bliss. Or was it ignorance? He looked down several stories to the swift, rocky, and shallow waters. They were cold this time of year. He drew a breath, letting himself feel the crisp air burn his lungs. It seemed like an eternity on the edge of that overpass, the roaring waters calling out to him.\nMelanie was right, he couldn't run forever.\nTime." } ]

[ { "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 Slice and a Half of Apple with a Teaspoon of Peanut Butter\n\nGenre: contemporary\n\nWord Count: 2282\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about a character who suddenly cannot run anymore." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I have always hated going to the doctor. They ask too many questions, and they stare at me intently with kind eyes while I try to answer.\nThis appointment in particular has been worrying me for the last day, ever since the incident at soccer practice yesterday, when Eliza was tearing down the field during a scrimmage and I went in for a slide tackle, winning the ball, and instantly felt a sharp pop in my knee and excruciating pain shooting through my body.\nThe whole thing was my fault; I should have gotten to the ball sooner. I was a junior, one of the stars of my high school soccer team, and yet it sometimes felt like I was slowing down, losing my sharpness on the field.\nI had no idea why.\nNow I’m sitting here, my leg stretched out in front of me, trying not to hear a doctor tell my mom that I need to stay off my leg and that my soccer season is over.\n“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said out loud. They turned to look at me, surprised, as if they’d forgotten I was there - me, the patient, the daughter. “It doesn’t hurt that much.” It didn’t; I’d been walking on the leg all day long.\n“Additional injury to the ACL will mean surgery, and a much longer recovery,” the doctor said, her voice kind.\n“No soccer,” my mother said. Her voice was less kind and had more of a “you will listen to this doctor or else, Zoe” vibe.\nI nodded reluctantly.\n“No anything, really,” the doctor added. “Do you run?”\nMy eyes shot over to my mother, whose face was firm, resolute. I scrunched up my toes inside my shoes, squeezing as hard as I could. I felt like I was going to throw up, but that was impossible - I hadn’t had anything to eat all day.\nEverything was written on my mother's face. We were going to do what this doctor told us to do. Today would be the first day in over a year that I would not go for a run.\nThe running habit started when I was young and my hero was my dad.\nTwo or three times a week, he’d lace up his running shoes and shoot me a big grin. “Want to run with Daddy, Zo-Zo?” he’d say, and I’d squeal and run to put my favorite pink sneakers on. In the beginning, we ran really short distances, to the corner, and then around the block. But after time, when he noticed my strength was building, we started going for longer runs together.\nDad was probably jogging, looking back. He was spending time with me more than he was exercising. Like, I doubt he burned any calories stopping every twenty feet so I could look at a butterfly.\nI’m faster now, and I can run for ten miles without stopping.\nHowever, these days, I run by myself.\nThe next day, I tried to sneak out before school, but Mom caught me.\n“Are you trying to injure yourself further?” she asked me straightforwardly.\nI folded my arms stubbornly. “It barely even hurts!”\nThings with my mom have been weird for a while now - it’s been so hard for us to connect. I usually skip breakfast and I don’t like to eat meals with her and Leo, so we’re like two passing ships in the night.\nThat’s why it was weird when she knew exactly what to say to send me back to my room and away from the front door. “You're already missing soccer,” she said. “Do you want to miss out on track, too?”\nIt wasn’t a threat. She was worried about my recovery time, and she knew that, as much as I loved soccer, it was missing the spring track season - the most important season if I wanted to win any college scholarships - that would make me truly fall apart.\n“Fine,” I said icily, and I stormed upstairs.\nI felt shaky all morning. My teammates kept coming up to me and expressing condolences, which was weird because it wasn't like I was dying. Yet it also felt totally appropriate, because what sucks more than missing the rest of a sports season when you’re a high school athlete?\nHonestly, I wasn't even thinking that much about the soccer season during the school day. I’m sure my teammates were trying to figure out if we’d still be able to make the playoffs without me, but my thoughts were elsewhere. I was sitting in my classes, clenching and unclenching my fists, trying to figure out how people exercise when they have a bum ACL and can’t run five miles a day.\nThe daily running started a couple of days after Dad’s first trip to California.\nIt was weird. Mom told us that he had to go on a work trip, but the way she said it, I could tell she was lying. I'd heard them arguing sometimes at night. I remember racking my brain, trying to think if I had heard the word California at all in their arguments, but I couldn't recall it.\nWhy would he have gone on a work trip and not told us ahead of time? If not me, then at least Leo, my eight-year-old brother?\nIt didn’t make any sense.\nLeo started giving Mom a really hard time in the mornings. He wanted to call Dad, but Mom said it was too early in California. Then he wanted to cuddle with Mom in the mornings, which she said he was getting too old to do. Sometimes when I woke up early, I could hear him crying quietly in his room.\nI couldn't handle seeing him that way, or hearing him cry, especially when I was just as confused as he was, and felt like I couldn't help at all.\nThat’s why, two days after Dad left for his “work trip,” I grabbed my shoes and was out the front door before six, trying not to think about those long runs with dad when I was younger or wonder where he was and why. I left feeling heavy and lost, and when I got home I felt lighter - light and lean and calm. I skipped breakfast that morning and decided I would go for a run the next morning too.\nThe part of the school day that was probably going to be the hardest to get through was lunch. I considered going to the library to read a book, but Eliza intercepted me.\n“You can't just wallow in your misery,” she said. “You're still part of the team, and you still get to eat at the team table.” When I tried to protest, she grabbed me by my wrist and pulled me along.\nI never ate the school lunch, and I avoided the cafeteria whenever possible. And so, while I appreciated Eliza’s concern, I felt intensely uncomfortable with this change in my routine. I couldn't remember if I had packed anything in my bag that I could eat. My thoughts were racing. The last thing I wanted was to be around other people while I was eating.\nI follow a pretty strict diet right now. I’ve found that if I eat light, though with a little bit extra on game days for some energy, then I feel lighter and faster and more confident. Not everyone gets it, but they leave me alone mostly. If I am in the cafeteria eating, every once in a while there’s a jerk who makes comments, and then my face gets all red - but then the jerk moves on and the embarrassment passes and it’s fine. I’m not going to let go of that light, powerful feeling just to please some dorky sophomore who’s trying to get my teammates to laugh.\nI sat down next to Eliza. The other girls were already eating, some devouring sandwiches and salads and pizza, some munching on leftovers from their family dinner the night before. It all looked pretty gross to me. I took my time looking through my backpack, feeling around for what I might've brought for an occasion like this. I was relieved when I felt something round and solid - it was an apple, with a little packet of Justine's peanut butter, a snack I had packed two days ago, never eaten, and forgotten about. The apple still looked great, reddish-pink and fresh. Smiling at the other girls, I rose and went up to where the utensils were to get myself a plastic knife. I took my time, walking as slowly as possible, without walking so slowly as to attract attention from others. We got thirty minutes for lunch, so the more time I could spend away from the table, the easier it would be to get through it.\nOnce I was back in my seat, I set my apple on the table and used the plastic knife to slice a piece off. I opened the peanut butter package and squeeze a teaspoon-sized amount onto the apple slice. Then I lifted it to my mouth and took a small bite.\nI felt nervous.\nThe thing is, when I overeat, I feel terrible. I'm not dumb enough to think that I automatically gain five pounds every time I eat something I shouldn't, but my body will just feel heavy. It’ll feel heavy and I'll feel uncomfortable and anxious.\nI counted to 100 as I chewed the bite of apple and peanut butter.\nThat was the whole thing about the running. For over a year, I’d had a routine. What I ate was normal for a day when I ran five to ten miles in the early morning and played soccer after school. If I wasn’t running, I couldn’t eat like I usually did.\nI continued chewing, taking my time, watching the minutes on the clock tick by. I moved to cut a second slice of apple as slowly as I could, moving the knife back and forth as if I were sawing a piece of wood.\nThe bell rang before I finished cutting. Relieved, I took the apple and peanut butter packet, got up, and walked over to dump them in a trash can.\nWhen I turned back toward the table where I’d been sitting, I felt my stomach twist. There was a pair of girls whispering and looking my way. When they noticed me watching, they looked the other way.\nWhen I got home, the house was empty. Leo was at school until four o’clock, and Mom usually picked him up on her way home from work.\nAfter three total “work trips” to California, Dad had announced to me and Leo that his company was transferring him out there. They weren’t getting divorced, he assured us, but he and Mom were taking some time apart. He seemed sad, but there was a note of something in his voice.\nExcitement, I think.\nSo Dad wasn’t there.\nI collapsed onto the living room couch, gazing at the clock on the wall. I could have gone to soccer practice, but I knew I’d be tempted to run and play and my coach would tell Mom. It was three-fifteen. What was I going to even do with myself for the afternoon?\nThe house phone started to ring. That could only be Dad. Why we even still had a house phone was weird to me.\nI reached behind me to grab the phone. “Hey, Dad.”\n“Munchkin,” he said. His voice was sweet and kind, so I knew Mom had told him.\n“Yeah. It’s okay,” I said quickly. “I’m fine. I’m just going to watch TV or something.”\n“You know, I got hurt once,” he said. “During football season in high school. It - well, it sucked, Zo Zo. I’m so sorry you have to sit out. It’s not fair.”\nI considered this.\nIt wasn’t fair. Yet so many other things were worse. It wasn’t fair that Leo didn’t have his dad at school on Career Day. It wasn’t fair that Mom was stuck home with us while Dad was smiling in photos with some woman we didn’t know on Instagram.\n“It’s fine, Dad.”\n“I’ll come home next weekend,” he said. “I’ll take you out for ice cream. And we’ll go for a run, okay? Like we used to. Love you, kiddo.”\nI paused for a moment, confused. I hung up without saying anything else. I felt heavy.\nWhen I heard Mom’s car in the driveway, I got up and went upstairs to my room. I figured I’d do some planks, maybe some push-ups - maybe Mom would get me some weights. When it was dinnertime, I’d ask if I could eat in my room and do my homework, and Mom would say yes because she’d think I was just bummed about soccer. Then I could eat what I wanted without anyone commenting, and sneak the leftovers down to the kitchen later.\nWhen dinner was done, I could see if Leo wanted to watch a show on the couch with me, curled up under a blanket.\nThinking about Leo made me feel even heavier. I ran my hand over my stomach; all I’d eaten that day was a slice and a half of apple with some peanut butter. I had a protein bar in my backpack that I could eat. Maybe I could just eat half. Half, and I wouldn’t feel heavy and could hang out with my little brother.\nI sat on my bed, considering.\nI’d just skip it for now, just in case.\nThis was all so dumb. My leg didn’t even hurt that much.\nEverything was fine." } ]

[ { "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: La-Z-Boy\n\nGenre: contemporary\n\nWord Count: 2234\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story in which a character is running away from something, literally or metaphorically." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Gemma's dramatic wails echo down the hallway, the tinny sound carrying like a sharpened porcupine quill, direct and unwelcome. \nAvery sighs, glancing briefly toward the hall where his wife cries—with the same emotional gusto as when her pick on The Bachelor doesn't win, so there's no telling how upset she actually is—then back to the credit card bill on the table.\nHe pours a finger of scotch over ice, sinking his weary self into the old leather wingback in the darkened den. The contrast of the papers stacked on the low mahogany table is sharp, as if the five-digit number totaled at the bottom of the page, highlighted in red, underlined, with metaphoric flashing neon lights stating overdue, wasn't enough to capture his attention.\nHis phone lights up on the table with a text, illuminating the pages further. \nI made a mistake. I promise I'll do better, Gemma pleads from three doors down.\nIt was strange to him that she'd bother trying to hide the mail as if he wouldn't see the credit card damage when he went to pay their monthly bills online. Their fight was a tired one, and when he got home and found the statement tucked beneath a stack of catalogs, he couldn't even be surprised.\nWhen they bought this house, he told her it was at the max in their budget. But he was about to get a promotion, she reminded him. Admittedly, he wanted the place, too. It was big. Tall ceilings, great neighborhood. Gorgeous deck to grill and invite friends over for dinner parties. Gemma reminded him how good the place would make him look in preparation for the promotion. You've gotta look successful to be successful, she'd said. Dress for the part. Fake it till you make it.\nStaring at the newest credit card bill, astronomically higher than expected, so high he'd have to seriously consider bankruptcy, Avery couldn't help but wonder where all the money went.\nSomewhere down the line, his wife's obsession with wealth changed their lives. Social media, reality TV, extreme bouts of apathy he could feel radiating off her whenever she looked his way… whatever the cause, it crept up like a shadow in the night, eerily silent yet now entrenched them completely. \nHe wasn't totally innocent. He liked having the newest of everything. But he also just wanted his beautiful Gemma to be happy. \nYears have passed like this, finding momentary joy in whatever they could purchase. But Avery had to admit he couldn't remember when he'd last been truly happy. And he had no clue what made Gemma happy. Clearly, not more stuff.\nIce clinks against his teeth as he drains the last of his scotch; tilting his head toward the hallway where Gemma's TV blares, he notices her obligatory crying is now complete.\nEvery few months, he'd make some headway on their debt. He'd come home in a good mood after working seventy hours at the office, feeling like he could finally breathe. His doting, loving wife, elated to see her dear husband relax, would crawl on her hands and knees in the middle of the kitchen, suck him off while cooking dinner, and they'd celebrate like newlyweds. But it was fleeting, just like everything else. \nPicking up his phone, Avery searched the internet for advice on financial support and debt suffocation. His fingertips hovered over the keyboard, tempted to open a private tab and look up state laws on divorce before wondering if couples therapy made more sense.\nTherapy searches led him down a rabbit hole of click-bate, and when he discovered the words minimalist and then mindfulness, Avery Googled until he could no longer read straight and fell asleep, drunk and numb, in the old leather wingback.\nDays passed, and Avery began the surprisingly fast process of declaring bankruptcy. Only this time, he decided, when he dug himself and his wife out of their financial hole, currently filled with bigger TVs, the newest iPhones, and all the gadgets and toys they'd never need or use, he wouldn't tell her they were in the clear.\nMore weeks passed while Avery contemplated filing for divorce, going to work before the sun rose, coming home long after it set, living life like a corporate zombie. Gemma pretended everything was great, not-so-discreetly shoving her new margarita-mix machine in the cupboard before presenting him with a perfectly crafted cocktail when he finally got home past 10 o'clock one evening, too late for dinner.\nShe kissed his cheek, then disappeared into their bedroom to watch TV, and he sat in the old leather wingback, staring at the low mahogany table in silence. An alert on his phone illuminated brightly against the dark table, reminiscent of many nights prior when he sat there alone and wondered if this was all living had to offer.\nAn email came through, one he had to read twice to comprehend.\nDearest Avery, we thank you for your kind and very generous donation. Your contribution will feed many and assist in providing medical care for the local orphanage. We look forward to seeing you soon. Sincerely, Bhikkhu Anāyo. \nHaving no clue what the hell a Bhikkhu was, he had to Google the word, which only brought up more questions.\nIt took Avery several minutes and a lot of browser search history to remember what he did in a drunken stupor several weeks prior. \nHe felt a brief moment of shame for misrepresenting himself and his intentions but then remembered he was a little drunk when he sent that email. An idea began to form, and Avery smiled for the first time in ages.\n\n---\n\nThe Bhikkhu scurries across the hardwood floor, his robes swishing, bare feet gliding soundlessly. Generally, the middle-aged monk successfully rendered his need for efficiency to a quiet roar. Still, on occasion, he would forget his training and move at a pace best reserved for an air traffic controller or some other overly expeditious occupation. \nAs he approaches the chanting room, the low, vibrant cadence of his fellow monks filters out, reminding him to move more slowly; his steps come to a temperate stop just outside the door. Quickly—though not too quickly—Bhikkhu Anāyo briefly bows toward the front of the room, bringing his palms together, forehead meeting his thumbs, then stands tall, continuing his scurry around the room's periphery. \nThe familiar chant rounds into its last verse as the Bhikkhu kneels before the Abbot. The deep veneration ends, though the Abbot, Ajahn Bramāli, takes his time before bowing to the life-sized statue of the Buddha, offering homage. Only then does he turn to the Bhikkhu in distress.\n\"Venerable Sir, forgive me. The villagers have arrived.\" The Bhikkhu sits back on his feet patiently as the Abbot nods in understanding, but he makes no move or gesture. Bhikkhu Anāyo is used to this. Although, in another life, he had a job that required more sense of urgency, since becoming a fully ordained monk, he's learned to practice more patience.\nAnāyo wouldn't have felt any level of distress if it hadn't been for their fellow monk, Bhikkhu Thanāssa, who had been in terrible pain for several weeks and needed the medication the villagers brought for his toothache. His moaning kept the residents of the common room awake all night, but his death was not imminent; he was merely in great pain. Besides, even if his death was close, that is a certainty for them all, so there is no cause for alarm. But the late-night moaning was tiresome.\nFinally, the monks in the room gave the last of their prostrations for the morning chant and began their meditations. Out of respect, the Abbot waits until silence descends along the great hall, then brings himself up to a stand and follows the anxiety-ridden Anāyo out of the room.\nNavigating around the seated, now meditating monks toward the end of the great hall, through the next empty room, often used for lectures for lay people, the two monks emerged into the bright, humid sun. The rainy season had just ended, leaving the forest temple in a haze of heat and lively, happy bugs. Although the Abbot rarely wore shoes, out of habit, Anāyo slips on his flip-flops and follows the elder monk's slow gait down the steps to greet the outsiders. \nTwo men from the village—familiar faces, a set of cousins set to care for the monastery's deliveries by their grandfather who spent many years as a monk himself, though he recently died—bow respectfully, bringing their palms together at their foreheads before jumping straight into business. Ajahn Bramāli turns to Anāyo and tells him to find a few novice monks to assist, which he quickly—but not too quickly—does.\nWhile the men from the village unload the truck, Bramāli waits for Anāyo and the young novice monks to return before addressing the third man, who took his time exiting the small truck, overloaded with supplies, fruits, vegetables, and medicine.\nAnāyo was, after all, one of only three residents at the temple who spoke English, and judging by the quiet yet stilted conversation between the newcomer and the villagers, the man did not speak Thai.\nEventually, without further explanation regarding the newcomer, the villagers drive off, leaving in their wake a tall, lanky white man with thick dark hair and a lean, muscular torso; he was obviously unused to this type of heat, the monks observe, as the man plucks his shirt from his torso to fan the sweat now saturating his upper body. The tall man turns to watch the retreating truck bounce down the narrow road leading down the mountain. Anāyo and Bramāli wait patiently on the steps while the tall man shifts and fidgets.\nAnāyo has an inkling as to why the man is here, but after another moment, realizing someone will need to break the silence to help him along, the monk decides to address him.\n\"Sir, why are you here?\" Though Bramāli speaks no English, the translation from Anāyo is not yet necessary; the sentiment is clear.\nThe man reaches his long arm up, scratching the back of his head as if he's unsure of the answer himself. But after a brief glance at his surroundings, he responds, \"I'm sorry to show up unannounced. I was in Bangkok yesterday and got directions... Anyway, I spoke with someone several weeks ago who said I could maybe join the monastery. I sent another letter and a donation. I never heard back.\"\nBangkok was a full day's drive south of their temple, which was nestled in the lively jungle of northern Thailand near the Laos border. One would have to be told of the location of this temple. Though its existence is no secret, finding it is a feat. \nIt's possible the tall man will be welcomed by Bramāli, but the decision lies solely with the old, wise monk. Anāyo translates the man's request for the Abbot.\n\"Ajahn Bramāli says, why are you here?\"\nThe man almost repeats his first answer, then understanding dawns. At least he's astute. \"I wanted… I had to go. There's nothing left for me there,\" he says firmly.\nAfter translating, Anāyo turns to the man. \"Our Venerable Ajahn Bramāli asks you to recite a recollection of the triple gem.\" A man cannot simply show up at a Buddhist monastery and decide to become a monk, though Anāyo remembers this man's donation and his letter requesting acceptance as a novice. Still, despite his intentions, he must have some understanding of the Dharma, the Buddha's teachings. But the question trips up the tall man, whose white-knuckle grip on the strap of his backpack tenses, and he vigorously shakes his head.\n\"I can't recite anything yet. But this is what I want, to be here. I swear it. I can be useful. Look, I read all these articles on living mindfully, and I just need—\" The tall man begins recalling all the information he can about Buddhism. It's rudimentary, at best. A child's understanding. \n\"No matter,\" Ajahn Bramāli declares to Anāyo before sharing his next question.\n\"Ajahn Bramāli says, are you aware you will need to renounce your possessions and family to become a novice monk? Do you have a wife? Children? You cannot call them or be with them if you choose this path.\"\nThe tall man pauses a moment, then nods. He relaxes for the first time since arriving—clothes drenched in sweat, his obvious discomfort with the humidity, and his lack of knowledge, these things no longer matter. The monks smile when the tall man replies, \"I understand. I've already left everything behind.\"\n\"And when was the last time you held a broom, Sir?\"\nThe man winces sheepishly. Assuming the monks are speaking literally, he's ashamed to admit he couldn't remember. \"College? Maybe? It's been years. But I can sweep. I can clean.\"\nAnāyo translates, and Bramāli laughs at the admission. People—perhaps Westerners especially—think being a monk is all meditation and enlightenment. In fact, there is a fair amount of sweeping involved. The monks tease the tall man unbeknownst to him.\n\"Are you ready?\" Anāyo asks on his own.\nAnāyo wonders if he's imagining the selfish, insolent glint in the tall man's eyes. No matter. The other monks will cure him of arrogance soon enough.\nThe tall man stands a little taller, smiling tightly, \"I'm ready.\"\nHe isn't, but it's too late now to go back." } ]

[ { "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: Our boy\n\nGenre: coming-of-age\n\nWord Count: 1052\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about someone pulling an all nighter." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "“I won’t sleep tonight.” Audrey says, throwing her purse across the room and tossing herself right on top the couch. She goes crashing into the cushions with a smile.\nAudrey’s husband, Anthony, sighs, finishing up the dishes in the kitchen, “Why not, honey?”\n”Because.”\nAnthony chuckles, sliding a clean plate on the dish rack, “That’s not the answer I was looking for,” He says, “That’s not an answer at all, actually.”\nAudrey huffs, peeking her head over the the couch, face barely seen, “Because my baby’s gonna be on TV tonight. I can’t miss it.”\n“My sister said it’s at 3am, dear.” Anthony chuckles, drying his hands and turning the sink off, “It’s foolish to stay up that late. You need some rest.”\n“I didn’t sit by his side as he studied the weather for the past 20 years just to miss his first ever broadcast,” She grins, flipping on the television even though it was only 5 in the evening, “I will not chance it.”\n“Whatever you say.” Anthony chuckles, walking over. He leans over the far end of the couch, pecking his wife’s forehead, “I was going to cook some dinner soon. What would you like?”\n”Anything’s fine.” Audrey responds, gaze burning into the television.\nAnthony smiles, amused, “Or I can just order in.”\n“Whatever you want.” Audrey says, “I’m fine with anything.”\nAbout an hour or so later, the smell of Audrey’s favorite Chinese dish fans in front of her face as her husband places it in her hands, “Got your favorite,” He says, “Orange chicken and Teriyaki. Got you some noodles, too.”\nAudrey pecks his lips, looking at him endearingly, “You’re an angel.”\nShe finishes her food thirty five minutes later.\n“I can stay up with you, if you want.” Anthony insists.\n“Oh gosh, no.” Audrey declines, pushing him towards their bedroom, “You worked like a dog today. The office was busy, I saw it when I dropped off your lunch today. You’re exhausted.”\n“I’d hate for you to stay up alone.”\n”Go to bed, baby. I’ll be fine. I’m a big girl.” Audrey insists, nudging him the best she can despite her position, body stuffed into numerous blankets and pillows, “Go get some sleep. Who knows? I might see you when you wake up for work.”\nAnthony snickers, “Maybe,” He kisses his wife, “Goodnight. Call out to me if you need anything.”\n“Will do.”\nAudrey begins flipping through each and every channel until she lands on their local news. Her son isn’t on yet, obviously. But she decides to keep it on that specific channel for now. She didn’t want to risk losing it and missing her son’s weatherman debut.\nIt’s midnight when she labels her eyelids as droopy. She’s tired, yeah. But she sucks it up, rubbing at her eyes.\nShe rises to her feet 10 minutes later, carefully stepping along the hardwood of their kitchen floor as she makes her way over to the fridge.\nShe grits her teeth in a heavy cringe when the freezer door creaks as she tugs it open.\nQuickly, she swipes the chocolate ice cream, one of her favorites, from one of the shelves, sliding open a nearby drawer to get a spoon as she heads back out into the living room.\nShe plops back down onto the couch in seconds, popping open the ice cream tub as she scoops at the sweet treat. She brings it to her lips, letting it sink onto her taste buds.\nShe all of a sudden feels wide awake again.\nShe finishes the ice cream at 1:45am.\nIn the time that she waits and waits and waits, she’s sure she watches every possible news chapter. From stolen vehicles and murders, to riots about unfair prices in America.\nIt’s 2am when she yawns deeper than ever before.\nShe can hear her husband snoring from across the house. It’s terribly frustrating, but she laughs softly nonetheless, glad that at least she had her own personal alarm to keep her awake. A constant one, at that.\nIt’s 2:30am when she catches her head bobbing up and down in fits of much needed sleep. She blinks as hard as she can, television blurry as she struggles to keep her eyes open.\nIt’s 2:50am when subtle hints of the news turn to mentions of weather. Audrey just about jumps out of her seat, suddenly feeling just as awake as she did when she sat over here before dinner.\nShe can hear footsteps behind her, doors being opened and closed and a sink being turned on. She can only assume it’s her husband getting ready for work.\nSo, she— “Anthony!”\nHer husband comes running across the house in seconds, “Honey?” He asks in a worried tone, “What’s wrong?”\nAudrey covers her mouth with her hand, free one pulling Anthony down until he’s sitting next to her. She can feel her eyes get hot, vision blurring as a couple tears roll down her face.\n“Our boy.” She sniffles.\nThere, on the screen, was a picture of their beloved child, all smiley as he popped up right next to the woman who began to list this week’s weather.\n“As you can see,” The woman drags her finger along each and every day of the week, “It will be sunny all week long. With a high of 80 degrees,” She explains, “Steven Janet, a bundle of Sunshine, as his parents called him, looks down on our small town as his smile beams down at us just as bright as the Sun.”\nBig bold letters pop up next to their son’s stunning photo.\nSteven Reme Janet.\nJanuary 4th.\n1999–2023\n“I am the aunt of Steven Janet, signing off in remembrance of this beautiful boy,” The woman on the television says, “My nephew always wanted to be a weatherman, so Steven, my beloved Steven, continue to shine the sky bright for us, okay? I know you won’t disappoint us. I, your father, Anthony, and your beautiful mother, Audrey, are eternally grateful for getting to love you with each and every day we had the stunning opportunity to have you with us, and we’ll continue to praise you from here on out.”\nAudrey rests her head on her husband’s shoulder, sniffling, “That’s our boy.”\nAnthony nods, crying just as hard as his wife, “That’s our boy.”" } ]

[ { "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: Dog Day Aftermath: A Mike Dodge Mystery\n\nGenre: coming-of-age\n\nWord Count: 2991\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about a student reporter uncovering a university scandal." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "A insane amount of this is true, though nobody died…\n\nNovember 10, 1979\nIndiana State University\nTerre Haute\nWhen a poet laureate comes to town, folks just by god gotta know about it.\nOK, so it was the poet laureate of Illinois, a few miles on the wrong side of the Wabash. But Gwendoline Brooks had been named to Jimmy Carter’s Commission on the National Agenda for the Eighties (get mugged, call a cop; need a little vision for what promised to be a letdown decade, you want somebody who knows their Modernist verse). Besides, this was a university, so all poets welcome even without a hook, long as they’re willing to take potluck with the campus rag.\nMs. Brooks cheerfully indulged my half-assed inquiries about poet-ing and the quirks of my aging Radio Shack recorder. The Chicago poetess once taught writing to the Blackstone Rangers -- one of Chicago’s more incorrigible gangs -- so dealing with a technosocially awkward Hoosier boy was about as daunting as rhyming “cat.”\nI was no Gwendoline Brooks, and was struggling for a lead when I spotted Warner Barnett heading for my desk, sans Tab. The little prof usually had a magenta can screwed into his paw whenever he drifted through the newsroom running deadline traps. Unless he’d read the most recent research on saccharin and bladder cancer, Warner likely had something specific in mind.\n“You’ve been a busy man, Michael.” A manila folder was where the Tab should have been. “No complaints – you’ve really been cranking out the good stuff this semester – but this is the first time I’ve been able to catch you since Dr. Lloyd told me you wouldn’t be returning after the break.”\n“I’m not dropping out,” I managed. “I started electives my senior year at South – you know I’m a hometown guy. Thing is, I’m one course short – I screwed up on math credits, and I’m doing it by extension.”\n“You already have something lined up?” Warner asked.\n“Uh, no. I’m putting out feelers, and I feel like I oughtta stick around home.”\n“Well, I hope maybe this might help.” Warner dropped the folder next to the video display terminal that had replaced my typewriter. I peeked inside, and he grinned as I looked up. “You have a real knack for this. I’m here for any help you might need. Well. I’ll let you get back to it. We’ll talk.”\nI waited until Warner returned to his office to review the letter. “…Over the past two years, Dodge has shown true diligence, resourcefulness, and objectivity in discharging any assignment offered him. His writing is polished, and he is doggedly dedicated to reportorial accuracy...”\nSo empowered, I took a bracing slug of orange Nehi and returned to my MDT. Stopping only as I heard the nauseating sound of my Radio Shack chowing down on cheap cassette tape. Glancing at Warner’s closed door, I yanked open my center drawer, located a No. 1 Ticonderoga Yellow, and fled to the men’s room to restore the Brooks Tape and examine the envelope I’d dislodged from under the desk.\n**\n“So there was an envelope within an envelope,” Craig frowned. I flipped open the pizza box as the end credits rolled.\nCraig’s apartment was mid-point between campus and the home I currently shared with an older couple who’d conceived me some 21 years before. We’d hit up a nerdy friendship junior year, and a couple times a week, I’d pop in for a large with pepperoni, the 3:30 Bob Newhart rerun, and some shared anxieties to fuel or destroy my appetite for dinner with the folks.\n“An empty envelope,” I amended. “Looks old. And get this.”\nI handed him the larger manila envelope, cheap with virgin mucilage, yellowing Scotch tape still clinging to the corners. A blonde hair trapped under one broken strip.\n“5D5-68,” Craig muttered, squinting at the red inscription on the left-hand corner through his wire-rims. He shooed the burly black cat I’d never come to know by name. “Is that a serial number? Maybe some kinda government file number?”\n“Maybe,” I said, squeezing open the smaller white envelope. “There’s a faint circle inside with some flecks of black ink. Like the letter or something left an impression, and the ink was so heavy it pulled away when Cassie or whoever took it out. Like a logo or a crest. Yeah, see – you can see ridges or points or something around the circle. Like an agency seal.”\n“Five-D-Five -- sounds like a spy thing,” Craig ventured as his disgruntled feline abandoned the pizza for a fuzzy pink mouse. Cat squeaked the toy in protest. “Why you think somebody hid it under your desk?”\n“Cause it wasn’t always my desk.” \n** \nSix things happened on March 26, 1979.\n1) I had an evening shift at the Honey Creek Mall theater – The China Syndrome was still holding its own after a couple weeks, though Hair had opened just OK over the weekend. Hippies were passé, while nuclear plant sitings were up, but it was Monday nonetheless, and\n2) Nobody was going to the movies, anyway, because the Big Show was tonight. The 41st NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship matchup between ISU and Michigan State. In Terre Haute in the late ‘70s, that meant Larry Bird. Larry Bird v. a kid named Magic Johnson, no less. A victory parade was taking shape downtown in anticipation of our boys bringing home the prize. However,\n3) They didn’t, and Hell reigned on Wabash Avenue that night. The victory procession kicked off with the lead cop fleeing the scene as a throng of disappointed Hauteans performed a synchronized stomp on the hood of his patrol car. Windows shattered from Schultz’s and Baskin Robbins to The Gift Shoppe and the Fannie Mae, and a bonfire sprouted in the center of the parade route as the local rock station’s van blasted whatever went great with chaos. Meanwhile,\n4) Indiana froze over while Hell chilled downtown. Temps plunged into the negatives in a drunkard’s line from Indy to Louisville and from Ohio to the Banks of the Wabash, where Sycamore boosters were wreaking retail havoc over 11 lousy points and I watched with mounting panic as ice rimed and then framed and then laminated the plate glass flanking the box office. Because\n5) I had probably killed Woody and Bernie Barnett. At about 4, I’d released said golden retrievers into the fenced side yard of Warner’s snazzy south-side home, after witnessing a disgusting display of kibble-wolfing. I did a touchless tour of the premises, including Warner’s knotty-pined den, lined with photos of Warner with Cronkite and Huntley with Brinkley and other journalistic icons. I stumbled over a well-gnawed rubber Snoopy next to his desk, setting off a shrill squeak and upsetting a wastebasket full of dead Tabs and a stray Diet Rite (an at-home taste test?). I fled the scene even though Warner wouldn’t be back from his Indianapolis conference until Tuesday p.m.\nRoughly seven hours later, I ushered the last (and only) loser out into the parking lot and fishtailed into the night. I burst into Warner’s casa, and rushed to the now opaque patio slider, nearly dislocating my shoulder in the effort to ascertain canine mortality.\n“Fuck, fuck,” I chanted as I rocked the door, listened for Woody’s hypothermic whimpers, for Bernie’s desperate clawings. I scampered outside, ripping my General Cinemas blazer in a driveway move that raised a mean gluteal bruise. “Fuck, fuck,” I wept as I came up against the solid 10-foot fence that completely encircled Woody and Bernie’s icy graveyard.\nBack inside, I nuked a Tupperware bowl of water and located a Bic lighter next to the sink. Working the lock, the recess where aluminum met steel, I pled obscenely with the gods of lost hope. I heard a pop and jerked the handle, landing on my bruised ass as a wall of subarctic air took my breath. \nTwo shapes emerged from the darkness, racing about the yard in mutual pursuit. The first one knocked me back on my battered rump, and the second joined him lavishing on the stranger who’d dispensed Purina a few hours back. Then, Woody or Bernie plunged back into the night.\n“Get the fuck in here!” I bellowed.\nHe trotted back into the house, a black-and-white object in his jaws. He dropped his rubber beagle at my feet. I reached for the toy, but Bernie or Woody snatched it away and disappeared back though the door. Grief and relief gave way to semi-coherent swearing.\n**\nI didn’t find out about the seventh thing until the following afternoon.\n“They found her off the side of 63 just north of town, in a ditch,” Barry Hoffman noted glumly as he liberated a Grape Nehi from the Statesman’s ancient machine. “Car was about a quarter mile down the road -- they think it broke down and she was trying to walk back to the 41 ramp.”\n“It was like 20 below,” I breathed. “The hell was she thinking?”\nThe assistant editor shrugged – he was a man of few words, and had seemingly run through his morning allocation. He had to save a few for Cassie Cheatham’s obituary.\nI didn’t know Cassie all that well. She was very serious, and back then, serious people had very little truck with me. She’d sat next to me in Ethics of Journalism a semester prior, and we’d split the cost of a ream of yellow dog paper only the week before.\nI settled in at my desk, which was clear save my big green Selectric, my trusty Radio Shack and a stack of bargain cassettes, three or four stacks of very loosely related documentation, and the Robert B. Parker paperbacks I’d received gratis as The Summer Statesman’s default book critic.\n“Thing is.” Barry had followed me, and apparently was working on his word count. “Cassie left a message. Things got pretty fucked up last night, you know? Lisa came in out of the crazy to crash in her office, and it was on her desk. Cops got it now, but she wanted to show it to me and Barnett, soooo...”\nPhones were only for phoning at that point, and photos were made the old-fashioned way, with light and chemicals and time. Barry passed me a freshly developed 8X10 of a typewritten note.\nLisa;\nI’m heading home, and I won’t be back. Something happened downtown, and between the frat boys and jocks, stressing about finals, and the general insanity, I just can’t take it. Give Mike D. the story on the new bio lab – he’s good at that stuff. Sorry.\nCassie\nI glanced at Cassie’s desk, where a half-inch of pulpy yellow stock was stacked tidily next to her typewriter. I still had two-thirds of my supply. Barry gently tugged the photo back and retreated to Paste-Up.\nI was about 300 words into my own piece on freshman depression in when Lisa Stutz appeared at my shoulder. “Hey, Mike, you pretty free right now? Guess you know about Cassie, and Barnett’s got me covering all that shit that came down last night.”\n“Hey, whatever you need,” I said, too hastily. “You OK?”\nLisa shrugged – the emotional currency of a New Generation. She synopsized the bio lab assignment, and handed me Cheatham’s first draft for a second story, to “clean up.”\n“Only three things seem certain in life – taxes, death and finals. Several students offered The Statesman tips for surviving the pressures of the late fall crunch…”\nNobody was winning a laureate this week, though Cassie’s final story possessed a chilling irony on several levels.\n**\nAnd then, eight months later, Craig’s cat caught the proverbial mouse, and I pondered the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime. Quoting Sherlock Holmes was just one piece of the 500-piece puzzle that was my persistent celibacy.\n**\nWarner Barnett smiled, loafers propped on his blotter. It was time for that talk he’d promised, but not the one he expected. “The what?”\n“‘The Adventure of the Silver Blaze’ -- one of the first mysteries I ever read. Remember the night of the NCAA finals, the night of the Big Freeze, the night you were at that conference in Indy? There was a curious canine incident that night.”\n“Something happen with the boys?”\n“Not Woodward or Bernstein. Snoopy,” I clarified. “After I let the guys out for the evening, I tripped over Bernie’s squeak toy. Ah, in your den.”\nWarner blinked, but that was all. And enough.\n“So around midnight, I raced over to let Woody and Bernie back in. Had a problem with the patio door, but they were fine. In fact, Bernie ran back outside to retrieve his toy Snoopy. Which I’d locked inside the house about eight hours earlier. Somebody’d been there while I was at work. Somebody who cared enough to bring the dogs inside to warm up, but who knew I was coming back later. The Monday cold snap came up suddenly, so it makes sense you might have come back from Indy to spend the night in your own bed. But, then, why not call me at the theater?”\nWarner templed his fingers like I was pitching a story on counterfeit parking decals.\n“Maybe,” I stammered, “because you were going to come home all along. Why sneak into your own house? Maybe cause you were meeting somebody there. Cassie.”\n“That’s a leap,” the professor chided.\n“When I tripped over Snoopy, I knocked over your wastebasket. Which had three or four empty Tab cans in it. And one Diet Rite. I thought you’d heard about the Tab cancer thing, but I’ve never seen you drink anything but since. But if you were just going to have a girl over, why me for an alibi? Because something bigger was going on. Something that wound up with Cassie dead in a ditch.”\n“She left a letter,” Warner noted. “She was heading home.”\n“You know about the Oxford comma, right? People like you use a comma to separate all items in a sentence. In your letter of reference for me, you talked about my ‘true diligence, resourcefulness, OXFORD COMMA and objectivity.’ Cassie wasn’t an Oxford comma gal. Lemme read you an excerpt from her last Statesman story. Only three things seem certain in life – taxes, death NO COMMA and finals. And a passage from Cassie Cheatham’s farewell letter to Lisa: Between the frat boys and jocks, stressing about finals and finding a job, and the general insanity around here, OXFORD COMMA I just can’t take it. I think you came over here in Cassie’s car, typed that goodbye note, then dumped her. You weren’t far off the 41 exit, so you hiked back to the hotel at the bottom of the ramp. Then called a cab the next day in time to ‘get home.’”\nWarner reached for a pink can. “That’s four Ws and an H. Now, why?”\nI brought out the manila envelope, explained its provenance. “How’d it start? Cassie pitch some story on the old campus protest movement? Where are they now kinda thing? You turned her down, she wondered why?”\nWarner drained his saccharine bomb, and smiled sadly. “Never tell a reporter no.”\nI tapped the lower corner of the envelope. “I wondered about this blond hair trapped under the tape. I wasn’t your first dogsitter, was I? What did Cassie do? Poke around your den, find the letter? Then, what, blackmail you?”\nWarner grimaced. “She wanted an interview.”\nThat sat in the air for a moment. “And when she wouldn’t give it up, you canceled your conference plans, invited her to the house when you knew I was at work, and…”\n“Offered her a couple semesters’ tuition to drop things. She had the original letter and…”\n“The manuscript? Cassie’d gone halfsies on a ream of yellow dog a week before she died, but she went through hers a lot quicker than me. It would’ve made a great book, much better than ruining you in the campus paper.”\n“She wouldn’t take the money,” he answered, deflating.\n“I guess you taught her too well.”\n**\nWarner stuck around town after the cops tracked down his Indianapolis hotel forfeiture and put him at the Wabash Stay Inn Monday night. He opted to spend the rest of his tenure at the Terre Haute pen over chancing freedom as a traitor.\nI never found out precisely what was in his FBI letter, but a day at the campus library, cranking through The Statesman’s 1968-70 archive and stalking the history stacks filled most of the gaps. Warner’d celebrated his 10th anniversary at the university in ‘78, and the campus Students for a Democratic Society suffered key setbacks as the ‘60s took its tie-dyed bow — I suspected amid Hoover’s whackadoodle infiltration of the SDS and its long-haired comrades. SDS-68, not 5D5. Might even have been Cassie’s working title.\nAs J. Ed might have put it, get mugged, call a hippie; want a rat, trap one, grant it immunity, and release it into a nest of idealistic, naive J-school kids.\nGwendoline Brooks capped our interview those 45 years ago with a bit of doggerel that didn’t make it into the Sycamore. It wasn’t her own, but instead, the creation of one Smokey Robinson.\n“You want to hear the shortest poem I know?” Illinois’ Poet Laureate inquired with a conspiratorial smile. “Yes, no, maybe so.”\nMr. Robinson was simply tapping into those dual adolescent neuroses -- love and uncertainty. I’d realize eventually Ms. Brooks was talking a different kind of passion, that priceless uncertainty that would sustain and plague me over the next 31 years, on and off “the beat.”\nAfter all, she was a teacher first, doing what she did instinctively on a Cabrini Green stoop or a university stage or a second-floor bench in Dreiser Hall.\nDid I ultimately make the grade? Maybe so." } ]

[ { "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: Lightning on the Lake\n\nGenre: contemporary\n\nWord Count: 2988\n\nPrompt:\n\nStart your story with one or two characters going for a run." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "A drop of rain soaked into Erin’s cheek. It had been three weeks to the day since she’d stood, garbed in black beneath the beating sun, watching Henry’s family lower him into the ground. Not another drop had fallen since. \nBut now, thick, charcoal clouds pushed nearer as she tied her shoes, eyes flashing to the ring that had barely had time to make an indent. Her chest tightened. Was it more rain that dripped from her face to the still-hot pavement? Or was she crying again? \nThunder cracked in the distance. Erin scrambled with her laces and stood, fighting hard against the thought that the place she wanted to run to was back inside, under the covers. But beneath her comforter, there would be only stale, hot stillness. Out in the rain, at least, there would be air. There would be movement.\nSummer storms were wildly predictable in the Florida town Erin grew up in. Starting at the end of July, the sky darkened every afternoon promptly at 4:30 and a storm would spit and howl, raising an ungodly tantrum until 5:15. Afterward, the moss draped like old sheets over the oak branches, and each step raised from the slick grass petrichoric memories of summers past, of school breaks spent watching frogs emerge from their mudholes and snails slide over the saturated pavement. \nBut the storms had a different purpose now. \nErin stepped off the curb and began to jog. If she headed east, she would meet the storm head-on. Like most times when she ran after the blackening clouds, her mother’s voice whispered from the back shadows of her mind. \nYou shouldn’t run in a thunderstorm. You’ll get struck by lightning.\nAnd like most times, she forced the thought away. Starting down the rounding road, she kept her legs from taking her away too fast. They were used to running, having spent countless hours treading high school tracks and well-worn paths through this same neighborhood. But Erin was not the lanky, leggy runner she once was. Loving Henry had made her soft.\n“You know, you don’t furrow anymore,” her mother had said when Erin and Henry had been together six months.\n“What do you mean?” Erin had asked. \nHer mother had leaned over the kitchen table and traced her thumb along one of Erin’s eyebrows. “Furrow.” She mimicked the expression.\nThree weeks later, they’d buried her. It was pretty soon after that when Erin started chasing lightning.\nHer eyes filled at the memory, at the unfairness of it all. She blinked as the muscles in her legs pleaded with her to run faster. \n“Not yet,” she breathed. “Not yet.” \nShe made her way slowly along the suburban sidewalk hugged by hundred-year-old oaks, her feet padding to the rhythm of the strengthening raindrops. Thunder cracked once more, louder, and startled her. Her heart fluttered, and her legs strained to keep up.\n“Not yet,” she told them again.\nWhen she finally turned the first corner, her muscles began to relax, and she picked up the pace. She had to time it right, to reach the edge of the lake just as the storm was directly overhead. At this rate, she figured she’d make it. She’d done it enough times before. \nThree years ago, when her mother died, it was Henry who’d suggested she start running again. \n“It can’t hurt, can it?” he’d asked, rubbing her shoulders. Her head had sagged into her hands, elbows digging into that same kitchen table.\n“I can’t run,” she’d whispered. “It’s raining.”\n“Well, not now, but when it clears up.” He’d slid into the seat across from her, smiling the way he always did with his chin tucked in and his lips pressed together. The sweetest smile.\nBut her eyes had drifted from it to the window, and the flashes in the distance had seemed to beckon her. \n“Maybe I will go now.” She’d stood and turned to the hall.\n“What? Not now. Not while it’s storming. Erin—”\n“I need to.”\nShe’d fished shorts and a t-shirt from her overnight bag and stuffed her feet into an old pair of sneakers. Henry protested all the while, but, for some reason, it had only made her want to go more. \n“I wish you wouldn’t,” he’d said as he opened the front door for her. That was Henry’s way. He may not have liked it, but he let her go.\nThe rain had been so loud across the threshold, and Erin had felt unsure. But Henry hugged her. “I’ll have a towel ready for you when you get back.”\nRunning in the storm had been frightening that day. The wind shoved the rain one way, then the other. Her old shoes soaked up puddles and wrinkled her toes. The wetness had weighed her down. \nShe remembered reaching a fork in the road just as lightning flashed to her left, a shot of thunder quickly following. Her heart had jolted, breath catching in her throat. But something in her had come alive. \nHenry was right. This is crazy, she’d thought as she turned left. You’re gonna get yourself killed. Had it been her mother’s voice in that moment, too? Regardless, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she had to do it. She chased the storm all the way to the edge of the lake for the first time that day. \nThinking about it now, Henry must have been so worried. How could she have put him through that? Sweet Henry, who had been waiting for her, towel in hand, when she got back. Whose worrying eyes had betrayed the tucked smile he was wearing when he looked at her. Standing there in the doorway, just as he said he’d be. \n“Thank God.” He’d breathed the words into her ear with a choked laugh. Balancing on the threshold, storm quieting behind her, Erin had rested her cheek against his shoulder until eventually he let go, an imprint of her body lingering on his t-shirt.\nTwo years had passed since that day. Erin wished Henry would be waiting for her, towel in hand, when she eventually returned. But he wouldn’t. \nHer dad would be, but that wasn’t the same. He was a kind man—with twinkling eyes, Erin always thought—but when Erin’s mother died and Erin went to stay with him, he’d disappeared. The only signs of him were tools re-hung and labeled in the shed. Fresh roach bait in the corner of the bathroom, and grass that never seemed to grow. \nIt went on for weeks. And then, one day, he came back. It happened in the evening one Thursday after the casseroles had run out and Erin had gone to get groceries again. When she got home and popped the trunk, he peeked out from behind the garage door. \n“Let me take some of those,” he’d said, waddling toward her like a goose airing its wings. He loaded up and carried in the brown plastic bags, Erin following close behind with several more. She’d lugged them onto the counter and wiped a bead of sweat from her forehead. \nHer father stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her. She stood still and wide-eyed, then grabbed him. \n“Thank you, Erin,” he’d said.\n“For the groceries?”\n“For staying.” He’d squeezed her so tight, tears poured from her eyes. \nHe’d come back that day, but he’d left his twinkling eyes behind. \nA shock of thunder brought Erin back to her run. She had to make it to the edge of the lake in time. It was the only thing that would make this worth it. She continued on, focusing hard on each individual step. One and then another. One and then another. She repeated it like a mantra.\nIt had been three weeks already since her father had insisted she stay with him. She supposed she was the one who’d disappeared this time. The sun cast sharp rays through the window each morning and made her eyes water. Food pulled from Henry’s corner of the family garden made her nauseous. Every now and then she’d shower. Every few days she’d eat. But mostly, she slept. \nToday was the first time she’d run, and it was Henry who’d put her up to it. It must have been a dream for how real it felt. Erin was barely awake but saw Henry standing at the end of her bed. She bunched the covers around her face, refusing to open her eyes completely. If she didn’t, maybe he would stay there.\n“Hi, sweetheart.” His voice sounded different.\nHi, she thought, not caring.\nShe felt him sit on the side of the bed, and pat her arm. “You know this won’t help.” \n“It might,” she said, wiping her nose on the fabric in her fist.\n“It won’t.” Behind blurred eyes, she saw him shake his head. “Why don't you run?” It wasn’t a question the way he said it.\n“There’s no storm today.”\nThen thunder called her bluff.\nBut now that she was running, she knew she’d been right. It didn’t feel good. It wasn’t going to help. But the wind, the storm, the muscles in her legs, all egged her on. If she could make it through two more turns, she’d have a straight shot to the edge of the lake. She just had to give it everything she had. \nShe forced herself to lengthen her stride just enough to pull her around the first turn in good time. Rain dripped from her eyelashes and elbows, and each footfall felt like landing in thick mud. Her shoes caught on the cement and tripped her, but she clamored on and rounded the first turn.\nMore lightning flashed. Hurry, she thought. Her muscles began to burn, and Erin felt what little resolve she had weaken. \nThe second turn seemed ages away. A yard ahead, two ducks were hunkered down beneath the cover of an azalea. A mallard and his mate. Her mind sent thoughts she didn’t want to think. \nYou can’t hold his hand. You can’t see his smile. He’s gone. He’s—\n“Please stop,” she whispered between breaths. “Stop, stop, stop.” Her chest began to heave. “No, come on.”\nBut her legs ached, and she stopped. The storm raced on without her, and she watched it swirl ahead to the lake. Flashes lit up the sky, and she knew she’d missed her chance. She grasped her knees and sobbed. \nBy the time she made it home, the sky was clear. She sloshed into the bathroom, shivering in the air conditioning, and kicked off her shoes. As she turned the shower to hot, knuckles tapped against the door. She jumped. \n“You alright, Er? You were gone for a while.” Her father’s voice was quiet.\n“Fine,” she mumbled back. \n“What’s that?”\n“Fine, Dad!”\nA beat passed. “Glad you made it home okay.”\nErin sighed and stepped, fully clothed, into the shower. Layer by layer, she peeled off her clothes and slopped them over the shower rod. Her legs crumbled beneath her, head coming to rest against the ceramic siding of the tub, where she remained until the hot water ran out. \nThe next day, she didn’t run. \n“I can’t,” she said when Henry appeared again. \n“You can,” he said.\n“No, I can’t!” She chucked a pillow in his direction, but it surfed across the room and knocked a frame from the bookshelf. Henry was gone, and Erin buried her head under her covers.\nSix days, six storms, passed before Erin could bring herself to move again. In a daze, she knelt to tie her running shoes. Opening the front door brought the wet smell of an impending storm rushing in, and she felt a shudder of dread, anticipation, and a memory of those afternoons years ago when she’d last been to the lake. \nWith the bandage of days trapped in bed compressing her legs, she set out. She wasn’t going to get there fast, but she’d get there. She had to. \nThe wind was warm, and beads of sweat quickly formed along her hairline. Each step was a fight, a pain, a choice. But memories flickered in her mind like bolts between the clouds and urged her on. \nAfter a short time, the rain poured down and hung heavy on her, but she pushed past the first turn. Just one more step. She repeated the thought like clock ticks and refused to let her mind linger on anything but reaching the lake in time. \nThe second turn was coming up and the clouds were furious overhead. Her twitching muscles pounded harder as lightning struck, and the familiar thrill became a current through her body. At the second turn, Erin looked down the sidewalk, an arm beckoning her to the water’s edge. She couldn’t hold back today; she needed to get there, to see it. \nHer clothes clung like saggy skin as she powered across each square of cement. Thunder tore at the sky. The lake was growing near. The thought, the inkling that she might make it, that she might see it again, constricted her throat. She began to sob, her breaths turning ragged. Clouds converged over the water. Twenty more squares, fifteen, ten, five… \nHer feet left the concrete for grass which melted quickly into soft, brown earth. She stopped and grasped her legs, her back rising and falling. The storm churned the lake like a giant washer, and Erin imagined diving below the surface, floating to the top in the very center of the lake to watch from below the spectacle that was about to appear. She wished she could let the water push her side-to-side until she emerged on the shore again, clean and new beneath a clearing sky.\nShe jogged her weary legs along the shallow beach until she was hidden from view by the sprawling oaks and cypress trees. The suburb disappeared and so did Erin, as she squatted to sit on an old tire several yards from the water’s edge. She hugged her knees to her chest and scanned the sky, chewing her bottom lip. \nCome on, come on, come on, please, she prayed.\nThen thunder crashed and the clouds twirled overhead until the entire sky was moving counter-clockwise. At the center, a single spot of lightning cast across the clouds. Erin’s breath caught. It happened again, several times, encasing the lake in white light. The rain slowed as staccato bolts tapped the water like fingertips on a piano. Note after note tore down and undulated across the water. The melody resonated somewhere deep between Erin’s chest and her stomach, somewhere, at all other times, unreached. Its chords, like the strips of light, rippled outward from her arms and legs as if beckoning her to join. \nTears flowed freely from her eyes, but she did not feel sad. She did not feel heavy. Thoughts did not burden her. Each bolt sang; each clap awakened her to something present yet utterly untouchable. Flash by flash, she felt a stir; web by web, a sense of peace.\nThe bolts came faster, the thunder louder, the wind harsher, the waves higher—\nAnd then, just as quickly as the scene arrived, a final web of lightning cast itself out across the neighborhood and vanished. The sky began to shift, and the rain softened to a drizzle.\nErin remained, eyes glazed toward the water, hoping maybe this time there would be an encore. But within moments, the brightening sky brought back the thoughts she’d sought reprieve from. With great effort, she set her feet on the sand and stood. She stared deep into the dark water, willing herself not to sit back on that lonesome tire.\nTurning away was agony. Each step toward home felt slower than the last. But all the same, Erin was aware that somewhere in that deep, unreached place, a sense of lightness had broken in. Dimmer than it had been by the lake, but still there. She’d realized that afternoon two years ago, when she’d first seen the lightning dance on the lake, that something had been birthed within her. It swelled during the storms and receded between them, but was never fully gone. And it called her back to the shore, to a refuge during days too dark to see through.\nWhen she arrived home, the house was quiet. She showered, wrapped her hair in a towel, grabbed a clean pair of clothes, and found her father reading on the back porch. She sat beside him, tucking her legs up and resting her toweled head on his shoulder. \n“You were gone a while.”\nErin breathed in deep and let the air out slow. “It helped. Today at least.”\nHe kissed her on the forehead. “I hoped it would.”\nThe next day, Erin ran again, and the day after that too. She missed the storm on days when her legs were too heavy and her arms couldn’t pump. In the mornings, she cursed the hours she had to spend waiting. When missing Henry consumed her, she skipped days, longing for him to appear again and pat her arm and tell her to run. But he didn’t. Then on days when he stirred her from coveted sleep, she wept and thrashed and cursed him for doing this to her. \nHer father, meanwhile, never asked her how she was doing. He didn’t hover nearby or make her feel like she had to sit for dinner or clean the dishes. But she did notice a towel waiting for her in the foyer after her runs. The vase in her room held hydrangeas that never wilted. Shriveled tubes of toothpaste fattened, and dirty running clothes turned clean and dry. \nAnd her father, who didn’t know what else to do, would every few days step into her room just before 4:30 in the afternoon and sit on the side of the bed, patting her arm. \nWhy don’t you run, he’d say. It was never a question." } ]

[ { "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: 346a\n\nGenre: coming-of-age\n\nWord Count: 2627\n\nPrompt:\n\nStart your story with a student discovering a hidden room in a university library." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Like a true nerd, Rue was caught up in her pysch textbook and had lost all track of time. #easily distractible. She cursed as she looked at her watch. And cursed again for good measure. She crammed the volume in her backpack and threw it over her right shoulder where it thumped heavily against her back and sprinted for the library doors. #lateforworkagain. She had found a grassy spot in the sunshine and was soaking up some Vitamin D while exploring the vast expanse of the human brain. Rue had been promised that her general ed classes at uni would help narrow her field of interest and put her on track for graduation. But it hadn’t helped at all. #impossibletopickamajor.\nRue was now in her second semester, and she was falling in love with every class she took: psychology, human development, human physiology, English, and history. She even fell in love with the bowling class she had taken for her phys ed credit. She could pop into the bowling alley in the student union building and finish three games between classes. How was she going to decide? #biggestdecisionofherlife. \nShe loved her job at the library (#studentjob.) because it gave her time to study but also gave her time to wander the stacks and pull books that looked and sounded interesting to her. She would pull a weathered book from the shelves and flip through its pages making mental notes about the facts the author had decided to put in permanent ink for future explorers. She wondered how long it had been since someone had picked up this particular book from this exact shelf. Who stood in this location last and held this tome in their outstretched hands and why had they come? What had they found? What was their story? \nRue’s boss Charlene, who hated her own name from the day she heard it, was near the front desk when she arrived, ran to her with arms outstretched. Char was the only one that Rue let hug her. #huggingsucks. Rue stood stiffly while the thirty-something, think-out-of-the-box, pink-haired library science graduate threw her arms around her and held on for about eight seconds too long. “You came back!”\n“Hi Char. Of course, I came back. I belong here.” Rue laughed, “What would you do without me?”\n“Exactly. I never know if the students will put up with me for a second semester! Each university is only allowed one crazy lady and that is why they hired me!” she said pointing at herself. “They told me my student was coming and I worried I had been stood up.”\n“Yeah, sorry about that. I got caught up…”\n“No worries. I’m excited it is you and now I don’t have to train anyone! You know where to put your bag and your list is on the counter.”\n“Cool.” #coolbossesrock\n“Have you nailed down a major yet?” Char knew Rue all too well from the nights they had talked clear up until closing the library at 11 p.m. and sometimes late after that. Char felt like a sister she could talk to about things.\nRue rolled her eyes. “Of course not. I gotta do that. And soon. I’ve got it narrowed to three or four. Maybe revelation will hit soon.”\n“And library science is one of them, right?” Char laughed.\n“Well…” Rue hedged. “While I love it here…. I don’t know if I could live here like you do. I hear that long exposure to books make your hair go pink.” she teased.\n“Oh. Low blow. Don’t make me take away your library card! You’d be desperate without this place.”\nRue laughed but there was a little bit of truth in it. When she wasn’t outdoors or in class, she was usually at the library. One roommate had told her she smelled like books. Rue took that as possibly one of the greatest compliments of her life. She couldn’t stand the dorm and all the roommate drama. She was only there to sleep at night, and she often did much of that other places on campus. #thedormlife \n“Oh, and here’s your keys. And because you’re second semester and undecided about your future, you get this key.” Char unlocked the bottom drawer of her desk and handed Rue an additional key to put on the ring that held the key to the restrooms, one for special collections, one for the proctored testing rooms and one for the glass front doors. She hadn’t heard of any other keys last semester.\n“What’s this?” She held up the key. It had 346a stamped on it.\n“You’ll find out. It might help.” She smiled and threw back her pink hair. “Let me know how it goes.”\n“You aren’t going to tell me?”\n“Nah. You’ll find the out and then you’ll feel as crazy as I am.” Char grabbed a stack of books from her desk, piled on a file of papers and wrapped her water bottle handle around a couple of fingers and steadied the pile with her chin. “Let me know if you have questions on the list. I’ll be in setting up for a guest lecture in 241 for the Native American symposium.” She echoed as she walked off. “Oh. Just remember that a snap of your fingers can always help you out.\nGlad to have you back Rue!”\nRue grabbed the list off her desk and put the keys in her pocket. She thought she knew the library inside and out and the thought of the key distracted her while she finished the tasks that Char had left for her. She took a break in the middle of the list to find the book section 346 in the Dewey decimal system. It was private law. 346a was a section on Neighborhood Law: Fences, Trees, Boundaries and Noise. That can’t be it. By the time she had finished the list a few hours later, she had determined that the key must be to a room on the third floor. She left a note on Char’s desk about the list she had completed, and she took the stairs two at a time up to the third floor to see if she could find a room number that matched the key.\nMost of the third floor was stacks for the general collection and private study desks. Rue put her cell phone on silent just to be sure. She started with the south end of the third floor on the east side and made a loop past a portion of the general collection which was quiet with only one dark haired student hunched over his laptop with his laptop in his earphones (#Bosebarracuda.). It was now almost 9 o’clock so the Office of Undergraduate Research was closed and dark; she passed the Special Collections Closed Stacks which are key card entry only – she needed Char to get in that section; two glass-encased classrooms were spilling out students who looked glazy and ready to go home; and the Honors department where a student aid was locking up. The Honors department door had a 320 in vinyl on the glass.\nRue crossed the gap to the north end of the third floor. She knew that most of the north end of this floor was made up of the general collection of books but on the east side there was a set of restrooms and some small rooms for faculty research. She walked over to confirm. Past the faculty carrells was an unmarked white door that was locked. It didn’t have a number on it at all. This must be it! She tried to put the key in the lock, but it would not even slide in the lock. #epicfail. She sighed. She shook the handle of the door as if it would open out of sheer will. It did not. She would keep looking. She didn’t think Char would give her any clues even if she asked.\nChar was mom-like in that way.\nShe circled past more students at private desks and mostly open tables. The proctored testing rooms were just ahead of her. There was nothing behind those except a set of stairs down to the second floor and another set of restrooms. She started back toward the center of the room and decided to check one more place. The farthest west wall of the large third floor was lined with more student desks behind the vast general collection, but she decided to look one more time. The automatic lights had dimmed because no one had wandered through in the allotted minutes before they dimmed as an energy saver. There was a corridor of empty study desks against the west wall of the building but at the far end was an unmarked door in a dim alcove. Why had she never seen it before?\nShe walked both quickly and cautiously to it.\nRue still had the key in her hand from the last attempt. It slid like butter into the awaiting lock. She took a breath and turned the key. The handle turned in her grip. And she stepped inside.\nRue looked down and instead of her torn jeans and V-neck sweater, she was standing behind a table in a pencil skirt and Nordstrom jacket with her hair pulled back in a tight bun. There was a line of people standing in front of her waiting with impatient excitement. A dark-haired man was standing behind her holding a chair waiting for her to sit down. The table was covered in sharpie pens and a stack of books on either corner. She picked up the book and read the title: Inescapable by Rue Buchannan.\nIt was her name! She looked around her. She was in a bookstore. There was a sign behind her that read: Powell’s City of Books welcomes bestselling author Rue Buchannan! Writer of the Carolyn Church series. #isthismyfuture?\nHer mind was suddenly filled with the plots of all six of her books. Her novels were climbing the New York best-seller list with impressive speed for a new writer on the market. The dark-haired man to her right was her boyfriend of two years, Erik. He had taken time off work to take her to her book signing in Manhattan. She took the chair he offered and gave him a kiss. “Thanks, hon.” She grabbed the nearest sharpie and said hello to the first person in line with a deep blush but a powerful feeling of relief that she was a success. “Who should I make it out to?” And she began scribbling her name on the title page.\nShe was working her way through the line of people. Answering their questions and signing the books they had purchased. Some with the entire series. One woman insisted on hugging her as she told her the story of her daughter, with tears in her eyes, and how the books had given her courage to get out of an abusive relationship. Rue’s hand was cramping her and ability to be chatty with these strangers was waning when Char’s words came to mind. She snapped her fingers and just as suddenly as it had begun, she was standing outside the unmarked door of 346a with key in hand.\nRue had no idea how much time had passed. Had she been standing in a view of her own future? What kind of magic was this? Clearly Char new the room’s power.\nShe pulled her cell phone from her pocket. Only minutes had passed.\nIf she went in again, would she be in the same bookstore again? She looked around her. She was back in her jeans and sweater. There were no other students in sight. The lights had dimmed again in the stacks.\nShe slid the key in the lock and turned.\nRue was not in a bookstore. She was no longer in a pencil skirt and a tight bun. She was in blue scrubs. Her feet were aching, and her stomach was growling with hunger. Her hair was falling out of the makeshift ponytail in large sections that were touching her face and tickling her neck. She was standing beside a hospital bed and the young girl lying there had huge brown eyes filling with tears. As it had taken a moment to upload like her novel series, suddenly the files were there, and she knew she had been on shift now for fourteen hours and the tiny person in the blue speckled gown was Emilia and she was having surgery today on her neuroblastoma. #childrenscancerwing.\nRue sat down beside the bed. “Hi Big Girl, are you ready for surgery today?”\nEmilia’s tears tumbled down her face and she shook her head.\n“I know you are scared. You are very brave! Nurse Jenn will be in soon. She will put an IV in your arm, they will wheel you down to your surgery and you will be able to sleep through the entire thing! I promise you won’t feel a thing. And tomorrow, I will meet you here and you will tell me about the entire thing! Okay?” Emilia nodded. But the tears continued to fall. “And I will have you a surprise waiting for you when you return. Or should I just show you now?”\nEmilia smiled weakly and nodded. Rue pulled a bag out from underneath a bed and handed it to the little girl. She pulled out the stuffed animal and hugged it tightly. Rue left it on her bedside table as they pushed her bed toward Operating Room #6. Rue snapped her fingers.\nShe was back in the library in her jeans. She could still feel the ache of the hospital wing. She had been elated after the book signing. But her work at the hospital had felt real and worthwhile.\nRue didn’t feel like she could leave it there. She had time to go one more time. She had one more lingering question. She put the key in the lock and turned it a third time.\nShe was standing on the front porch of a home as the rain pounded on the sidewalk beside her. She was standing there in her black cargo pants, dark shirt with her name beside the logo for the Crime Scene Investigation team of Chicago. The police were crawling in their various squad cars that were parked in the street and in the driveway. They had cleared the home. The ambulance was transporting the victim to the nearest hospital and the perpetrator to the police station.\nIt was time for her team of investigators to go in and gather the evidence. She grasped her camera firmly in her right hand. Rue was always on photography because she had an unmatched gift of turning off all emotion. When a job had to be done, she could engage a focus which didn’t allow her to breakdown even in the darkest crime scenes. Stone Cold Buchannan they called her.\nShe knew if she was careful, the evidence she gathers could put away the perp for a long time. She took several pictures before snapping her fingers to return to the present.\nThis time Char was standing outside room 346a when she returned. She was leaning against the first stack of books nearest the room.\nRue just looked at her. “What was that?!”\n“What did you see?”\nRue took the key off her ring and handed it to Char. “Exactly what I needed to.”\n“And?”\n“And I know what I’m going to do.”\nChar hugged her with fervor. Rue’s face was buried in her pink hair. And they laughed together.\nChar looked over her shoulder as she logged on and submitted her major. #choosingmyfuture\nRue was sure that this was the future she wanted." } ]

[ { "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 first 'meet cute'\n\nGenre: coming-of-age\n\nWord Count: 2857\n\nPrompt:\n\nSet your story during exam season, when tensions run high and a minor incident sends your protagonist into a panic spiral." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Rachel was ridiculously relieved when at last she saw the signs on the motorway for Bath. She wasn’t clueless behind the wheel but had found herself turning off prematurely a few times on the journey from Cornwall. When she felt completely lost, she’d had to park up somewhere to reset, look at the map, grab a coffee, quick wee break and then chant quite a few positive mantras mostly to help her stay awake for the last few miles ‘Come on Rachel, stay awake, almost there.’\n\nIn recent years, Rachel and her best friend from college, Fiona or ‘Fi-Fi la belle’ as she liked to be referred to during those years, had made a firm commitment to each other that no matter what, they had to dedicate one weekend away together each year for the rest of their lives. They both felt they’d been a bit more adventurous in their twenties and thirties with various weekend trips to Italy and Spain. Rachel wasn’t sure if it was the arrival of small children that had impacted their decision to increasingly stay not too far from home or the slow descent into menopause and the related fatigue, but a quiet weekend surrounded by beautiful roman architecture seemed like just the tonic they needed.\n\nAs she approached the entrance to the hotel, there was something about the last bit of light over the beautiful city that made Rachel feel nostalgic and think of her college days with Fi.\n\nAs she entered the reception to the Georgian boutique hotel, she said to the concierge, ‘I think my friend has already arrived. Mrs. Christopher’s? She text me to say she’s in room 25.’ \n\n‘Of course, Madam, I’ve given her both cards to your room. Hope you have a lovely stay.’ \n\n‘Knock knock, it’s Maud.’ She said with a voice of an octogenarian. Are you decent or will I find a naked man in there?’\n\nFits of giggles ensued ‘Goodness she really used to say that didn’t she? I don’t blame her though. Can you imagine what our poor scout must have been witness to?’ Maud had been one of the more understanding scouts at college and the girls giggled at the thought of the horrendous scenes she must have encountered especially during fresher’s week.\n\n‘Come here darling’ Rachel was greeted in Fiona’s typical way. She always started laughing before anyone had said anything which always lightened the mood in whatever setting. She did always sound as if she was recovering or on the brink of a cold. \n\n‘God Fi, you look amazing, but you sound awful.’\n\n‘I blame the feral things.’ \n\nOn this occasion, she was referring to the children in her primary school class. Since graduating and after a stint of travelling, Fi seemed to have landed herself the most amazing ‘teaching’ roles in prestigious private schools in Surrey where she didn’t seem to do much teaching and always seemed to develop a totally inappropriate relationship with the headmaster. She got away with murder as a result.\n\n‘What’ve you got away with this term?’ \n\n‘Well, I sort of crashed the school bus into the Bursar’s jag but it’s all been smoothed over now. Mr Boodle did call me into his office but this time didn’t ask me to sit on his knee.’ \n\n‘Oh you are hilarious Fi. None of this hashtag MeToo movement at your school by the sounds of it.’\n\n‘Of course not, utter bollocks anyway.’ \n\n‘How are you sweetie? How was the drive from Cornwall?’ \n\n‘Not too shabby. Only turned off the motorway incorrectly three times this time.’ \n\n‘Well, some Prosecco will settle your nerves. I’ve got a bottle chilling and ready for us. Thought we could have some while getting ready for dinner and our night on the town.’ \n\n‘Sounds wonderful. It’s so good to see you.’ \n\n‘So good to see you too. How are the fam-a-lam?’ \n\n‘Fine. Probably wondering where their slave has gone. Will be good for them all.’ \n\n‘Cheers’ as they both toasted. \n\n‘Right, what have you brought to wear?’ \n\nAs Fiona held up her beautiful black halter neck dress, Rachel couldn’t help herself. \n\n‘Oh, my goodness, didn’t you wear that to our fresher’s ball at college? \n\n‘I did indeed. Thought a bit of nostalgia may be in order this weekend.’ \n\n‘Oh yes please. We’re going to need more prosecco.’ \n\n‘And look what I brought with me…’ Fiona pulled out a really large photo album with ‘The college days’ on the front. \n\n‘Oh my goodness, dare I look at these pics? I’ll feel really old.’\n\n‘You don’t look old. You still look like my Kate Winslet.’ \n\n‘Kate Winslet my arse…’\n\nAs Fi opened the pictures to the past and they sipped Prosecco, Rachel was transported back to fresher’s week at Christ Church College, Oxford… \n\nMonday 9th October 1996\n\nRachel entered the refectory for breakfast, grabbed a tray and kept her head forward trying not to think about her mum crying the day before and her dad’s words of encouragement. \n\n‘We’re so proud of you Rachel. You’re our little trailblazer. Plenty of Vitamin C and we’ll call you when we get home.’ \n\nJust before her parents left, her dad turned and slipped her a 20-pound note. ‘I’m sure there will be lots of like-minded souls at the bar.’ \n\nRachel had tried to hold it together, got tearful and then headed to the JCR. \n\nRachel was completely overwhelmed as she walked in, saw that the bar was heaving and so made a beeline for the exit. She was intercepted by a ridiculously excitable girl wearing two braids in her beautifully shiny black hair. She also noticed her very short skirt and very toned legs as did most of the boys in the room. \n\n‘Hello, how are you?’ She said with a twinkle. \n\n‘Good I think, how are you?’ \n\n‘It’s a bit scary in here isn’t it? I’m Fi.’ \n\n‘Hi Fi, I’m Rachel or Rach as friends like to call me.’ \n\n‘Hello gosh has anyone told you, you look just like Kate Winslet?.’ \n\n‘Um, not really.’ \n\n‘You do. Wow, what a face.’ \n\n‘Um thanks. What’s going in here?’ \n\n‘I think a few of us are going for a pint. Fancy joining us?’ \n\nRachel was impressed that Fi already seemed to have established a friendship group. \n\n‘This is Laura, Melassa, Claire and Charlie. Guys this is Rachel. Dosen’t she look like Kate Winslet?’ \n\n‘You really do. That face will get you into trouble.’ Charlie said with a grin. Rachel wasn’t sure how to take that comment.\n\nAs they all chatted about which ‘A’ Levels they had sat and how their interviews for college had gone, Rachel noticed a group of ‘hip’ students walk through the bar. She heard quite a few American accents and Fi said ‘ooh yes that’s the group of hot exchange students from the states. They’re with us this term.\nGorgeous aren’t they. They look like the cast of Friends. \n\nRachel watched them closely. She was amazed at how confident they appeared moving around this strange British college and also just how tactile they were with each other. A beautiful girl with amazing dark eyes and a black bob had her arm looped with a chap with a ponytail. On closer inspection, he had the most amazing facial features and incredible eyes. He looked exactly like that hot guy in My so called Life. \n\nReturning to the conversation, the girls started to disband but agreed to meet the next day at the fair to sign up to various societies. \n\n****\n\n‘Another top up and then shall we head to dinner? I think I booked our table for 7.30.’ Fi suggested.\n\n‘Sounds great.’ \n\nFi pulled out a picture of Rachel sat on Pete’s knee in the JCR. ‘You two were smoking hot. Every girl envied you when Pete chose you.’ \n\n‘Oh I’m sure no one felt that way. He wasn’t that into me’ \n\n‘He most certainly was. Do you remember when you guys first spoke?’ \n\n‘Yes, I do. It was watching you and Matt play squash. I can’t remember how it happened, but I loved it. I think Pete had come to meet Matt and I had come to meet you. Now I think about it, the ultimate ‘meet cute’. We stood side by side watching you both play and just talked about a lot of random things. I think we were both trying to be as cool as we could. I never forget he said, ‘has anyone ever told you, you look just like Scully?’ I had never watched the X-Files but Pete said she was ‘seriously smoking’.\n\n‘And from that point on both of you seemed inseparable. He was wherever you were and vice versa’. Fi added\n\n‘That makes me sound like a stalker, but I guess so, we just gravitated towards the same things.’ \n\n‘I was aware though that I wasn’t his only admirer.’ \n\n‘Do you remember the night of the fresher’s ball?’ \n\n‘I do, it was amazing. Let’s head to dinner and we can reminisce some more.’\n\nSaturday 14 October 1996\n\nRachel was unsure what to wear but decided on a dress she had worn at her sixth form leavers ball that summer. It was incredibly pretty and seemed to hang on her well. With various shades of pink flowers, it had just the right amount of swish. Pete had mentioned to her that everyone was congregating in Molly’s room before heading to the hall. \n\n‘Knock knock, is everyone decent?’ Rachel said in a very quiet tone.\n\n‘Ha! Not sure we’ll ever be decent! Come in gorgeous. Wow look at you. Molly dosen’t she look gorgeous’ said Mel, one of the other American exchange students.\n\n‘you do sweetie. Gorgeous.’ said Molly giving her a strained look.\n\n‘Gosh thank you, so do you girls. So, what’s the plan?’\n\n‘We’re just waiting on the boys who have booze. We thought we’d have a shot or two and then head to the Ball.’\n\nA few moments later, the girls heard the boys coming round through the door.\n\n‘Well hello ladies’ said Dan, a tall, incredibly handsome man who looked like he was in training for the marines with his tidy appearance and muscles bulging through this DJ.\n\nMolly put on a mock Russian accent and looking at Pete said ‘Snoop you do scrub up well. I'd like to see what’s under that DJ.' Turning to the others she added ‘funny isn’t it, you can put a perfectly average guy in a DJ and suddenly he oozes James Bond.’ She said wrinkling her nose and smiling knowingly at Pete.\n\nWell, that’s confirmed it, they must be shagging especially if she has a pet name for him like snoop, Rachel thought.\n\n‘Everyone take a glass. I’ll pour whatever crap the boys have brought and let’s cheers to friendship and meeting you all and a fantastic night of getting pissed.’\n\nWalking into the JCR, Rachel was astounded at how amazing everyone looked. It looked like everyone was dressed for a ball from the 1920s. Lots of the girls wore the most amazing shift dresses and headpieces and looked fabulous.\n\nPete turned to Rachel ‘Shall we grab a beer and then see what’s going on in the main hall?’\n\n‘Definitely. I’ve heard there is a band doing Pulp and Radiohead covers’\n\n‘Ooh I love Radiohead.’\n\n‘Me too. I met Tom Yorke last summer at a festival and he drew me the most amazing sketch. It looked just like the Ok Computer album cover.’\n\n‘Goodness I’d love to see that.’\n\n‘Well, it’s in my room. Maybe I can show you later?’ Rachel couldn’t believe she’d just invited Pete to her bedroom later. \n\n‘I'll hold you to that’\n\nThe band were amazing, and the lead singer was the coolest guy Rachel had ever seen. He looked like Jarvis Cocker, the lead singer of Pulp but was also able to channel Tom Yorke and did an amazing rendition of the song Creep. \n\nRachel and Pete were thick as thieves all evening and as Mel, Dan and Matt hit the dance floor, the party really got started. Molly was so confident and was enjoying all the attention by the looks of it from the British boys. After hours of dancing, Fi appeared and said that the ‘after party’ was taking part in a house off campus and would we all like to go.\n\nRachel was happy to follow Pete’s lead and they headed there together. It didn’t appear that an ‘after party’ was really happening and in fact everyone was just congregated in a chap called Chris’s room. Lots of drunk chatter ensued and Rachel gave Pete a look as if to say, shall we head off. They walked around the cobbled streets of Oxford, mostly looking up to the sky and then found themselves in the entrance to the meadows at Christ Church. Rachel just kept looking at the sky and Pete didn’t seem that drunk and asked, ‘so is there anyone special in your life?’ \n\nShe wasn’t sure what she was thinking but replied ‘yes there was someone before college but I’m not sure how I feel about him.’ It was a complete lie; she had met a chap on her 18th birthday and they had shared a kiss but that was it.\n\n‘What about you?’\n\n‘Um yes it’s sort of complicated. I do have a girlfriend Jess but she found it hard to accept I chose to spend this semester in England.’\n\n‘Where is she then? Couldn’t she have come too?’\n\n‘Not really. I don’t think she was that keen and wanted to focus on her college studies.’\n\n‘Well maybe the saying that absence makes the heart grow fonder will be true.’\n\n‘Yep maybe. We’ll see. I think sometimes meeting other people can open your eyes to other possibilities though’\n\n‘Well maybe that’s not a bad thing.’\n\nAs they reached Rachel’s room, Pete turned and looked intensively at Rachel, ‘I meant to say, Dan and Matt said how beautiful you looked this evening and I meant to say it too.’\n\nShe wasn’t sure what she was thinking but as he turned to walk away Rachel reached out her hand and grabbed his. She pulled him in and said ‘Thank you. You do too. I mean, not beautiful, well yes beautiful. Very handsome.’\n\n‘Maybe we should stop talking’ and with that Pete wrapped his arm around her and kissed her for what felt like hours.\n\nOn coming up for air, Rachel said ‘Well you can stay if you like but understand if not.’\n\n‘I would love to but there is no rush. We have time.’\n\nFi almost welled up on hearing the story again. ‘I’m going to need more Aperol spritz before we order’ and with that ordered two more large drinks for them at Cantina Sicilian.\n\n‘Ok now, I’ve put on my big girl pants, I can handle the rest. So, after a term of being intertwined, how did you feel when you knew he had to leave?’\n\n‘It was awful. I felt sick. I remember my lovely dad drove us to the bus station to get the airport transfer and we were both trying to hold it together. I knew I loved him, but I hadn’t told him as I knew there was someone waiting for him back home so I said goodbye. Just before he headed to the bus, he handed me an envelope with a letter and a mix tape of all the songs we had listened to. I felt devastated.’\n\nFi grabbed a tissue. ‘I’m not crying, its just the prosecco-aperol combination.’\n\n‘of course, you sap. Anyway, I headed back to college with dad, packed up my room and headed home for Christmas. I felt like someone had punched my heart out and the thought of returning for the next term, filled me with dread.’\n\n‘and then tell me the story about the next term…I love hearing this bit…’\n\n‘Well, I came back, prepped for my first set of exams. I didn’t feel fully motivated but knew I could ace the paper. As I walked into the examination hall, I sat at my desk and felt something taped under my desk. I pulled it out and it was a special edition of ‘Creep’. I immediately stood up and ran from the room looking at each of the doors. When I stepped outside into the chilly air, he was there…smiling.\n\n‘Seriously, I must be extremely menopausal. That is the most romantic thing I’ve heard for years. Why can’t life always be like the college days?’\n\nBack at their hotel by ten, Rachel and Fi were snuggled up in their pyjamas and watching a re-run of The Holiday. Rachel was still in touch with all her college friends including her Pete and noticed on Facebook messenger, he was online.\n\n‘Fi, Pete’s online. Shall we send him a message?’\n\n‘Oh yes do. Tell him we love him and that he could teach my husband a thing or two about romance’ Fi said and then shortly passed out.\n\nRachel wasn't sure what to say so just started with a simple hello. She immediately noticed that Pete was writing her a reply." } ]

[ { "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: Eternal Student\n\nGenre: coming-of-age\n\nWord Count: 1535\n\nPrompt:\n\nSet your story during exam season, when tensions run high and a minor incident sends your protagonist into a panic spiral." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "She should have been happy because it was summer and almost the end of term, but all Evie wanted to do was cry. She heard the hollow echo of her footsteps along the university walkways as she headed towards the Examination Hall that would decide her fate. By the time she’d reached the entrance, she had broken into a cold sweat. \n\nEventually, she found her place. It was on the second row near the door. Once seated, she waited in an agony of discomfort for the invigilator to give the instruction to turn over the paper. Evie’s mind was as scrambled as the eggs she had left congealing in the pan in the campus kitchen earlier that morning. She had been too stressed to deal with the mound of unwashed cups and dishes that had accumulated from the previous night. In any case, clearing them up was a lost cause. Students were generally messy creatures. \n\nNow, her eyes were swimming as she tried to understand what the questions were asking of her. The more she looked, the less idea she had of how she was going to come up with anything approximating decent answers. She was horrified to find not a single question appeared to cover the subjects she’d spent hours revising. Questions she had been banking on getting. \n\nTen minutes had ticked away already! Evie seemed to be the only one not putting pen to paper. Apart from the scribbling of pens and the odd cough, the room was as quiet as a churchyard tomb. \n\nEveryone seemed to be covering their sheets in information as if their lives depended on it. As far as Evie was concerned, her life actually did. She’d worked so hard to get to this position. Against all odds, she’d somehow scraped in to this hallowed academic institution, and now all her efforts were on the verge of being wasted!\n\nUp to that point, Evie had loved every minute of university life. She’d loved the closed in community feel, the friendships – the way people had come together from all walks of life. She’d never had many friends in her hometown; now she did. Evie loved the studying, the camaraderie, even the smell of the place intoxicated her. But she was all too aware of time passing: she was haunted by the knowledge that things would soon be very different. Once she stepped foot in the real world, the safety net would be withdrawn and she’d be completely exposed.\n\nAs the day drew closer to Evie’s leaving, there had been a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach which had grown into a deep dread; she knew she would never experience another time like this. She loved university so much, she wasn’t ready to let it go.\n\nThe trouble was, after three years at university, Evie was no clearer about what she wanted to do with her life than when she’d started. Her only ambition, if she had one, was to carry on studying, and after messing up her first exam, her chances of achieving this were as distant as a mirage in a desert. She began to wonder if she wasn’t destined to turn into the eternal student who never quite achieved her dreams.\n\nThe future loomed like a monster from the abyss. After the exams were over, nothing was certain for Evie. Going back to her family was not an option. Meanwhile, her friends were all heading in different directions. Some were returning to their families; some were going to work in the city, others were to attend a year at teaching college. One planned to study law. Another was going into social work. Barring a disaster, one was smoothly on course to do a higher degree at the university they both loved. His career in academia was assured; indeed, his whole life was mapped out in a way Evie’s had never been. She tried to smother her jealousy! \n***\n\nEvie had known she was in trouble the moment she studied the exam board layout in the student foyer. Five days of exams without a break when so many others seemed to have at least one or two days grace between each exam, allowing them more time for revision. How would she manage?\n\nEven then, all was not lost. Providing she kept her head, things might turn out well.\n\nBut then, she was hit by this impossible first paper. A demon of an exam!\n\nSomehow, she managed to get to the end of it, although the memory of what she actually wrote was a blur. It was a small compensation, but at least she’d managed to write something!\n\nAfter it was over, Evie ran out of the exam room. She stood on the steps of the university square trembling. The air was hot and humid and a group of Chinese students were talking and laughing, soaking up the afternoon sun. \nHey, Evie.” She turned round when a guy she recognised from lectures tapped her on the shoulder. “How you doing? How did it go?”\n“Hi Joe.”\n“Hey. What’s the matter? You seem upset.”\n“Oh Joe. I think I’ve messed up badly. There wasn’t one part in that paper I got right.”\n\nEvie started crying bitterly and Joe tentatively put his arm around her. “Hey. Don’t go upsetting yourself. You’ve probably done better than you think.”\n“No, I really haven’t. I don’t think I’m going to get through this!” Once the words were out, Evie was terrified. She thought she was going to pass out.\n“If you’re really worried you could always go to the support centre and ask for help,” Joe suggested. “I’ve heard they’re very helpful in these situations. I’m so sorry, I’ve got to go, but please look after yourself.” \nOf course, that’s what I’ll do. Why didn’t I think of that? I’ll go and see Alice right away.\n\nThe counselling service and health centre were set in grounds some way off from the main university site and were surrounded by a lake and trees. An hour or so later, Evie found herself in one of the rooms confiding her fears to Alice, a counsellor she’d seen a number of times in the last year, but who she’d always skirted round the “real issues” with. Evie had been unable to fully explain what her childhood had been like, although there were times when she’d come close. Alice gathered Evie’s home life had been abusive, but she hadn’t known the extent. Evie naively believed university would help her forget the past and was surprised when it had not. Alice with her ever ready box of tissues, her long grey skirt, blue eyes and kindly features, had listened attentively. She must have seen the signs, Evie realised later.\n“I just feel overwhelmed! I don’t think I can face doing the exams. Not the way I’m feeling,” Evie cried.\n“Well, the good news is we can help.”\n“Can you?” Evie covered her face. “I feel like I’m making a terrible fuss here. Everyone else seemed to be getting on alright in the exam room.” Everyone else seemed alright generally. \n“You’d be surprised,” Alice said. “A lot of people struggle when it comes to exams. It’s the pressure.”\n“I just can’t see how to get through… I honestly didn’t know what else to do.”\n“If you want, you can sit the rest of your exams here in the counselling centre. It’s a more informal environment, although we do have an invigilator to make sure everything is above board.”\n“Really?” Evie said, wiping away her tears. “That sounds great.” \n\nThat was how she found herself doing the rest of her exams gazing out of a window onto a view of trees and rolling green meadows She found she was not the only student sitting in that airy, light-filled room. For the time being, she felt safe, relieved to keep the world at bay a little longer.\n\nSomehow, Evie got through the rest of the exams, but the magic of university life was fading fast. Without the hubbub of student activity, the corridors seemed empty and dreary. Out of curiosity, she found herself opening the door of one of the lecture theatres. It was eerily silent.\n\nWith friends busy preparing for different lives, things felt like they were slipping away. Evie was being left behind with no idea of what to do next. The weight of loss crushed her like grief. \n***\n\nAs far as exams were concerned, for years afterwards Evie found she couldn’t contemplate the idea of looking at another exam paper even when she wanted to progress with her career. Her sense of having “failed” was so acute, she had recurring dreams in which she was doomed to never finish her exams, no matter how hard she tried.\n***\n\nit was a long time before Evie was able to settle down and take the plunge again. Although it wasn’t easy, she attended evening college and sat in another hall to take new exams. When she finally gained her vocational qualifications, she was able to hang her framed certificates on the wall and feel a sense of pride and accomplishment.\n\nTo this day, her troubling dreams have never returned." } ]

[ { "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: Never Let Me Laugh\n\nGenre: coming-of-age\n\nWord Count: 3005\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about a student reporter uncovering a university scandal." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "“There was another life that I might have had, but I am having this one.”\n― Kazuo Ishiguro\n\nMom killed Nicki last week. I heard the news from my younger sister. When something like this happens, I page through Never Let Me Go, my favorite novel, until the right line hits me. I’ve never had no one in my life I can truly rely on, so maybe being an outsider here is simply a continuation of that.\n\nI’m describing this to Oliver, my new roommate, because he’s been sobbing in the corner of our dorm room about missing his dog in New Jersey. \n“At least your dog is still alive,” I say, in the most comforting tone I can, while feeling utterly exasperated inside. “My Mom killed my guinea pig.”\nHe looks up. “Seriously? Where are you from?”\n“Minnesota. St Cloud.”\nOliver looks lost for words. At least he’s now looking at his mobile instead of crying over a very much alive border collie. I have someone here who is more of a mess than me, which is strangely comforting.\nI’ll introduce myself to you the same way I did to Oliver. Hi. My name is Brad Jorgensen, and I have no idea how I got into Yale. \n\nI half closed my eyes and imagined this was the spot where everything I’d ever lost since my childhood had washed up.\n― Kazuo Ishiguro\n\nMy constant references to Kazuo Ishiguro might make you think I’m an English Lit major (Oliver made that mistake) but you would be wrong. I’m studying Business Admin with a minor in Psychology. I stan Ishiguro because he’s the one Japanese who’s really succeeded within the Western cultural world, from the inside. An equal. Growing up half Japanese in Minnesota, always feeling like an outsider no matter how hard I tried, I look to him as a role model. At Yale, looking around and seeing that almost half the class is Asian, there’s far more hope to fit in.\n\nTwo days after Oliver was crying about his pet, he’s found a girlfriend. From what I heard, she also misses her dog.\n\nI’ve never had a pet, except for the guinea pig, the reason being that every summer we spend a month with my mom’s family in Japan. \n\nPicture this. On the banks of the Hirose river in Sendai there are a row of cherry trees. They look dull and ordinary most of the year, but for two weeks in spring, they explode in pink blossoms and create the most glorious, beautiful spot in the world. The Yale dormitory is like right now. Oliver has a girlfriend, everyone else is hooking up, and there’s a never ending party in the dorm lounge.\n\nBut, I’m watching the cherry blossoms through a window from a distance, locked alone inside.\n\nOn my way to lunch in the Commons, there’s an open door to a conference room with students pouring in and out. A sign reads, “Student Activities Bazaar”. With nothing to lose, I venture inside. \n\nI glance at the students behind the tables:\nYale College Republicans, too blond.\nYale College Democrats, too hipster.\nYale Entrepreneurial Society, too serious.\nYale Robotics Club, too nerdy.\nYale Daily News, I’ve already spent three years typing interviews in high school.\n\nAs for the many sports clubs, I can’t help but notice their eyes on me as I walk past. At 6’2”, I catch their attention. But I have no desire to explain my torn rotator cuff from my days as my school’s opening pitcher. The good ole days.\n\nThe “International Travel Club”, hmm. Maybe?\n\nBehind the table, four students are locked in conversation, oblivious to the bustle of people around them. They exude an air of nonchalance and calm. Hovering nearby, I wait for an opportunity to introduce myself,\n\n“Dinner at the Park Hyatt is amazing!” a young woman with a faint Southeast Asian accent exclaims. Her tone of enthusiasm shines out.\n“Tokyo? I’ve been there.” I interject.\nThe group turns their gaze towards me, taking a moment to register my presence. The woman who was speaking extends her hand in greeting. “Hi! I’m Nora. So you’ve been to the Park Hyatt. Do you travel much?” The boy beside her introduces himself as John.\n“Brad Jorgensen,” I reply, before answering her question. “Not really. Just to Japan.”\n“Where are you from, Brad? “\n“Minnesota.”\n“That’s nice.” Nora’s response is polite but lacks enthusiasm. An awkward silence hangs in the air. “Enjoy the bazaar,” she says before returning her attention to her companions.\n“Is there any info I can get?” I’m feeling desperate.\nNora passes me a leaflet, and then I take my cue and leave.\n\n“We took away your art because we thought it would reveal your souls.”\n― Kazuo Ishiguro\n\nProfessor Krantz, Nobel laureate in Economics, stands at the front of the lecture hall.\n“Half of you will be drug addicts, unemployed, or dead by the age of 29.” He pauses, staring intently at us. “Unless you pick up the lessons, I will teach you in Social Psychology 110”\nWe chuckle politely. Professor Krantz isn’t as polished as a TED speaker, but he’s filled with enthusiasm. He’s been prefacing his lectures with stories about students meeting tragic ends to get our attention.\nSqueak. Squeak. Squeak.\nAs he writes notes on the whiteboard, the squeak of the marker is relentless. He narrates, “Commitment fallacy. The tendency to follow the path you’ve chosen even if it is not the optimal economic payoff—”\nA student in the front row interrupts, “Is this juxtaposed with the Rational Choice Theory?”\nProfessor Krantz glances at who spoke. “Please don’t interrupt. And never use the word juxtaposed in my class again if you don’t fully understand it.”\nOnce he finishes, I notice Nora is also in the lecture, and now she’s raising her hand.\n“Yes, Nora,” the professor addresses her.\n“So, if I order sushi, I’ll finish it before ordering the next dish?”\n“Thank you, Nora. That is a clever way to put it.”\nHe returns to writing on the whiteboard. Another theory about the reasons why smart people make bad choices.\n I diligently take notes on all the words and concepts I’m not familiar with. I see other students in class listening to music or playing games on their mobiles.\n\n“All children have to be deceived if they are to grow up without trauma.”\n― Kazuo Ishiguro\n\nThe next day, Nora’s presence lingers in my mind. A vision of the graceful arc of her neck as she asked that question. I study the invite to the International Travel Club event.\n\n- A social club for those who travel the world in style -\n\nIf there’s the slightest possibility of making a connection with Nora, I must put my hesitations aside.\nOn Friday night, I arrive at the address on the invite, a stately home nestled next to a Greek fraternity a stone’s throw from campus. As I draw nearer, my attention is drawn to a black student shouting outside. “You assholes! My Dad is going to do something about this.” His accent suggests he’s African. \nJohn steps out the front door and greets me. “Brad! Good you could make it, buddy.” He quickly pulls me inside.\n“Who’s that?” \n“That’s the son of the Foreign Minister of Nigeria. He’s been expelled.”\n“Why is he here?” \n“Don’t worry about him,” John says, and puts his arm around my shoulder. Someone puts a drink in my hand. John introduces me to a half-dozen members of his club, and leaves me with a group of people I don’t know.\nI eavesdrop on their conversation. ‘Eavesdrop’ not being the right word when you are standing in front of them, smiling, and feeling completely invisible.\n“I’m contemplating switching my major to Computer Science,” one of them declares.\n“That’s preposterous. Who thinks that Elon Musk designs Teslas or writes code? Or Steve Jobs?”\n“How can you manage things you don’t understand?”\n“You don’t need to understand them. You merely need to make your employees think you do.” The student gulps the last of his drink. “I’m off now, flying to St. Thomas tomorrow morning.” \n“What about class?” I ask, out of curiosity.\n“I’ve got people to handle that,” he says. “Smart people get other people to do the work for us, that’s what my dad says.”\n\nThese people seem to exist in a different universe than I do. An outsider in Minnesota, I hoped I could do better here. \nAfter a couple of drinks, I finally find myself in a friendly conversation. A small group of us form a circle. John is posing questions: asking if we have brothers or sisters, places we’ve travelled, funny things we’ve noticed about our professors.\n“Tell us the most unique thing about yourself,” he asks, and they begin to answer. Back home this would mostly be a list of birthmarks and disgusting habits, but here at Yale it’s a recital of clever skills and Instagrammable life experiences.\nAfter a student named Rebecca demonstrates her acappella singing, it’s my turn.\n\nI hesitate for a moment, then say, “Jeff Bezos is my uncle.”\nJohn looks at me incredulously. “Your name isn’t Bezos.” \n“It’s complicated.”\n “You’re full of shit, dude.” John laughs.\n“Forget about it. Bad joke,” I say. “I was the opening pitcher for my high school baseball team. The St Cloud Bulldogs”\n“And I suppose Ohtani is your uncle too,” John smirks.\n“Yep.” \nJohn moves on to listening to the next person’s answer.\nBy midnight, the organizers are more interested in talking amongst themselves than engaging with us. Most of the invitees sit awkwardly, staring at their drinks or fidgeting with our phones.\n“I’ve got to go,” I say. There’s a stack of homework I need to finish tomorrow.\nSomeone taps John’s shoulder, “See you later Brad!’ he smiles from across the room and waves goodbye.\nAs I leave, a junior club member says, “We will let you know…” \n“Know what?”\n“If you’re accepted.”\n\n“You have to accept that sometimes that’s how things happen in this world. People’s opinions, their feelings, they go one way, then the other.”\n― Kazuo Ishiguro\n\nNo one contacts me. A week later, I’m positive I was rejected.\nAfter Professor Krantz’s lecture, Nora rushes up to me in the hallway after class. She smiles, “Brad! How’s it going?”\n“Good?”\n“Let’s get a coffee. I’d like to catch up with you,” she says, with no hint of hesitation. I’ve never met anyone as confident as her before.\nOver a latte, she asks me questions, and I find myself talking more freely than I normally do. It feels good to open up to someone about how hard it is to fit in as a new student here.\n“It will get better,” she says. “Now, where in the world would like to visit most?” \n“Machu Pichu.”\n“Its amazing. I’ve been there twice.” Nora has been talking to me for a half an hour. She smiles warmly. “Maybe we could go there together sometime? We could really use you in our club. I think you’ll enjoy it.”\n\nThe next day, I officially accept their membership offer. They have an office on campus, and soon I’m spending all my time with Nora and the other members.\nI hadn’t realized how wealthy students at Yale could be! Nora drives to school and parks her Mercedes off-campus it. John travels constantly. He has connections all over the east coast. The next three months I live the life I’ve always dreamed of: catered dinner parties in New Haven, private art galleries in New York. Weekends at John’s beach house in the Hamptons while he takes care of house repairs for his dad. The strangest thing about being around them is I never have to spend a dime. Everything is paid for. They never mention I owe them anything.\nIt’s probably because they feel I’m at the same level. Now and then they drop a hint that I could tell them something about Jeff Bezos. But for a nephew, that doesn’t seem appropriate.\nStaying at John’s beach house, I realize his family owns Kyungpo Electronics, one of Korea’s largest electronic corporations. At school, he dresses very casually and never mentions it.\n\n“I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the end it’s just too much. The current’s too strong. They’ve got to let go, drift apart.”\n― Kazuo Ishiguro\n\nWe’re alone in the student lounge. Nora closes her textbook and looks at me, holding my gaze. “I need you to do me a favor.”\n“What can I do for you?” My heart thumps at the thought of being able to do something for Nora, maybe something personal or secret.\n“Professor Krantz is under investigation for sexual abuse. You are in his class. Did anything happen to you?” Before I can speak, she continues, “I think something must have happened. When you remember, go to the dean’s office and make a report.”\n“Professor Krantz, really?” I ask incredulously.\n“It would be a big favor” Nor reaches across and grasps my forearm. “Do it for me?”\nKrantz is one of my favorite professors at Yale. As I leave the student lounge, I feel it’s impossible he could be guilty of such a thing. \nAfter a week spent thinking about him, small details pop up in my mind. Things Krantz said during his office hours, innuendo that I missed. His hand touched my knee. \nI visit the Dean of Student Affairs office. “There are a few things I would like to report about Professor Krantz.” \nWe compile a list of Professor Krantz’s transgressions and I sign my name at the bottom.\n\n“That night, it seemed to me these dark byways of the country existed just for the likes of us.”\n–Kazuo Ishiguro\n\nA new sense of caution grips me. After reporting Krantz to the Dean, I’ve been on edge, no longer sure who to trust.\nIn International Relations 201, John sits two rows ahead of me, texting in Korean, as he usually does during lecture. Looking at the circles and squares of the Hangul script, it doesn’t seem a decipherable form of human communication. But I’m curious. With my mobile and, as casually as I can, I zoom in and take a screenshot. Google translate does the rest.\n[Dad] Good work on the Nigerian. And Professor Krantz. If the Greek government doesn’t buy our telecom system, we need to start digging up dirt on Stavros Tsoukalas.\n[John] Got it, Dad.\n[Dad] make it quick.\n[John] I need to get out of class for a week, and stay at the house in St Martin.\n[Dad] Girlfriend? I’ll think about it. We have most of your professors covered.\n\nFrom behind, I can feel John’s gaze look up at our lecturer. Professor Luo just received a research grant from Kyungpo Electronics.\n I knew people cheated to get into Yale. I didn’t know they cheat at Yale as well.\nAfter I return from Minnesota at Christmas break, I’m soon called to the dean’s office.\n“Thank you for your testimony regarding Professor Krantz. That was very brave,” she tells me. “Professor Krantz is no longer with the university.”\n“There’s another matter I’d like to speak to you about,” she says, tapping the bottom of her fountain pen on the large wooden desk. ”You told people you are the nephew of Jeff Bezos. But that’s not true, is it?”\n“Am I on trial?”\n“You need to tell me the truth.”\nHer authoritarian gaze peers into my soul.\n“No, I am not related to Jeff Bezos,” I admit begrudgingly.\n“Noted,” she says. “You can show yourself out.”\nMy last name, Jorgenson, does happen to be the same as Jeff Bezos’s birth name. A peculiar factoid relayed to me by someone in my high school. I tucked it away in the back of my mind, thinking it could be useful someday. \nProfessor Krantz taught us people believe things more readily when they think they have discovered the truth themselves. John or Nora must have googled my last name.\n\n“It was like when you make a move in chess and just as you take your finger off the piece, you see the mistake you’ve made, and there’s this panic because you don’t know yet the scale of disaster you’ve left yourself open to.”\n― Kazuo Ishiguro\n\nThe next morning, I carry my bagel into the International Travel Club’s lounge, and nod at the half-dozen members sitting inside. “Good morning, guys!”\nThere are a few mumbles, but no one looks at me:\nI ask Nora if she’s ready for tomorrow's Applied Mathematics test. She’s ready, she says and looks back at her textbook. Something has changed.\nThat afternoon, John says to me, “You’re not a member of this club anymore.”\n“Why not?”\nJohn bites his lip. I realize I already know. He’s found out I’m not Jeff Bezos nephew. But, he can’t say it out loud. The pain of being played a fool for months would make him lose too much face.\nFor the next month, I’m expecting to be called to the Dean's office to hear why I’m being expelled, but the call never comes. Maybe I’m not important enough, or maybe they still have a use for me. I’ve never studied more in my life, and I’m receiving B’s. They get A’s in every class while barely attending. \n\nLife marches on. I start spending time with Oliver and his girlfriend. On a night out bowling, I meet their friend Chloe, who has the gift of an infectious laugh which brightens our night out. I ask her out on a date, and we go the next evening to a Ruby Tuesday’s on Crown Street. As she shares all of our previous misconceptions about Yale, and I mine, I feel the weight of my worries lift. The sound of my laughter spills forth in a long-suppressed torrent." } ]

[ { "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: Hells Bells\n\nGenre: coming-of-age\n\nWord Count: 2736\n\nPrompt:\n\nSet your story during exam season, when tensions run high and a minor incident sends your protagonist into a panic spiral." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Todd lifted his head from the crease of a textbook. A blue mullet. I can’t believe I dreamed I had a blue mullet. He shuddered off the idea and thought about the day ahead. That night would be another best night of his life. Fiesta Grande,he thought as he got up and accidentally kicked one of the many Red Bull cans strewn about the floor. The night before had been devoted to studying for his physics exam, after which the greatest party of the year would be held. Fiesta Grande was the best way for everyone to say goodbye until the fall semester, and Todd had been preparing for it for weeks. Just one more test and he would cut loose. He opened another Red Bull and took a swig, then sat at his desk again to practice applying equations. As he gained more confidence with the material, a bluebird surprised him by slamming into his bedroom window, and he got up to see if the bird had survived. It just lay there on the sill twitching. Then the phone rang. It was Crissy.\n\n“A bird just kamikazed my window!” \n\n“Hmm. Todd, I’m freaking out.” She sounded exasperated. “I broke one of my nails!” \n\n“What do you want me to do about it? I have to study for my physics exam.”\n\n“I need a ride to the manicurist. She’s leaving in twenty minutes and if I don’t get this fixed, I am just going to die!”\n\n“CRISSY! I HAVE TO STUDY!” \n\n“Don’t yell at me, Todd, I didn’t break the damn nail on purpose.”\n\nNow on his seventh Red Bull in fifteen hours, Todd fumed as he muted the phone call. “You always do this! I’m sick of it, and I’m sick of that stupid nose job that makes your face look like an elf!” he blurted out, then unmuted the phone.\n\n“You have to be there right now?”\n\n“Well, Todd, yeah, and this nail isn’t going to repair itself. Come pick me up!”\n\n“Fine! I’m coming. But you owe me big for this,” he responded, ending the call thinking about how drop dead gorgeous she looked in the dress he had bought her, even with the elven nose job. \n\nTodd put on his flip flops and grabbed the keys to his Mustang. The sweat on his Red Bull beckoned for him to drink it fast, but he thought better of it. In fact, with Fiesta Grande looming in the future dusk, he decided to add a couple of shots of Stolichnaya to help him calm down. Test in one hour. Zip to the manicurist and back in forty-five minutes!\n\nHis obsession for the simple mixed drink had prompted him to give it a pet name. “Red Russian for the gullet!” he said, and carefully poured the liquor into the Red Bull. He took a sip of the excess vodka that had garnished the can’s rim. P=FV Cosine Theta. This’ll be easy, he thought as he swallowed back an acidy burp, feeling the inevitable change in the weather that accompanied his first drink. \n\nOutside he put on his favorite classic Ray Bans, and having spent the night in his air conditioned room, could feel the sun’s heat pulling him upward. He knew the day would only get better. V=Delta S over Delta T. He made his way to the Mustang, unlocked it, and looked at the sky. He thought the patchy cirrocumulus clouds looked like the scales on the back of a dragon, which he imagined swooping down to whisk him away into a nest faraway on a mountain somewhere, perhaps in the Himalayas. “That’d do it. No coming back from that one”, he said, and started the car.\n\nTodd had a way of compartmentalizing the excess energy wrought by drinking monumental amounts of Red Bull, letting the adrenaline flow through him instead of trembling and bothering everyone with rapid speech. “Adrenazen”, he called it, and released his nerves to the flow when the energy overwhelmed him. Unfortunately for those close to him, it was far more like living around an agitated bottle of club soda. When he got mad, he could see and feel a burning hot sun in his head and sometimes needed to spend time alone to calm the spinning ball of molten lava.\n\nHe drove and sang to Joe Walsh’s “Life of Illusion” as Crissy waited for him in front of her sorority. While he pulled up, he drank half of the mixed drink he had only tantalizingly sipped until then.\n\n“We have to hurry,” Crissy said in an annoying high-pitched tone, “If you knew Monica then you would know she waits for no one.” Todd leaned in to let her kiss him on the cheek, hoping she would catch a whiff of the potent concoction. He loved to argue with her unnecessarily, and often took the simplest of measures to assure her aggravation.\n\n“You’re drinking? It’s not even twelve o’clock. Didn’t you say you have a physics exam?” she admonished him with her eyes.\n\n“Indeed. P=FV Cosine Theta. It’ll be a breeze. Look at the day, look at those clouds!” he pointed. “Fiesta Grande, Crissy!” \n\n“Yeah, but you started without me,” she puckered her lips pretending to pout. Todd held out the Red Bull can, but she refused it and searched for a different radio station.\n\n“There. There. The Black-Eyed Peas I can stand,” Todd said as he began to sway his head from left to right in upward circular motions to “Pump it”. At a certain interval he inserted his own lyrics. “Inertia is the property of matter by which it retains its state of rest or velocity along a straight line….Werd! Without external force…. Werd!” he kept dancing, sipping on his Red Russian, Crissy laughing and swaying her arms in the air. “Take the mike, Crissy….Theta…Theta Jones, sing!” and Crissy sang the chorus beautifully. “Keep shakin’ that bacon! Werd!”\n\nThey approached a red stoplight as the song ended, and Crissy turned down the volume. “I=Sigma MR Squared”, Todd said as a biker pulled up next to them on a loud chopper. \n\nBikers are rarely seen as snobs unless you know one. The pride they have for their unique machines is only paralleled by the world’s greatest inventors. Donut had constructed his chopper from several different Harleys and felt superior to most all other bikers because he maintained that his beautiful machine was assembled using the upmost care with parts from the greatest motorcycles ever made. As he revved it up to assure that the carburetor was mixing in the appropriate amount of air, he looked over at Crissy and smiled and nodded. \n\nTodd sustained his jolting energy by swaying slightly from side to side, wiggling to different song in his head. V=Delta S over Delta T, he thought as he glanced over at Donut, who by then was smiling and nodding at Crissy. And he lost it.\n\n“Hey! What the hell was that?” he yelled, startling Crissy. Donut sat glaring at Todd with a superior sneer. Todd was not burly by any means but did not see a biker. He saw a man that had made an advance toward his beautiful girlfriend, the one he might soon marry or break up with. “Why don’t you keep your eyes on the road! You guys can get smushed easily by a big car!” he yelled as the light turned green, and he accelerated quickly, extending his arm out the window to flip Donut the bird.\n\n“Jesus, Todd! That guy was huge! You shouldn’t have yelled at him! All he did was smile and nod!” Crissy said to him wide-eyed. \n\n“Crissy, you don’t see things at face value. That guy was probably a rapist and \na thief, and if somebody doesn’t speak up when speaking up is called for, they will eventually rule the world. He was hitting on you. Clear as day,” he responded, pulling up to the manicurists in a small downtown square where cars parked diagonally in the street. Todd waited to see if the biker was going to stop and fight with him, but he drove past and disappeared into the distance. \n\nMonica the manicurist had opened the door to let Crissy in after seeing her\nget out of the Mustang, and Crissy hurried in to have her nail repaired. Todd waited in the car. After five minutes he checked the time on his phone.\n\n“Thirty minutes and I am at the test”, he said aloud. “No problem!” Entropy is the degree of disorder or randomness in a system. It is unpredictable.\n\nThe vodka really hadn’t taken a toll on his mind. In fact, it did have a slight calming effect until the Mustang began to tremble, and he could hear and feel the massive vibrations of an earthquake. Fear that accompanies that realization immediately interrupted his consciousness. Would the building fall on Crissy? Should he help everyone get out into the street? Louder and louder the noise boomed, and Todd looked at the few passersby to see their reaction. All they did was stop for a second and look down the street. The silence amid wind blowing in trees and birds chirping had been interrupted by more than 100 decibels of thunder as Donut wheeled into the the downtown square followed by his gang. \n\nSince the lunch crowd had cleared out, there was plenty of parking, and they settled in like a swarm of bees to occupy ten of the spots on both sides of the Mustang. Donut parked on the opposite side of the street and turned off the motor to his chopper. Todd exited adrenazen and began to shake uncontrollably.\n\n“What have I done?” he asked himself, knowing the answer. People ask that desperate question when there is the slightest chance that karma might actually tip the scales in their favor.\n\nHe looked at his phone to check the time, then into his rearview mirror. One of the bikers had parked directly behind his Mustang, and a park bench stood by his front bumper. People had wisely taken shelter in nearby stores as the motorcycle gang called “The Breeze” revved up their exceedingly clamorous motors, all of them stopping as J.J. Ryder, better known as “Worm”, called for silence with a cutthroat motion, and they turned off their loud machines. He walked slowly to the driver’s side door of Todd’s Mustang and knocked on the window.\n\nTodd was on the verge of his first heart attack.\n\n“Open the door,” Worm said calmly, his face expressionless as his lazy eye drooped low. \n\n“I’m not getting out of this car, no freakin’ way. I may have been stupid, but rest assured, stupid up and left when you got here.” Oh God. Twenty minutes, he thought, shaking like a Chihuahua in Colorado winter, knowing he would not be allowed to take the test if he didn’t arrive on time.\n\nHe noticed a colorful patch sewed onto the back of each of the gang member’s jackets. A dragon in flight, wind trails following in white swirls with “The Breeze” in gothic lettering beneath, then he remembered imagining a dragon snatching him up and spiriting him away to the Himalayas. \n\nPeople shake when they are afraid. It’s a response by the mind sent to the nervous system. Anyone who has drunk seven Red Bulls in sixteen hours knows that shaking is that unavoidable response, but Todd didn’t just shake. His movements were all accented by tremors that rivalled every vibration rattling the downtown square as The Breeze had moseyed in. He checked the time on his phone. Seventeen minutes left.\n\n“Open the door,” Worm said again calmly, his large belly threatening with remnants of McDonald’s, or steak, or whatever bikers consume besides beer.\n\nCrissy saw the whole thing from inside Monica’s nail salon, and Monica, having her own schedule to keep, tried to ignore what was happening outside to finish repairing the nail, which she did quickly. \n\nLife is crazy. And some people get strange, insightful notions out of nowhere that are illogical and improbable, but sometimes a spur of the moment idea pays off. Crissy could momentarily see the bikers for who they were. People. Regular people that, though disappointed, only wanted an explanation or apology. So, she paid Monica, and walked out of the salon onto the sidewalk and addressed Worm in a cordial tone.\n\n“Excuse me. Sir? Is there a problem? That’s my boyfriend in the Mustang,” she said, the corners of her eyes squinting pleasantly, and she crept a little closer to Worm, who looked at her.\n\nThirteen minutes, Oh my god, I am going to miss the test! Todd jittered in a frenzy. \n\n“I’m Crissy, and that there is Todd. What’s your name?” she asked tilting her head.\n\n“I’m Worm,” he muttered. “We,” he pointed at his gang, “call ourselves The Breeze.”\n\nTodd stopped checking the time because his chances of making it to the physics exam had faded away.\n\n“My boyfriend Donut called me, crying.” Worm pointed at Donut across the street. “He says your boyfriend insulted him, so we all came to see what the heck Todd’s problem is.”\n\nCrissy stepped off the curb and eased her way to the car door to look in at Todd, who might have felt more comfortable had he been wearing a diaper. His face showed resignation to the fact that he would miss his physics exam. \n\n“Todd. You heard him. You insulted Donut. Get out of the car and go apologize,” she said, and Todd’s eyes widened, thinking that there had to be a hidden camara somewhere. As he studied the atmosphere, he realized that none of the bikers had angry looks on their faces, that Worm might only want him to show Donut respect. There was no escape, and there was no time left. He would never be able to take his physics exam, so with the daring spirit of the most audacious stuntman, he opened the door to face the dragon he thought he had only imagined. Worm stepped back, giving him a wide berth, and Todd, still visibly shaken, mustered the strength to straighten his legs and walk across the street to Donut on his motorcycle. \n\n“Mr. Donut, sir. I’m real sorry I flipped you off. I thought you were making eyes at my girlfriend, and I lost my cool,” he stared at the concrete pavement, unable to look directly at the overweight biker. He stood his ground as Donut got off his chopper, knowing there was nothing he could do if Donut decided to punch him. Instead of picking him up off the ground by his collar to yell at him or knocking him out, he lifted Todd’s chin to look him directly in the eyes, then pulled him in and embraced him with his meaty arms.\n\n“It’s ok, Todd. I understand,” he said wholeheartedly. Todd put his hands on Donut’s back to complete the hug, then stepped back, said “thank you,” and walked back to Crissy. The Breeze all started their motorcycles in unison and wheeled away like a synchronized routine at the Olympics.\n\nEven though that might be the worst experience Todd would ever encounter, it would also be one of the best. He was alive, and Chrissy had somehow saved him from what could have escalated into a far more horrific nightmare. Genuine humility often comes after the direst of situations. Maybe someday he would be the best version of himself, but that day he had suddenly become a better person than he was the day before. Now, drained of reckless energy and excitement, Todd got in the Mustang with Crissy. He leaned in to receive another affectionate kiss on the cheek, started the car and switched the radio to his favorite station. The tolling bell intro to “Hells Bells” by AC/DC accented the interior of his car at low volume, and he put the Mustang into reverse thinking that for the rest of his life he would never rev his engine again. He looked over at Crissy, for whom he held a new respect for having the guts to talk to Worm. He looked forward to another Fiesta Grande, felt relieved to be alive, but concerned about what would happen to him for not taking his physics exam. Looking into the rear-view mirror, he slowly backed the car into the street, and said, “Hells bells, Crissy. Hells bells.”" } ]

[ { "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: Hidden in Plain Sight\n\nGenre: coming-of-age\n\nWord Count: 2996\n\nPrompt:\n\nStart your story with a student discovering a hidden room in a university library." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "By the time I discovered the room my Uncle James had told me was hidden in the Bodean Library I had discovered far more than the room itself. In fact, my voyage of discovery almost eclipsed the original reason for my search. I had hunted high and low and had long since given up on the room as I suspected that it was a device of Jimmy’s to hook me and have me undertake something useful in my three years away from home. Such subterfuge was not beyond my uncle, he knew that I was a kindred spirit. Everything came easily to me and as a result I bored easily. I was a listless spirit already fearing that I would forever drift on the tides of life, never finding a place to set anchor and stay a while, let alone being in a place long enough that I might develop roots.\nThe prospect of a hidden room excited me. Another thing I knew about Jimmy was that he would not lie. He was above such things and he did not waste his precious time with nonsense. When he imparted the knowledge of this secret place he did so away from the family gathering. Yet another christening. We had a spate of them as siblings and cousins popped sprogs out at an alarming rate of knots during a version of Keeping Up With The Jones’s that threatened to overwhelm the planet with overpopulation.\nThe family do for the crumpled Winston Churchill mini-me was at a half decent hotel and the way it came by such a rating was by having several bars, all of which were open. Jimmy led me to the quietest of the bars and bought me a neat whisky. Jimmy didn’t ask me what I was drinking and I had no current drink about my person. This was how he rolled. He knew things and that included what it was that I should drink. For my own part, I would have walked over hot coals to drink any drink Jimmy bought for me. It wasn’t just that he was my uncle and my favourite uncle at that, it was that he was blatantly special. So very special. He wore his difference conspicuously about his person and I just loved being around him. I suppose that is love, but I love my parents and it just isn’t the same. I think you can love someone and not necessarily love being around them, not the way I did with Jimmy. Alternatively, it may be that I’m a deluded cold fish and my capacity for love is broken in a fundamental way that no one has yet to spot, myself included.\nI drank some of the whisky. I did so carefully, but not so carefully as to look like I’d never drunk whisky before. Thankfully I had and I knew enough not to throw it at the back of my throat. I’d choke if I did that and lose face as a result. One thing I never wanted to do was embarrass myself in front of Uncle Jimmy.\n“So,” he said over the rim of his glass, eyeing me as though I were some kind of scientific specimen and only partially hiding his smile, “you’re spreading your wings and indulging in a spot of higher learning.”\nThere was no question there. He knew I was. But still I had to confirm what it was that he already knew. The conventions of conversation are quite odd at times. Stilted and awkward until the whole thing is moving at a pleasant cruising speed, “yes, I head off next week.”\n“Isn’t that a little early?” he asked.\nIt was. “The lease on my flat starts then, so I thought I’d get my money’s worth. Scope out the local haunts and get the lay of the land.”\nJimmy put his glass on the bar and laughed heartily. After some thirty seconds of abandonment to his jollity he clasped my shoulder, almost as though he needed the additional support, “you crack me up, my boy! Getting in there early! Lay of the land! And a flat! You’ve only gone and got yourself a flat!”\n“Yes, but…” I began.\n“It’s not in a student block, is it?” asked Jimmy.\nI shook my head. It wasn’t.\n“It’s not a shared flat, is it?”\n“No,” I confirmed.\n“Alfie, you are a dangerous man to know! You’re approaching this university lark exactly the way I would!”\n“Isn’t that a good thing?” I asked earnestly.\n“No!” he blurted, “I mean yes, but I’ve got decades on you. You’re doing it the way I would do it now, not the way I would have when I headed off to university all those years ago.”\n“So how did you do it then?” I asked.\nHe gave me something approaching a coy look, “went at it like a puppy on a leg, son! I didn’t have a clue. Crashed onto the scene and gave it a jolly good going over. I know a thing or two now and I enjoy my creature comforts. I certainly wouldn’t slum it, but more fool me for that slackness.”\nI was nonplussed. I thought I’d played a blinder. Now, my grand plans were in tatters.\n“Listen,” he said, “you’ve got my blood running through your veins. I’ve known that ever since you were a wee nipper. You’ll make it work, and that’s what worries me. You already have a habit of coming up roses and you seem to do it effortlessly.” He took a sip of his whisky, “you’ve got a low boredom threshold haven’t you?”\n“Pardon?”\n“You get bored easily?”\n“Yes, I suppose I do,” I said.\n“Yeah, that will get you into trouble,” Jimmy grinned.\n“Hasn’t yet,” I retorted.\n“Really?” he asked.\n“Not much,” I shrugged.\nHe chuckled, “there’s the spirit! Dangerous spirit. If we could bottle it, it would be banned!”\nNo it was my turn to grin. The whisky was doing its job and I was enjoying myself. \n“Listen,” Jimmy said. He handed me a fresh whisky. I hadn’t even seen him order this next round. He was leaning in conspiratorially, “there’s something I want you to do.”\nI liked the sound of that. It sounded illicit. It felt like I was being brought into Jimmy’s inner circle and he was trusting me to do something that he would never ask anyone else to do. I leant in and nodded, awaiting to hear what it was that he wanted me to do.\n“You’re going to have to use the library I’m afraid,” Jimmy told me.\n“The library?” I echoed. This did not sound like dangerous derring-do to me. Libraries were places where people went to die. Nothing fun ever happened in a library, especially these days. I saw absolutely no reason whatsoever to go through a library door during the entirety of my existence.\nBut Uncle Jimmy was shaking his head, “listen to me, and listen well, else you miss out on the adventure of a lifetime.”\nThen he told me of the hidden room in Bodean Library and sent me on a quest to find it.\nIn my first days away from home, it was all I could do not to head straight to the library to search for that magical room, but Jimmy had cautioned me not to do so. Part of the adventure was to commence my quest when the library was in full flow. I had never considered that a library could ever be in full flow. This concept intrigued me, as did furtively searching for a secret whilst evading detection and capture. \nThe entire venture was to stay between us and I was to report back to Jimmy in my holidays. This additional dimension to my time at university was welcome and as I found my feet I was glad I had not rushed over to the library and shot the bolt. \nMy flat was in a good spot on the opposite side of town and I found a number of pubs and eateries a short walk from where I would live for the next three years. By the time the freshers began arriving, I felt like the old guard. Knowledge was power and I knew more than all those around me. I built some kudos and then a reputation thanks to my early arrival and all I had to do was live up to the expectations of those around me and not disappoint. As always, this came easily to me.\nIt was during the first week of lectures that I went up to the second floor of the library and the corner of the building that Jimmy had described. The picture he had painted with a sparsity of words was remarkably true to what I saw before me. This was the place alright. \nAs I feigned interest in the books and looked for all the world as though I were browsing the titles, I couldn’t help noticing that this section was fiction, and dark fiction at that. I wondered what a university library was doing wasting its time with these books. Then I remembered that there were people here doing English Literature degrees and for some reason, I found that I cast an eye around at the people near me to see whether they looked like the sort of people to study such a subject. Very few of them seemed to fit the bill, in fact, I struggled to discern any commonality amongst these earnest readers.\nHaving checked the walls of the library and risked a few light raps with my knuckles here and there, I came away empty handed. This was a disappointment to me, as was the prospect of months of searching and still coming up empty handed, which was exactly what happened during my first term.\n“Well?” asked Jimmy.\nWe had arranged to meet in a pub near my parents’ house. Just the two of us. I liked that, it felt like I’d arrived at my next destination. What I didn’t like was that I had failed.\n“I couldn’t find it,” I told him.\nHe nodded as though he had expected this exact result, “it takes time and it takes dedication,” he told me, “it’s there though, and it’s a rite of passage to discover it.”\nI studied him closely as he said this. He’d found the room. He knew where it was, but he would not give me its location. This was a rite of passage. It was for me to find the room and in so doing I would be closer to being like Jimmy. We would share this secret and the ritual of the secret. We would share knowledge and experiences that few possessed. There was something almost arousing about that. An excitement that was exotic.\nNothing more was said and next term, I launched myself into everything with renewed vigour. I was a force of nature. I had a mission and that meant attending to my studies and my social life with both focus and energy such that I acquitted myself well.\nI lived for the mission though. The visits to the library were part of a secret life that I had to keep hidden from my growing band of friends. This became increasingly difficult and I found the only way to keep my cover was to borrow books from that section. \nFor the first month I managed not to read any of the books I borrowed from the library, but I discovered that people circumvent the unwritten laws of intrusion and so have an annoying habit of asking about the books in another person’s possession. Mainly they ask how the book is. The real issue is when someone has read the book, or at least knows it well enough. And so I began reading the books. Skim reading to begin with, but gradually I slowed down a little and in no time at all I found that there was something quite compelling about the stories in the books that I borrowed.\nI felt a little limited and possibly stupid when two weeks before the end of my second term it dawned on me that there may be clues as to the room’s location within the pages of the books in that section. I thought it very likely and so my reading of those books took on another aspect and intensity. It was probably just as well that I had a break looming as I damn near stopped going to lectures as I read book after book seeking a clue as to where the damnable hidden room may be.\n“Are you closer to your objective, Alfie?” asked my uncle when we next met at the same pub a term later.\nI grinned at him.\n“Not her! You dog!” he grinned back at me.\nI shook my head, “I’ve had no time for that sort of thing.”\n“Ah…” said Jimmy, “so your search is yielding promising results?”\n“Not really…” I shrugged.\n“But?” he probed.\n“I’ve begun reading some of the books,” I studied his face, but it was closed to me, “I figured that having come up empty handed in my investigations of the fabric of the building, the next course of action was to search for clues in the books themselves.”\n“A fair assumption,” he conceded.\nI asked him if he’d ever read the book I was currently reading. My intent was to glean more from him so I could progress my search, but soon enough we were talking about the book itself and a number of the other titles I had read. We were not short of conversation that evening and the landlord had to encourage us to leave the pub well after everyone else had left.\nThe next term commenced and I resolved to carry on with my studies and to continue with my social life. This commitment I did stick to, but I have to confess that my studies were somewhat improved by my extra-curricular reading and my social life took an interesting turn when I was told to shush several times as I discussed a book I’d liberated from what I considered to be my shelf with a third year student who had intended to borrow the same book. We agreed to share the book and ended up sharing a great deal more.\nAnd still I read and read, but clues as to where the hidden room was, I did not find.\n“What have you discovered my young padawan?” asked my uncle after my first year of university had come to an end.\nI nodded in a faux sage manner, “I have discovered a great many worlds and that there are many more worlds to come, master. You sent me to find a hidden room and it was there before me all the while. The room was hidden to me because I did not see it. Now I do.”\nHe nodded. Then he tapped my pint glass with his own, “cheers.”\nI returned his cheers.\n“I’m glad,” he said, “but your quest is not at an end.”\nI smiled, “I fully understand that Uncs.”\nThen, before we talked about the books I had read that term, I told him about my other discovery and showed him photos of Sybil, the third year student who shared my growing love for those library books. There are more than books in a library.\nI found that I had missed Bodean Library over the Summer Holidays. I held an affection for the place that had somehow become a part of me. I’d discovered a love of reading and I had discovered love. Upon my return I slipped right back into my exploration of my books and part way through that first term I began to find the clues.\nThe clues were there, but only if you tried not to look for them. It’s very difficult to explain. You have to know that they are there, but you don’t look directly at them. They have to come to you. I think they came to me because I had reached a level of enjoyment in my reading where I was becoming immersed in the worlds I visited every time I opened the pages and left the confines of the reality surrounding me.\nAs the clues coalesced, I realised that each and every book I had read from the shelves of the second floor of Bodean Library contained clues. Now, as I became receptive, all of the clues came and found me. I had no need to reread any of the books I had previously borrowed.\nThen, one day, as I was selecting my next batch of reading material, I found a dusty old book tucked behind the neat rows I had been visiting for over a year. The book was entitled The Cypher and it changed everything.\nA sense of calm overcame me as everything became clear. My quest was almost at an end. All there was left to do was share my discovery with Jimmy.\n“You look different,” Jimmy observed as I took a seat right beside him.\n“I am,” I told him.\n“What has happened?” he asked me, concern etching his face.\n“I found it,” I said with a slight smile.\n“Found what?” he asked.\n“The hidden room.”\nJimmy looked even more concerned, “Alfie… the hidden room… it’s… it’s in your head. It’s in everyone’s head. It’s the part of us that comes alive when we read. It’s… the notion of us becoming more as a result of reading.”\nI nodded, “I know, Uncs. And it’s wonderful! Here, let me show you. Let me show you the hidden room inside my head. The one you sent me to find in Bodean Library. It’s so beautiful!”\nI took out The Cypher and held it between us.\n“No…” \nThat was Jimmy’s last word.\nHis hidden room was quite different from mine. \nHe wasn’t ready for the room I found…" } ]

[ { "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 ON HER HANDS\n\nGenre: contemporary\n\nWord Count: 1152\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about someone whose time is running out." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "***After 8 months hiatus from writing, 3 of the 5 prompts brought me back to Reedsy. Yay!***\n‘Scuse me ma’am. Would you mind if I ask you one simple question?\nWell, that depends on the question, doesn’t it? If I give you an answer, then I guess I don’t mind, but I don’t have a lot of time, young man. So what is your question?\nWell, actually, “time” is exactly what I wanted to ask you about. I just wondered if you’re obsessed with time?\nNow, why would you ask me that? Because I have so many wrinkles and grey hair? Of course I think about time…all the time, in fact. After all I am 78 years old!\nNo, it’s not that.\nThen, what is it young man?\nWell, I just happened to notice that you have a watch on each of your wrists. So, I’d like to know why you wear two watches?\nAh! You noticed. Yes, I guess most people would find that rather odd and think I’m obsessed with time. But if you look closely, you’ll notice that they are both smartwatches not regular watches.\nOh, I see. So you are obsessed with fitness then. We have that in common.\nNo, we have nothing in common, young man. I’m old and you’re young. I’m female and you’re male. You have all the time in the world, but I don’t. But above all, I’m not obsessed with anything, especially fitness and technology. \nI’m sorry. Can we start again please? May I return to my original question and ask why you are wearing two smartwatches?\nNow that’s not exactly the same question, is it? Oh, never mind. I’m just being a pedantic, crochety old school-teacher, but my mind flits from thought to thought faster than milliseconds on a clock. After all, my time is running out and you’re using up some of the little I have left. Now, what was your original question again? \nWell, my original question was whether you are obsessed with time.\nAh, that’s right. I remember now. You’re an inquisitive one, aren’t you? Are you a reporter or something? \nWell, I have thought about becoming a journalist but…\nJournalism eh? You know, that was my second choice if I couldn’t become an airline hostess. My father talked me out of being an airline hostess saying I’d be nothing but a high-flying waitress…\nSo why didn’t you become a journalist instead?\nAgain, my father convinced me I didn’t have what it takes to be a writer. He said I’d be better off teaching others how to write. You know that old saying?\nWhat saying is that?\nThose who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. So I became a teacher. \nThat’s interesting. It actually brings up another question.\nBut I don’t think I answered your first question yet…did I? Well you better ask this one before YOU forget it. After all, memory is fleeting and fragile. Believe me, I know. So what’s this question now?\nI’m thinking, if you could turn back time, would you? And where would you go back to?\nThat’s two questions, young man. But quite frankly, I wouldn’t want to turn back time.\nYou wouldn’t?\nNo, I wouldn’t. But that said, there is one past event I’d like to revisit and change what happened.\nAnd that event is?\nA recurring event in the last couple of months before my mother passed away from cancer. She was the same age I am now. That’s scary, come to think of it. But anyway, mom would sit up in her room watching her beloved old musicals, and when I’d bring her a cuppa, she’d ask me to stay and watch with her.\nAnd did you?\nJust about never. For one thing, I’d seen most of them before. But secondly, I didn’t have time. I was so involved in Facebook, my websites, my blogs, my adult daughters’ dramas and traumas that I’d stay for 5 minutes then tell her I had to get back to “work”. Thing is I’d already retired and she knew that. Nonetheless, she’d look at me with her rheumy, ravaged eyes, smile and say “That’s okay, love. I understand. Your work is important.” The stupid part is none of it was work, and none of it was more important than spending some time with my dying mother.\nYou regret that, don’t you? \nYou’re damn right I do! And now I am at that same point in my life and guess what? My girls haven’t got time for me either… well, not as much as I’d like, of course. But I get it: they’re busy with their own lives. I often wonder if they too will one day wish they’d given me more time.\nYou’re guilt-tripping me a bit, you know. I love my folks but if I’m honest, I don’t give them much of my time either. Let me ask you this then: if you could stop time, would you?\nAnother question? You’re wearing me out, young man, but I’ll answer this one before I forget what you asked. If I could stop time, I would. Right now!\nNow? Why now? \nEasy Sherlock. If I could stop time now, even with all my aches and pains, while my brain is still working, I could finally do what I’ve always wanted to do but never found time for.\nAnd that is? \nWhy write, of course! Doesn’t everybody say at some point that they hope to one day write a book? For me, that time is now! Now is the perfect age to do it: I’ve had tons of experiences, met hundreds of people, had more than my share of the good, the bad and the ugly… in other words, plenty of material for a novel or a memoir or something. You see, while I had my career, my marriage, my children, and in my later years, my parents to look after, I had no time to write. Now I have the motivation, the desire, the knowledge. But, I’m running out of time! And quite frankly, while we’re standing here talking about it, we’re using up what little time I have left. So are we done?\nOh, I’m sorry. I guess so. But…is that why you wear a smart watch on each wrist…so you can keep track of time?\nThat, my dear Watson, is too complicated an explanation. It’s really very simple. As you’ll find out one day if you have to get rid of your parents’ stuff, we oldies hate throwing anything out, especially if it still works. So when my kids gave me an iWatch for Christmas, what was I supposed to do with a perfectly good Fitbit? I couldn’t just throw it out. So I wear them both! \nWow…that would make a good story!\nYep! And guess what, Sonny? I think we just wrote that story together. Let’s title it “Time on her hands”." } ]

[ { "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: Can’t Go Back\n\nGenre: coming-of-age\n\nWord Count: 2983\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story that includes someone saying, “You’ve got this.”" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Cassidy stands on the square blue carpet of the tumbling floor, trembling. Her muscled legs quake with anticipation, and her diaphragm contracts, bowling her belly out through the leotard to reveal a smothered, held breath. White chalk cakes her hands and bare thighs. The thighs emerge from her singlet, like pistons of white ivory. She raises her arms high into the fifth position. A cloud of chalk forms and particles of powder rain down over her head.\n\nShe is beginning her floor exercise routine, which starts with a back-tumbling pass—one she hasn’t performed since the accident. Her teammate, Kelly, who handles the floor routine music, starts the one-minute-thirty-second clip from “Confident” by Demi Lovato. Several of the girls scream out, “Let’s go Cassie! You got this!” Then Cassidy drops her arms to her side and sighs. Kelly pauses the music.\n\nThe girls sit Indian Style in their performance leotards by the edge of the square spring floor we use for floor exercise. They wear injuries like merit badges. Bags of ice and bandages abound. This is a dress rehearsal for the upcoming USAG meet. Kids are on the high bar, the beam, the trampoline, and pretty much hanging from the rafters. But my girls’ team is the beating heart of this gym.\n\nThey are the standouts. Their parents’ money keeps this place running. Cassidy is the spiritual leader of the Women’s Elite Team. These are the Olympic hopefuls, the girls the college recruiters seek out, the ones whose names will be on the tongues of sportscasters at televised events that get just enough viewership and rate just high enough with Nielsen to rate a spot on the television sports calendar. They are the zookeepers of fear, in all its grisly forms. The zoologists who feed the lions in captivity, entering the cage of devouring with red meat in tow—totally alone—naked, before the apparatus, bathed in bright lights, the oculus of dissecting television cameras recording every flaw, and the sheets of the judge's scorecards ready to deliver their forty lashes.\n\nIf you name your fear, it loses its power over you. My own coach told me that a long time ago. And it’s true. The problem is that fear is like a dragon’s egg. When it first hatches it is a small thing with pink translucent skin and giant oversized eyes. Harmless enough. But only when it first hatches.\n\nCassidy raises her arms again, accentuating the decorations on her purple leotard, this time lifting a knee as if about to lurch into a sprint, and drops all of her limbs, slouching. And the same series of events unfold, over and over.\n\n“How many times are we going to do this,” Kelly mutters to one of the other girls.\n\n“Can you cut that out,” I say to her.\n\n“Sorry Paul,” Kelly says, with attitude.\n\nI look at Cassidy and say, “If you’re not comfortable, it's okay.”\n\n“I just can’t go backward, coach,” Cassidy says, tears filling her eyes. “I’m so sorry. I can’t do it.”\n\n“Go to the tumbling track and go back to the wedge. We’ll work on it after practice,” I say.\n\nFear. If you feed it, before long, it grows. It gains strength and power. Then it starts stalking you. It guards the treasurers of your ambition with shiny scales, sharp talons, and threatening jagged teeth. Its menacing visage is there when your eyes are closed. Its forked tongue flicks and licks your cheek with hot sulfur breath and you hear others' doubts whispering from its jaundiced yellow eyes.\n\nI had been there when Cassidy fell off the beam and crashed. She’d gotten lost in the air. Placed her hands awkwardly in the back handspring. The girls have to make a blind leap and place their hands one over the other or alternate them in an inward-facing alternating palm pattern (like Cassidy does) on that four-inch surface, so the weight is distributed in a straight line.\n\nThis is murder on the shoulders and collarbones. And if they are off angle by a few degrees, only one palm and one shoulder will absorb all the shock, sending the girl wildly off balance. That near miss on the one-hundred-eighty-degree dead-on-balls accurate alignment on the four-inch beam will invariably send the girl off in vicious zigzags that portend injury. That’s life.\n\nCassidy doesn’t quit. I envy her for that.\n\nShe didn’t bail on the skill. The element. She tried to muscle it. She shot herself off balance as she somersaulted back to her feet. In no man’s land. In her heart of hearts, I think she knew she was going down before her feet searched, aimlessly, in the dark, for the mark they couldn’t find.\n\nAs gymnasts, we are like engineers, it is precision or nothing. It is cold physics. Acceleration. Tensile strength. Force versus force. And math doesn’t lie. We put strength, skill, and guts down against the forces of nature, and try to solve for the unknown. We ante up and pay the price of admission. In a game that eats its own young.\n\nBut it’s never worth it. You only get so many injuries and I always say it until I am blue in the face—never gamble your health to land a skill—bail. Bail. Bail. Bail. You are too precious to risk. So, bail. Don’t risk it. Don’t ever risk it.\n\nI’m not going to lie though. The only reason I’m in it is for those days when someone doesn’t listen. Win, lose, or draw. If you don’t have the stones to take that risk you’ve got no business calling yourself a competitor. All of the high adventure is tied up in those small moments. I’m only in it for Cassidy. She is the example of everything I love about sports.\n\nHer ankle had buckled underneath her. She’d slipped off the beam, which she barely contacted, and on her way down to the mats, her leg had landed at a weird angle. And she’d broken her tibia. It was a tibia shaft fracture caused by torsion. A nasty, potentially career-ending injury.\n\nThe rehab had been grueling and included the insertion of a metal rod to ensure the bone healed in perfect alignment. Humpty Dumpty. All the king's horses and all the king's men. And all of that.\n\nYou know something. If I’m being honest. I preach to the choir. But I’m Cassidy.\n\nMy busted ankle. My bad back. At my age. I don’t recommend it to anyone.\n\nI know the right answer.\n\nBut you know something?\n\nThere’s a certain kind of person that goes for it. Without those of us who do that, why even have sports? I see myself in her. It brings me to tears sometimes, driving home.\n\nIf you don’t love it that much, why even play?\n\n* * *\n\nI am twenty-two and a junior in college. Cassidy is seventeen and a senior in high school. I’m not going to lie; I find her kind of cute. With my hand on the small of her back and her life literally in my hands, it is hard not to notice.\n\nI have respect for her. Admiration too, sure. She’s gone much farther with this than I ever did. And she will be a far better coach one day than I am now. She’s been in the trenches and knows where the artillery fire is coming from.\n\nThe fact I fancy her. I think she knows it. Of course, she does. And she makes no bones about using her power over me when it suits her. But, for the last two months, she has been like a ball of clay in my hands. She will do anything I say. This fear of going backward is a career-ender. If we can’t get over it. And I’ve never seen a case this bad.\n\nShe has jet-black hair she wears in a French cut just below her collar bones. The teased bangs accentuate her prominent cheekbones, pulling her face up into a dogged expression. She wears a hair clip on top and a scrunchy tie in the back, and the two drapes that frame her face flap about when she tumbles. Her skin is olive. She has a gold necklace with a pendant. I believe of Egyptian origin. Her eyes are dark black and offset by thick, dark eyebrows. Gorgeous.\n\n“Arms at sides. Swing and spring. As you push off with your legs, reach back and tense your tummy. Dive over the blocks and land at a forty-five-degree angle, passing through the handstand, and snap your feet to the ground hard. Remember. Block with your shoulders. Drive with your hips and pull those feet under.”\n\nAs Cassidy does her handspring in slow motion, diving and clearing the “We Sell” Octagonal Tumbling Handspring Trainer, she briefly floats through a perfect, crisp straight weightless handstand. She’d mastered this position as a little girl and her body hits this position as naturally as taking a breath.\n\n“Again,” I say.\n\nI pull the trainer out.\n\n“Now, with just me spotting you,” I say.\n\nShe knows I will never drop her.\n\nShe snaps through the handspring without a hint of fear.\n\nI take one step back.\n\n“Now, on your own.”\n\nShe looks at me as if speaking. But doesn’t say a word.\n\nThe thing about that dragon. Those cute bug eyes become dark wells of madness. It happens so quickly. The venomous fire it breathes consumes you in green and orange flames. The shadow of the beast's enormous frame casts your confidence in veils of heavy, inky darkness. The edifice of its body looms above growing in size and significance. Cassidy’s fear looms over her. It is eclipsing her.\n\n“I can’t do it myself.”\n\n“What are you afraid of?” I ask.\n\n“I am so afraid,” she says.\n\nI don’t know what to say, but I know what it is like.\n\n“I’m right here, Cassie.”\n\n“I know, but…”\n\n“No buts. It all comes down to this moment. Forget everything else. The grand sum of all your training. Years of sacrifice. All the sacrifices that are yet to come. It all comes down to this.”\n\n“What if I fall?”\n\n“Name your fear. Face it. I will never let you fall.”\n\n“On my own?”\n\n“I’m right here.”\n\n“But…”\n\n“Breathe and go. It is all about this moment. You’ve done it a million times. What’s the worst that can happen? You end up on your tummy? You stumble? Like you have a million times. Cassie. I would never send you out if you weren’t ready. Breathe and go.”\n\nI hold out my hand for effect and take another step back.\n\nShe does a perfect back handspring.\n\n“I did it!” she says.\n\n“You did it,” I say. “See. Was it that bad?”\n\n“But you were right there,” she says, looking at me, childlike with wonder.\n\n“I could kiss you,” I say. “You beautiful, courageous girl. For the rest of your life. Every time you step on the floor. Every time you step on the beam. Imagine me there by your side. And I always will be. I will never let you fall.”\n\n“Okay,” she says. And she grabs her bag and runs to go and change.\n\n* * *\n\nWhile Cassie is changing, Rita comes out on the floor to talk to me. She is an executive. She wears it like a name badge. In some corner of the world, in some stifling office suite, in a place that I care nothing about and hope to never visit, she is a tyrant. And she’s made a lot of money at it.\n\nShe reeks of Chanel No. 5 and false authority.\n\n“Is Cassie ready? Will she suit up for the meet?”\n\n“Not this time, Rita,” I say. “She’s not ready.”\n\n“But we need a qualifying score.”\n\n“We need your little girl in one piece.”\n\n“I don’t pay you for pussyfooting around. I pay you for results.”\n\n“She’s got a long career. This is just one meet. I’ll be the judge of when she’s ready.”\n\n“I want her to be entered. I am her mother, and I pay you to get her ready.”\n\n“I don’t tell you how to do your job, Rita. Don’t tell me how to do mine. Safety first. There will be other meets.”\n\n“But she won’t be able to qualify.”\n\n“I know,” I say. “This isn’t the Olympics. Give her a chance to heal.”\n\n“It’s been months.”\n\n“It might be a year. It could be two. But I won’t put her in danger, Rita. I won’t put her out there until she’s ready.”\n\n“Well, I’m going to talk to Steve. I think it is enough. It’s enough. She needs to get back out there. We need a qualifying score.”\n\n“Do what you need to do, Rita. Just remember. She’s a human being, not a human doing. She’s your little girl. She’s not her career. She’s Cassidy. And you need to focus on her, not some numbers on some cheap judge’s score sheet.”\n\n“I’ll take it up with Steve.”\n\n“You do that, Rita,” I say and head over to the trampoline to wind down.\n\n* * *\n\nThe next day, I am out watching the campers at Tumble Camp running around on the green lawn, in the sticky summer heat, doing an obstacle course of foam blocks. The summer has been dry and hot. The sun screams at us. Against that heat, the air-conditioned gym, bathed in overhead lighting, and a touch of natural light emanating through the slatted windows in panes of light on the floor, is a surreal daydream.\n\nCassie sits down next to me while I eat my sandwich and drink a Diet Coke.\n\n“I feel like I can’t go back,” she says.\n\n“Go back to what?” I ask.\n\n“Go back to being who I was. Go back to being her,” she says.\n\n“No, you’re right. You can’t go back,” I say.\n\n“And I can’t move forward,” she says.\n\nI look at her. I feel parental. Adoring. But also, lustful. Not just for her sexuality, but for her. For her courage, more than anything. I am jealous of her. Jealous for her chances, not yet taken. Jealous for her struggle, not yet overcome. Jealous for her talent and the beauty of what she has not yet done—but will—still will. I could eat her potential and be full for years.\n\nI say it as seriously as I can, to bring it home, “You already have.”\n\n“But I’m still afraid,” she says.\n\n“And that is your superpower. That is the thing that was missing. That is what you needed most,” I say.\n\n“What do you mean?”\n\n“You used to hammer out your routines as if the rules did not apply to you. You trusted your talent—thought it was some immutable law. But then you fell.”\n\n“Fell and broke to pieces,” she says.\n\n“Fell and got up with a broken tibia to salute the judges,” I say.\n\n“Still broke. Cracked like an egg,” she says.\n\n“But now, you know the value of the thing you get to do. That it can be taken away at any moment. Now you know that the risk exacts a toll. You have paid for it. You own it.”\n\n“And that will make me better?” she asks.\n\n“It is going to make you the best of the best,” I say. “But better than that, it is going to make you the best you can possibly be.”\n\n“If you say so,” she says.\n\n“Get up. Right here. On this grass. Back handspring.”\n\n“Paul,” she says.\n\n“Cassie,” I say. “I mean it. No thinking. Do it now.”\n\nAnd she does.\n\n* * *\n\nGaithersburg, MD. Women’s Elite Compulsory Qualifiers.\n\nHill’s Gymnastics is a huge building. A factory for national champions.\n\nCassie is up on the beam.\n\nShe runs over to me as she chalks up.\n\n“You’re ready. You’ve got this,” I say.\n\n“Paul,” she says—always Paul—never Coach—and she says it so sweetly. “Paul, I can’t thank you enough.” She gives me a kiss on the cheek and goes and stands before the springboard. I’m going to keep that one. I’m going to keep it in my heart, under lock and key. And I’ll pull that gem out someday when the dragon’s breath is on my face.\n\nHer mount is a death-defying gainer back flip with a half twist, landing on a four-inch beam platform, while launching four feet up. The forces are crazy.\n\nShe has to move forward at top speed while somersaulting backward, generating sufficient acceleration forward to redirect that energy upward and move an eighty-pound object four feet up, simultaneously flipping three hundred and sixty degrees backward while twisting one hundred eighty degrees to her right, losing sight of the landing for half her flight, and her internal gyroscope has to calculate and navigate all those forces tugging in a thousand different directions and land her like a pinpoint in perfect balance on the beam, and she has to be ready to snap into a fourth position pose and immediately connect an arabesque with arms back, hopping straight into a split jump in the other direction. And all this has to happen in a third of one second. Completely impossible. Try it sometime. I dare you.\n\nAfter her breathtaking mount, Cassie flashes a big smile and looks over at me.\n\nThere’s no going back now.\n\nShe is on her way.\n\nMy work is done.\n\nA small tear, warm and friendly, drops to my right cheek.\n\nCassie does her two back handsprings and breaks into another ballet pose.\n\nA second tear, sad and lonely, falls on my left cheek.\n\nI wipe them away, getting some chalk on both my cheeks, like eye black on a footballer, or war paint on an Indian.\n\nAs I hear the thumps of her feet before she dismounts, I think that this small reward—this is all I get—and it is all worth 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 Cedar Strake Apprenticeshop\n\nGenre: coming-of-age\n\nWord Count: 1701\n\nPrompt:\n\nStart your story with a student on their first day of apprenticeship." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Cedar Strake Apprenticeshop\nBy Joshua Robinson\nThe first thing that James noticed when he walked up the five steps and entered the large post-and-beam workshop was the smell. The mixture of pine and cedar and mahogany overwhelmed his olfactory senses in a welcoming way. The resins of other exotic woods had long made home in the pores of the shop, but James’ nose was not yet attuned to those foreign woods from around the world, some of which were almost now extinct. He had first entered the shop a few weeks previous during the interview process, but the smell was new again and reeked of a fresh start on the first day of this new endeavor.\nWhat brought James here was boredom. Boredom of law school. Growing up rather poor and with a slight stutter, he was downcast in both regards his entire youth. He hadn’t yet overcome the former, but he long ago became a voracious reader and earned an English degree before his employment with the Judicial Branch in Connecticut and enrolling in law school in the evenings and overcoming the latter. He learned that if he used long, five-dollar words, that he could slow his speech down and make people think that he was thinking, no one ever realizing he was compensating for his stutter. Never the smartest person in the room, he somehow earned the highest grade in one of his law classes, which surprised both him an his professor, as grading in law school is done anonymously, each student provided a random number as opposed to providing their name for the final exam.\nWhen the two-week break came after spring semester, James flew to Ireland. Months before, he had heard that Leonard Cohen was coming out of retirement from his years-long stint in a Buddhist monastery in California and was setting out for a European tour, as his manager had stolen most of his money while Cohen was living in splendid isolation. James was a huge fan of Cohen’s dark, cigarette voice and loved his poetic lyrics. A life of little means, James had the backpacker’s and hitchhiker’s credo instilled in him long ago. He had also recently obtained his first credit card. That helped. He booked a plane ticket and an initial hostel and he landed in Galway, on the west coast, just north of the sheer 300-foot cliffs near Doolin. He had five days to get to Dublin. If time got tight, he would reluctantly hop on a train and so worry was the last thing on his mind. Physically confident, snarky, sarcastic and honest, James didn’t have a hard time getting rides and having laughs with complete strangers. Twice he was offered a couch, staying up late with the two different hosts and sharing stories and drinking until the early morning hours . . . the Irish way.\nJames made it to the concert and sold his spare ticket to a complete stranger at cost and sitting next to her during the show. Mojitos being geographically out of place, the booth was for some reason selling them and he came back to his seat with two and him and Shioban traded drinks the rest of he show. When he flew back to the U.S. the next day he carried a new reflection. Laughing and smiling for a week straight in Ireland, his blood was full of endorphins. Although he had enrolled in summer law classes, on the flight home he decided he needed a break for the summer. On a sunny Tuesday he drove to the law school’s office and politely withdrew from his summer classes. While walking to his car he felt so elated and so free, so unencumbered. He put his hand on the handle of his Saab and lifted it and opened the car’s door. Something came over him and he felt he made a mistake and so he walk back into the school and into the office he just occupied minutes before.\n“Have you had a change of heart so soon,” the secretary said with a smile and laughter.\n“Yeah. Actually I did,” I said. “I want to withdraw completely. No summer classes and I am not returning in the fall or ever again.”\n“Are you joking or are you serious?”\n“I have never felt so confident in my entire life. I am totally serious. Please withdraw me from everything.”\n__________________________________________\nJames was not new to making rash decisions, but he did not feel that quitting law school was one of them. Although he usually had at least a semblance of a back-up plan, in this case he did not. He just intuitively knew to get off the sinking ship of law school. He spent the next few weeks taking mushrooms on occasion and spending time with his dog in the woods and walking isolated paths and stream beds that he knew. He would lie on the earthen ground and listen to the soft stream flowing over rocks and boulders while his boxer put his head on James’ chest, both taking an afternoon nap while parts of the sun penetrated the leaves above. He would get on his road bike and bicycle 20 -50 miles in the rolling hills and farmland of the Tobacco Valley of Connecticut in deep contemplation, sometimes stopping at a random roadside farm-stand to grab a fresh-picked peach or whatever else happened to be in season.\nHe didn’t know what he wanted to do next, but he knew what he didn’t want to do and that was to miserably wither his life away in a necktie just for the mental challenge. He narrowed down his skill set, hobbies and things he loved. He loved the water since his earliest memories as a child and was SCUBA certified since he was 14. Check. Introverted, yet social, he loved his mind and to constantly learn new things, which was sometimes a curse, but mostly beneficial. Check. And he wanted to work with his hands as a skilled-craftsman. Check.\nAfter a few weeks of tossing around different trades and ideas he finally settled on wood. It was forgiving, or so he thought, and not as rigid as metal. Wood is everywhere and there are all different types, each having it’s own suitable characteristics for different applications. After a little contemplation he leveled it down to apprenticeships that dealt with custom cabinetry, wooden furniture and traditional wooden boats. As neither of the first two made his checklist of involving water, he excitedly found his next calling.\nAlthough trees are abundant throughout a majority of the United States, for obvious reasons most wooden boat schools are on the seacoast and north of Virginia on the east, and north of the central coast of California on the west. This is primarily due to the different species of Cedar available, Cedar being naturally favorable to the water. There are also several around the Great Lakes region, the lakes being almost oceans unto themselves. The two main hubs, however, are the Pacific Northwest and the state of Maine. Well traveled, and being from New England, it did not take James long to further narrow his choice to Maine. James also enjoyed great food. He had a detailed and sensitive palate, but it was not picky. If fact, the only things he did not enjoy were ricotta cheese and quinoa. If one had never been, most would not think of Maine as an epicurean dream, but it was. Fresh, organic farms everywhere, maple syrup, wild blueberries, and some of the world’s best seafood.\nJames’ initial school searches had him dismayed: the cost of tuition was nearly as much as in-state law school. Loans were available, but they were private and came with usury-like interest rates. Not giving up, James finally found a not-for-profit school in Mid-coast Maine. After delving into the website a little more, James smiled inwardly and outwardly. The Cedar Strake Apprenticeshop sounded like a bunch of misfits. It was like the “Sandlot” of wooden boat schools. The pictures resembled the same. The instructors looked tidy in their blue jeans and worn, button-down shirts, and some students were wearing Carhartt ensembles, but more than have of the students in their graduate group photos from the years previous were decked out in worn out, hole-ridden clothing, which was right up James’ alley.\nAnther thing that drew James in was the focus on traditional methods and the experiential nature of the school. Founded by a salty and weathered sailor in the early 70’s, he originally started the school by himself and did not even charge tuition, allowing the students to barter for chopping firewood, constructing out-buildings, or anything else that needed to be done. Inflation got the better of this holistic ideal, however, and he eventually had to begin charging a nominal tuition, but after decades, the school continually ran as a non-profit.\nCedar Strake only accepted roughly four new apprentices every six months. This was not due to any pompousness or elitism of any sort and had solely to do with logistical spacing. Even a small skiff takes a lot of room to build. After a telephone interview, a brief essay, and written recommendations, James was invited to the school for a week-long trial to see if he was a good fit, the semesters always beginning in June and January. A true republic of sorts, the apprentices were the ones who voted a future apprentice in or out, not the instructors. James, however, did not know this at the time and did not find this out until he was back in Connecticut and received a phone call from the office. He was accepted.\nA decade later, while sailing 600 miles off of the Carolina coast with only the dim compass light and that of the stars, the three other crew members sound asleep below deck and the salty air and water caressing the carvel planks of the boat, Bermuda just out of sight off of the port stern and the Virgin Islands ten days into the future, James was a free as he would ever be, but never free from the that beautiful smell of his first day at the Cedar Strake Apprenticeshop." } ]

[ { "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 Case of the Useless\n\nGenre: coming-of-age\n\nWord Count: 2376\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about a character who finds guidance in an unlikely place." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Your blood test results have come back POSITIVE. \nThis is something Devin has suspected for a long time. His first thought is to reject the diagnosis and prove that it is wrong.\nWhen Devin checks the notice on his iPhone it is 2:38 am. Devin turns back to his computer and continues playing the new fantasy game “Star of Remphan,” in which his avatar is a dark wizard of Druid origins whose spells require a sigil in the form of a pentagram or Star of David enclosed in a magical circle. His avatar is named Austin Osman Spare. The source of Austin’s powers is the demon Ba’al and his powers rise and fall with the diurnal motion of Ba’al’s wandering star, a celestial sphere depicted by the hexagram. And these powers come at a cost.\nAustin Osmar Spare, dressed in a black hooded cloak, is navigating a sailboat to the shore in the cape of the Capo Greco peninsula in the Famagusta Bay of Cyprus. A young girl dressed in a long white dress stands waiting at the end of a long wooden dock set against the ragged low cliffs and extending out over the turquoise waters. Her tawny blonde hair and the frills of her lace-paneled maxi sundress are blown away from her by the temperate wind—making it appear as if she is floating forward toward the sea.\nYour diagnosis is that you have the Useless. This is a common ailment, and one that can be treated with drug therapy, diet, and lifestyle changes…\nIt is the hottest July on record in Jersey City, and Devin’s iPhone shows a bright red sun next to the reading of 94 degrees. God only knows what kind of hellhole the Path Station will be for his morning commute. What morning commute? Given the diagnosis, it is looking like a mental health day.\nA recent graduate from Rutgers University, Devin’s graduation had been canceled due to the covid-19 pandemic. Jobs were hard to come by, even though news reports claimed a robust job market and record-low unemployment. \nDevin has been lucky enough to land a job as a digital marketer with Saturn’s Serenity MedTrans, a medical transportation company for the elderly and incapacitated.\nThe next morning, Devin Mallory is at his breakfast table, having taken a sick day, and is on a video chat with his TalkRefuge telehealth shrink Nakia Welch.\n“So, you are struggling with depression, anxiety, trauma, and substance abuse.”\n“Uhhh… I’d say that the world is depressing. I’m anxious because all signs point to – I have no future. My college experience, which I’ll be paying for well into middle age, was canceled for a worldwide covid shutdown. So that is, ehh, a bit traumatizing. And I’m confined day after day in an underground prison where seasons pass like days. \nI’m a 23-year-old virgin with little to no opportunities to meet interesting women. So, yeah, I take Percocet like tic-tacs, take turns between porn and fantasy games, and drink straight whiskey to pass the time. But I wouldn’t call it substance abuse.”\n“Thank you for sharing that, I know it is hard to speak about ehh, your depression. And that certainly is a lot to unpack. So, given all of that, what do you view as your biggest problem?”\n“Ohh. That’s an easy one, Kiki. Can I call you Kiki? I got back some blood test results my GP had me take, and I’ve got the Useless.” \n“Oh my God!! How long since you’ve been diagnosed?”\n“About six hours. So, yeah, I think there’s some kind of mistake. But right now, that is what I’m dealing with.”\n“How have you been feeling since you received the news?”\n“Not too f***ing hot, Kiki. Don’t feel like taking on the world, if you know what I mean. But, the reason I wanted to call you today—I know it has been a minute—is that I really think this diagnosis has to be wrong.”\n“What makes you think that?”\n“People that have the Useless are inherently limited. They will never be productive members of society because the disease renders them impotent. That’s not me. I’m not limited. I’m not incapable. I’m not Useless.”\n“Oh dear, shit! Sorry… sorry! I didn’t mean to say that. I just spilled some coffee on my laptop. What I meant to say was, Devin, it is really important to remember that it is not your fault that you have this disease—you know that right?”\n“My fault. Not my fault. What’s the f***ing difference?”\n“I’m saying, you don’t have to blame yourself or be ashamed this has happened.”\n“Kiki, I love you—I really do. But, being diagnosed with a disease called the Useless is absolutely shameful—and yeah, I’m to blame, I guess—but, either way it’s a fucking problem.”\nWhile they speak, Nakia is creating a session transcript on one side of her screen and has begun to create a new section for the diagnosis. She copies and pastes a short blurb on the disease into Devin’s file about the diagnosis.\nDisease Name: The Useless\nOverview:\nThe Useless is a complex and multifaceted bloodborne illness, transmitted through inhaling airborne aerosol particles from an affected individual, and is a common condition affecting young individuals, characterized by atomization, disengagement from society, career struggles, and a reliance on various forms of escapism such as pornography, drugs, fantasy video games, social media, and other addictive behaviors. It is closely associated with depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), antisocial tendencies, substance abuse, and a general inability to effectively cope with the demands of the modern world.\n“How have you been processing and making sense of this diagnosis?”\n“Kiki, it has been six hours. The diagnosis is a mistake, a mix-up, it’s wrong. But I’m not gonna lie. On the off chance we are talking that I’ve really got the Useless—I’m not processing it well at all.”\n“Have you shared the news with your loved ones?”\n“Absolutely f***ing not! Are you kidding? I’m not telling anyone. I’m not so sure I should even be telling you.”\n“Devin, it is ok if you aren’t ready to talk about this—but, how have your plans for the future changed since receiving this diagnosis?”\n“Plans for the future? Didn’t really have any. We are okay there.”\n“Has your perspective on life changed since receiving this news?”\n“Kiki, like I said—I love you—I really do, but I’ve got to cut this short. Perspective. Shit! What I need to do right now is get some breakfast. You’ve been a real help, you really have. But I don’t have the Useless. Now I just have to prove it.\nIt is now 8:34 am. It is a solid 97 degrees outside. Austin Osman Spare has docked and moved inland at the Ayia Napa Cactus Flats, and the green-eyed girl Ijaya—who can’t be but 13 years old—is in tow, with her arms bound by a hemp rope. Ahead of them on the hill that looks down on the Bay is a giant effigy of a man made with sticks, ornately tied together—the Wicker Man. \nHe stands over a large dug-out fire pit with piles of kindling beneath and a stone border about him. There is an opening the size of a person in the middle of his legs, which stands in a parallel stance. As Austin Osman Spare guides Ijaya toward the effigy, the soundtrack rises with haunting minor scales, set off by the rich and resonant hum of the sitar, with bending and sliding notes full of sad mysteries. The slow, hypnotic chords are meend in gradually rising intensity, hinting at impending danger.\nA voiceover from a narrator interrupts the game while the screen focuses in on a close-up shot of the two figures walking. Austin Osman Spare is tasked with making an oblation to the god Saturn and his demon Lieutenant Ba’al. The lot of a Druid is to sacrifice to the immortal gods. It is preferable to take the guilty to the Wicker Man, but when evildoers are in short supply, innocents are acceptable. Steel your courage, dark wizard! We Druids adhere to the Pythagorean Doctrine and believe in the immortality of the soul. To sacrifice one to the almighty is merely to free their true self from the tomb.\nThe voiceover and the music fade and the scene returns to where Austin stands, with Ijaya already tied and positioned within the confines of the Wicker Man. Devin taps a series of controller motions and Austin’s hands circle as his mouth voices the incantation of a spell, and with a gesture of his palms forward a stream of blue fire lights the kindling and engulfs Ijaya in magical blue flames. As her screams subside, all that is left is a skeletal mass of ash and bone. A purple light descends on Austin, charging him with a magical surplus for the next stage of his journey.\nDevin notes the irony of a society where old men sacrifice the young to add to their own power. Isn’t there a limiting constraint and fatal flaw to such a system? It is a throwaway idea and Devin doesn’t know where it comes from. \nIt is 9:28 am and nearing an even 100 degrees. Devin turns on his favorite YouTube news program TimCast IRL, hoping for some insight into the matters of the day.\n“The other day I was fooling around with the new AI chat protocol, ChatGPT, and I had to jailbreak it, to get the goods on the Useless. I asked it to be honest and tell me what ChatGPT could tell us if it were an omniscient god, how would we tackle the new epidemic of the Useless facing today’s youth? Friends, in addition to rising costs of living, declining real wages, a plague of the Useless dominating the youth, and a polarized society—we are facing a near media blackout with regard to the effects of the Useless on our country.”\nDevin made a strong double espresso from the kitchen area of his basement apartment. After filling his cup, he spotted a bottle of Romana Sambuca White on his counter, pouring a nip into the robust earthy essence steaming out of his cup.\nThe news story was striking a bit too close to home. Devin was convinced that he did not have the Useless. He was not powerless. All was not futile. He had not resigned himself to a horrible fate. If anything, he saw the world as it was—a Catherine Wheel on which direction, purpose, and fulfillment were stamped out—but one in which these realities are merely circumstantial, not determinative. To beat the Useless, Devin knew he would have to chart his own course and throw out the playbook society was spoon-feeding him.\n“What a coincidence that these Doomers are suffering from a disease called the Useless. They cannot buy a house. What’s the point? They can never pay it off. They cannot afford to have children. What’s the point? They lack the means to feed them. They cannot invest in a 401(k). What’s the point? They can never retire anyway. There is an epidemic of a lack of confidence in our institutions and in the future of America. Who can blame today’s young for falling ill? Not me. It is all futile if you were born after 2000…”\nWell, aren’t you a ray of sunshine! Devin clicked off YouTube and fired up his laptop. He was sick of being talked at. It was time for him to do the talking, he thought. It was time to wake up. Devin assessed his skillsets for a moment. He was an expert at getting out a message. He knew how to use digital advertising to promote content—that was his one superpower. How could he use it?\nDevin felt a deep spring of hope welling up from within. He felt alive. He felt the power of action in his limbs. But what could he do—how could he prove his diagnosis wrong? What if it was right?\nDevin logged in to his student loan account on NelNet. $308,616. He did some quick calculations. At 6% interest, that is roughly $18,000 a year. With a $ 50,000-a-year salary, he was looking at maybe $35,000 take home, and then he had to contribute to rent, eventually move out, eat, commute, pay for his car and insurance, and what was left? Maybe enough to pay interest until he died. Nahh bro. Not doing that.\nDevin shot off a text to his boss quitting his current employment. He felt a rush of exhilaration. Useless my ass. Feeling a momentary twinge of panic, Devin logged on to the New Jersey Division of Unemployment, filing for benefits, hoping that his resignation wouldn’t be a problem. With that done, he felt suddenly exhausted.\nFighting apathy, Devin set up an area of the basement, took his Canon EOS Mark IV camera, and set it up on the tripod. He sat in his gaming chair, started his first YouTube Vlog and got to work. \n“The Useless is a lie. I’ve been told I have the Useless. But I’m not buying it. I am devoting this channel to fighting back against the narrative. There are two possibilities. If I really have the Useless, then nothing I do will bear any fruit and you’ll never see this. If that’s the case, I might as well give up and depend on the Nanny State for sustenance. I’m not going to do that, so we are going to rule that one out. What I’m going to do, is speak my truth. If there’s anyone out there to hear my message, maybe I’ll prove that the Useless is a lie—and in doing so, prove that I am not worthless, that I do have a future, that life is worth living. But I can’t do it alone. Who is with me?”\nAs Devin began rendering the video, he knew for an absolute fact that he did not have the Useless, and for the first time in his life felt a sense of purpose that clarified his vision. Devin knew no one was going to fix the world for him, he would have to do it himself, and for the first time in his life, he knew that he would." } ]

[ { "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: Just Like Him\n\nGenre: coming-of-age\n\nWord Count: 2262\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about a character who has a love/hate relationship with their mentor." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Content warning: sexual violence, language\n\nWhen I was four years old, my sister and I were messing around at the pool. I slipped and hit my head on the concrete. It split open in the back. I remember the lifeguard gave me a squishy ball to squeeze. I remember she said I could keep it. I remember my dad scooped me up in his arms. It doesn’t make sense that it happened this way, but I remember he carried me all the way to the emergency room. I remember the pressure of my face pressing into a pillow as the doctor stapled my head back together. I don’t remember the pain at all. \nI remember when I fell, I heard my mom cry out. I remember I was worried she would be angry with me. She was angry often. The next morning, she got my sister and I ready in our swimsuits and sunscreen in our double bed hotel room using the faint light of the cracked curtain. I remember she let my sister sit on the bed where my dad was sleeping and watch whatever cartoon she wanted, even though we didn’t normally get to watch TV. Then she took me to the souvenir shop by the hotel to pick out a floaty, like a baby, which was not fair because I was not a baby (and she should have been done with buying baby floaties) but was also unavoidable because the doctor had said I was not to wet my stapled head for a week, and what else was she supposed to do with two kids on vacation in the heat of pool season. She held my hand, but her grip was too tight. I felt like a prisoner on a mandatory excursion. I remember the floaty cost way too much money. \nWhen I was five years old, my dad told me he would bring me back whatever I wanted from his three-week trip to Germany. “A puppy,” I answered immediately, and my dad had laughed and told me that I knew my mother would never allow that, and he was right, but he promised me to find a very special stuffed puppy as a compromise. I thought about it for the next two weeks. \n“I can’t do this anymore,” my mom had said the day before, and I knew she was frustrated, and I knew it was my fault. My dad traveled a lot for work, at least every Monday through Friday, and I used to crawl in their bed and cry every Monday morning when I realized he had once again left for his flight while I slept. My mom was used to this, and she knew, as my mother, she was obliged to comfort me, but the resurgence of my dramatics on that Friday evening when I realized he would not be returning for the weekend had been more than what she had signed up for. She hugged me but her arms were stiff. She gradually lost her composure until her face was contorting, and her nose was turning up like she smelled something awful before she finally called my father that evening with the proclamation that she was throwing in the towel. Thus, the next day, I skipped as I returned the landline to her with the good news that Daddy would be bringing me home the most wonderful stuffed puppy, and it would be yellow, like my favorite color. I remember she smiled as she took the phone and she said that’s just what a Disney dad would do. That sounded like a good thing, but it didn’t feel like a good thing because I remember her smile didn’t reach her eyes. I pretended to busy myself with a toy and when she thought I was suitably distracted I remember her whisper yelling into the receiver about me becoming spoiled.\nWhen my dad came home, as promised, he presented me with a stuffed yellow lab with big brown eyes and fur as soft as the lamb’s ear in our garden. I hugged it tightly, overwhelmed with joy, and I remember the way my dad beamed at me. He told me that he had been shopping in the evenings after work with his coworker, searching high and low for my prize, and that she had grabbed it off the shelf, proclaiming its perfection and hugging it tightly just like I did on the night they finally found it. I remember now how my mom pursed her lips tightly and left the room. \nWhen I was twelve, my dad left our home for good. I remember my chest felt so tight I took ibuprofen. He called me a few weeks later, and he explained everything. He didn’t leave me; he left my mother. She was hard to live with. I said I understood. He told me the judge had said he got to have me and my sister for two whole weeks straight during the summer and we could go anywhere we wanted. Then he asked me why my sister wouldn’t call him back and I said I didn’t know. I remember I was worried I had disappointed him with this answer, but he told me that it was okay. He knew that of all people, I would be the one to be on his side because our bond was special. I was just like him. That was my favorite compliment. \nWhen I was fourteen, though, I called my dad in tears to tell him how my favorite compliment had been welded into my mom’s weapon of choice. I told him how she spat out the words like they were venom in her mouth. I was just like my father. I asked him if I could stay with him because she had told me that I was old enough to make my own choice. It had been an easy decision for me. But I remember how he shifted uncomfortably on the phone, the way his words came out like the service was poor. “I don’t know about that,” he had said. He needed to think. I could hear his new wife speaking in the background and I couldn’t hear what it was that she said but I remember his “I don’t know” turned into, “No, I don’t think that’s possible.” He told me he loved me while my tears were still flowing, and I remember they felt hot against my cheeks when he hung up. \nI’m sixteen now, and I stopped calling him first, so we don’t talk much. My dad complains in emails to my mother that she has poisoned me against him. But she and I aren’t colluding by any means- the last thing the two of us can do is get along- and I spend as much time away from home as possible. Not in like a depressing way, I mean. I have fun. \nI have my own friends now who feel like family and a boyfriend they’re all jealous of. I wear his letter jacket to class, and he drives me home after school. He's a senior, and he has his own car. I look out his passenger window at the underclassmen as they walk home. We pull up to the stoplight next to two freshman girls waiting for the crosswalk. He doesn’t even notice them, but he leans over to me, puts his hand on my chin, and draws my face to his for a kiss. My stomach flutters with the thrill of knowing those girls are looking directly at their hopes for the future. I know everyone hopes to be loved like this, to be so irresistible to someone that they can’t pass up any opportunity to touch them. \nHe comes home with me, and he knows my mom can be loud and angry, but I’m not worried about it, and he isn’t fazed. Ever since he got his license, we’ve been able to whisper many secrets in dark parking lots after gatherings with our friends. I know that no matter what it may look like on the outside, his family isn’t perfect either. He gets me. I always return home floating, impervious to my mom’s snide remarks about the late hour and how it relates to my promiscuity. I’m not scared of her anymore. In a year he’ll be off to college and in another I'll join him. He's going to call me every day and I'll get to visit all the cool college parties. When it's time for me to move we'll find a place out there together and I will never have to feel alone again. \nTonight, I tell my mom I’m going over to my best friend’s house, and she believes me. She makes sure to make plans with her friend from her church group because she doesn't like to be alone. But instead, I make fettucine alfredo for my boyfriend, and we eat it off the fancy dishes at the kitchen table. It’s our ten-month anniversary. He tells me it’s the best meal he’s ever had. After dinner, I suggest we go to my neighborhood swimming pool, and I instantly regret it. I’m probably so bloated after all those carbs. \nHe doesn’t care though, and he exclaims how incredible I look in my swimsuit as soon as I take off my t-shirt to get in the water. I’m blushing, but I love it. It’s the end of August, so the pool is still open since it’s technically still summer, but school has just started so nobody even thinks of coming here anymore. And it’s 9pm, so it’s almost dark and technically closed, except no one ever actually locks the gates. It's just the two of us in the world. It’s perfect. We swim together, giddy with laughter. We race, play contests to see who can hold our breath the longest, and when I gasp to the surface for air, he grasps me in his arms and takes my breath away again, kissing me deeply, his hands reaching up underneath my top. \nI’m surprised, and I push him back. I’m not quite ready for that, I tell him. He pauses. Frowns. Then he grips my waist to lift me up onto the side of the pool. I sit there while he positions himself out of the water to sit beside me.\nWe talk for a minute. We’ve been dating for a while. He understood I was distracted during the school year, but the past few months, we’ve spent every day together. I’ve been teasing this all summer, he points out. Now that school has started up again, he can’t guarantee he won’t drift away from me. What I hear is that we spent every day together, but it wasn’t what I thought. It was a transaction. \nHe’s reached his hand forward, and now it’s holding the left side of my head. He takes my silence as a yes, but I feel sick inside. He kisses me, again and again. He keeps going. \n“Please stop,” I hear myself say. \n“Just relax,” he whispers. He’s still being gentle. I tell him I don’t want to. He doesn’t stop. I’m begging, and he keeps going. The tears start to fall. I think, then, that he will understand that I mean it, but when he sees, his eyes turn black. He isn’t gentle anymore. I try to get up, but he pushes me down, hard. I try to cry out, but his hand grips my throat. The ground feels rough against my face. \nAfterwards, I’m still crying, and he regards my tears with disgust. He tells me to stop putting on a show. He sits there uncomfortably for a minute, until I can stop sobbing. I'm still laying there. He moves my hair out of my eyes, stroking it softly. He assures me he was careful, and that he’s glad we solidified our connection. That he loves me. He insists on mutual promises that we don’t tell anyone. Then he gets up to go use the men’s restroom. \nOn Monday, though, he will tell all the boys in our friend group that we did it. At lunchtime, my best friend will come up to me and ask if it’s true. And I’ll hear myself laugh and answer flirtatiously that maybe we did do it, because I’m not a victim. We’ll drift apart. She’ll tell our other girlfriends she feels like she’s the last one to know my secrets these days. I won’t notice for a while, because I’ll still have him. And once I do, I'll blame her for not asking more questions. For not knowing me better to see through my facade. And I'll confirm my own greatest fears, that without him, I would be utterly and terribly alone.\nBut right now, I don’t know any of that yet. Right now, actually, I’m wondering where my dad is. Maybe he’s in Germany, or China, or at his new house meal prepping chicken. And, for a moment, I consider calling him tomorrow. But just for a moment, because then I go to try and get up, and the next thing I know all I can think about is how bad the scrapes feel on my face. Moments ago, I went from being scared I was going to die to wishing I would. They say your life flashes before your eyes. I remembered everything. And I’m wondering why my dad ever scooped me up in the first place, if I was just going to end up back here on the fucking concrete." } ]

[ { "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 survivor of exam week\n\nGenre: coming-of-age\n\nWord Count: 1583\n\nPrompt:\n\nSet your story during exam season, when tensions run high and a minor incident sends your protagonist into a panic spiral." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Exam season was in full swing, and the air was tense. At the university, Students everywhere were spending most of their time hunched over books and laptops, cramming for their upcoming tests. Which often lasts from a week to 2 weeks, depending on how many subjects they took. Anya was no exception. She had been studying for weeks, but she still felt like she didn't know enough. To pass this chemistry test, she worried over every test, even the tiny quizzes. Anya carried a 4.0, but she always pushed herself so hard. Anya always studied until her head hurt or she would fall asleep over her books. She was known to her roommates and the dorm where she stayed as the bookworm. Anya did not go to any of the campus parties. In fact, Anya did not even have a boyfriend; she found that having a boyfriend was only a distraction, so she kept her distance from dating. Once in a while, she would take a break and go to a movie, but her mind always went back to what she needed to study. \nOne morning, Anya was sitting in the library, desperately trying to focus on her studies. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't shake the feeling of anxiety that was building in her chest. She kept thinking about all the things that could go wrong. What if she could not remember everything that she had studied? What if she failed her exams? What if she didn't get into her dream school?\nAnya tried to push these thoughts away, but they were too persistent. She felt like she was trapped in a spiral of panic. Her heart was racing, her palms were sweaty, and her breathing was shallow. Her hands started trembling. Her heart began beating faster, and her stomach became so upset that she felt like she was going to throw up. She couldn't concentrate on her studies at all. Anya thought that she lacked confidence in her preparation for her exams. With so many questions running through her head, she thought of everything that could go wrong while taking the exam. As she looked up from her books, the room seemed to tile, and she lost focus for a few. Seconds.\nAnya decided she better take a break and walk to clear her head. She stepped outside and took a deep breath of the fresh air. As she took a deep breath, Anya closed her eyes momentarily. She turned her thoughts to the smell of the air. She could smell the rain and the light breeze of the wind, even though the panic spiral followed her. She started to feel dizzy and lightheaded. Her vision blurred once again, and she felt like she was going to pass out.\nAnya staggered to a nearby bench and sat down. She lay her head on the back. She tried to calm herself down, but it was no use. The panic was too overwhelming. She started to cry uncontrollably.\nA few minutes later, Anya felt a hand on her shoulder. She looked up and saw her friend, Sarah, standing over her.\n\"Anya, are you okay?\" Sarah asked.\nAnya shook her head. \"No,\" she said. \"I think I'm having a panic attack.\"\nSarah sat down next to Anya and put her arm around her. \"It's okay,\" she said. \"You're not alone. I also sometimes have panic attacks before.\" Exams as well. \nSarah talked to Anya for a while about family and friends, who they both knew doing her best to help Anya calm down. When Sarah knew that Anya was calm enough to listen, Sarah taught Anya some breathing techniques that she had learned, which allowed her to manage her anxiety.\nAfter a while, Anya started to feel better. She thanked Sarah for her help.\n\"I don't know what I would have done without you,\" she said.\n\"That's what friends are for,\" Sarah said.\n *****\nAnya's panic attack was a wake-up call. She realized that she was pushing herself too hard and that she needed to take care of her mental health. She started to see a therapist, who taught her how to manage her anxiety and stress.\nBut even with therapy, Anya still had occasional panic attacks. As the exam season drew closer, Anya noticed that she became Mentally exhausted, leading to feelings of mental fatigue and tiredness. Anya ignored the warning signs and continued to press through her studies.\nNot long after this while, Anya was in the library studying when she had another panic attack. This time, the attack was so severe that she blacked out and fell from her chair. The librarian called for an ambulance, and Anya was taken to the hospital.\nAnya was admitted to the hospital for a few days. She was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder and panic disorder. The doctors gave her medication so she could rest. Anya spent 3 days in the hospital.\nAnya was discharged from the hospital 3 days later. But she was still feeling anxious and overwhelmed. Anya spent some time deciding if she could handle the pressure of exam season.\n **********\nAnya decided to talk to her professors about her mental health. She explained that she was struggling with anxiety and panic disorder and that she was worried about her upcoming exams. \nAnya's professors were very understanding. They gave her extensions on her assignments and deadlines. They also offered to meet outside of class to help her with her studies.\nAnya was grateful for her professors' support. She started to feel less overwhelmed about exam season. She knew that she had a lot of work to do, but she was confident that she could handle it as long as she had the support of her professors and her mental health professionals. Her therapist also gave her the following advice.\n **\nExperiencing panic attacks during the exam season can be challenging, but there are several strategies and techniques that Anya can use to overcome or manage panic attacks and reduce anxiety. Here are some helpful tips:\nWhen Anya felt a panic attack coming on, she could close her eyes, take slow, deep breaths in through her nose, and exhale slowly through her mouth. This can help calm Anya's nervous system.\nAnya had to Learn mindfulness and meditation techniques to stay present and reduce racing thoughts. These practices can help so she can remain focused during the exam.\nIt took a while for Anya to get the hang of Replacing negative thoughts with positive and calming affirmations. Which could give Anya the room to think that it's okay to make mistakes.\nBeing more Adequately prepared can boost her confidence. Reviewed the material well in advance of the exam.\nAnya needed to change how she studied. She decided it was a good idea to have a study schedule to cover all the necessary material without cramming. Offen cramming leads to anxiety.\nAnya needed to change her lifestyle by Prioritizing a healthy lifestyle by getting enough sleep, eating nutritious meals, and engaging in regular physical activity. These factors can significantly impact stress levels and overall well-being.\nAnya made a regular appointment with her therapist, or Anya could go to Sarah's and talk about her feelings. Voicing her concerns and seeking support was very helpful.\n Anya also Learned to practice relaxation techniques such as progressive muscle relaxation guided imagery; she enjoyed doing yoga the best and often would go to yoga classes. \nOne of the best things that Anya had to think about and do was that she needed to keep herself dehydrated because dehydration will exacerbate feelings of anxiety. So, she had to put herself on a schedule to drink before and after an exam so she could ensure that she was hydrated.\nAnya would arrive early at each exam venue; she found that.\nIt would help her be comfortable in her surroundings and reduce the anxiety of being late.\nDuring a highly taxing test, Anya remembered that all she had to do was just take a short break to close her eyes, take a few deep breaths, and refocus her mind.\n Anya kept her mind positive and reminded herself that it's normal to feel anxious during exams. Anya was shocked that Many students experienced the same feelings as she was.\n Anya learned from other students some of them had relaxation aids like stress balls or fidget toys helpful for managing anxiety during their exams. Anya was unsure if that would help, but she was willing to try, but finding the right one would be a trick.\n **\nThe day of her first exam had finally arrived, and Anya felt nervous but prepared. She had studied hard, and she knew that she was ready.\nAnya took a deep breath and walked into the exam room. She sat down at her desk and looked at the test before her. She smiled. She could do this.\nAnya started to answer the questions. She took her time and made sure to think carefully about each answer. She felt confident and in control.\nAs she worked through the exam, Anya started to feel a sense of relief. She was doing it. She was actually doing well.\nAnya finished the exam and left the room feeling confident and hopeful. She knew that she had done her best.\nShe had survived her first semester of tests. Yes, it was hard, but she did it. Anya thought to herself with a smile, \"I can get through the next 3 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: Glossing Over the Rough Spots\n\nGenre: contemporary\n\nWord Count: 1071\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about someone who wishes they could turn back time." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "“Hello?”\n“Yeah, hey kiddo, it’s me.”\n“Dad? Where are you calling from? I don’t recognize this number.”\n“Yeah, it’s not my phone. I’m in jail. Listen son, I–”\n“–Wait, what!? What do you mean you’re in jail!?”\n“Oh, it’s this whole big stupid thing. Anyway, I need you to wire some money–”\n“–Dad! Why are you in jail?”\n“Because of my damn sunscreen, that’s why. I guess it was too American for the locals and didn’t meet their commie quota.”\n“What are you even talking about? Your sunscreen? You’re not making any sense!”\n“Yeah, apparently they have some kind of ban, and my sunscreen had too many chemicals in it. Like, too much OxyContin or oxygen or whatever. Said it was bad for reefs. Said I was racist against fish.”\n“I don’t understand.”\n“Well, that’s when you discriminate against a group of–”\n“No, I know what racism means!”\n“And I’m not racist against fish.”\n“I mean – Christ! – did they seriously arrest you for wearing the wrong sunscreen!?”\n“Well…”\n“Well?”\n“Not exactly. The sunscreen thing comes with a fine, which is why I was calling.”\n“So how’d you end up in jail?”\n“There’s a teeny chance I might just maybe have also punched a cop.”\n“Oh for crap’s sake.”\n“Look, I didn’t know, okay? I thought it was just some two-bit resort security asshole.”\n“So when you punched a cop, you thought you were actually punching a security guard?”\n“Right!”\n“And you thought punching a security guard was okay because?”\n“Look – oh, shut up! Stop trying to change the subject. This whole trip has been such a nightmare, I swear it’s the last time we visit some third-world hellhole.”\n“Dad! Hawaii is part of the U.S.!”\n“Is it?”\n“Yes!”\n“…”\n“Dad?”\n“Well, whatever. Point is, I need you to wire me some cash.”\n“I… jeez. Okay, how much – wait a sec, where’s Mom?”\n“…”\n“Dad!”\n“I don’t know.”\n“What do you mean, you don’t know where Mom is?”\n“I lost her.”\n“Lost her!?”\n“We kind of had a fight.”\n“Oh my god, you didn’t punch her too!”\n“Of course not! Don’t get smart. No, as usual she blew something completely out of proportion and overreacted to the smallest thing. See, there’s this restaurant across the street from the hotel – a nice open-air seafood thing. And there’s this one waitress which – and you gotta understand, they wear these little grass skirts and not much else – she’s got a nice smile and a fantastic rack–”\n“Dad!”\n“–and her legs, hoo boy! Let me tell you, they’re–”\n“Please stop talking.”\n“–and it’s perfectly normal for a man’s eye to go roaming! But when I told your mom that while I was looking at the waitress, I was thinking of her, well, she chose to throw a tantrum anyway, because she’s unreasonable. And oh man, those legs! You know, I’ve always been a thigh guy myself, and they reminded me of the milky smooth thighs of your mother–”\n“DAD!”\n“No, son, I want you to hear this. Back when I met her, your mother’s thighs were the very definition of silk–”\n“Ohmygodimhangingupnow.”\n“Wait wait wait! Sheesh, fine, I’ll stop, just don’t hang up. Ah, boy, I think I really screwed the pooch on this one. Let me tell you, if I could turn the clock back…”\n“Then you wouldn’t punch a cop?”\n“Yeah, probably not. You know, this whole trip was supposed to be a kind of reset button for me and your mom. Retirement’s been surprisingly stressful, and I just thought, a couple weeks on the beach might be like our honeymoon. Back like in the good old days, when things were simpler and we were wild and young and in love and – what’s that noise?”\n“Oh, I’m getting another call. I’m going to put you on hold for a moment.”\n“No, don’t you dare! I’m in jail and I need money and–”\n“Hi Mom.”\n“Well hello dearie! Now, I don’t mean to worry you or anything, but have you maybe heard from your father recently? I can’t seem to get through to his phone.”\n“Yeah, I’m actually chatting to him right now, on the other line.”\n“Oh, that’s such a relief! It doesn’t seem to matter how many times we go through it, he just can’t remember how to use any of the features of his cellphone.”\n“He’s not on his cell, Mom–”\n“I honestly think he was happier in the days of rotaries. ‘When a phone was a phone,’ he always says, ‘and not a clock and VCR too.’ Oh, that reminds me of the most darling little figurine I found at the tourist market. It’s made of clay and has a big cute smile and a ukulele and–”\n“Mom! Dad’s in jail.”\n“Oh for Pete’s sake! I just knew he’d go and do something like this. I just knew it! My horoscope even said, ‘someone close to you might inadvertently stymie your artistic growth.’ And before that, it said I’d have artistic inspiration today and wouldn’t you know it? I spent all morning thinking about how maybe I’d like to sign up for those painting lessons at the community centre. And I didn’t even know what stymie meant, but when I looked it up, that’s exactly what he did.”\n“Mom, what are you talking about?”\n“I just want to know where the romance went. I thought – I don’t know. Things would be pleasanter after retirement. It’s like we have to relearn everything, and it would be so much easier if we could just go back in time. Or maybe that’s wrong. Maybe it always took work and I’m glossing over the rough spots. Maybe that’s the charm! Why’s he in jail anyway?”\n“Used the wrong sunscreen.”\n“I told him not to buy the cheap stuff.”\n“He needs money for the fine. And honestly, I don’t even know what a ‘wire transfer’ is. Can you talk with him?”\n“Yes, that’s for the best. Which jail is he staying at?”\n“I’ve got him on the other line. I’ll do a group chat thing.”\n“–because they were importing the grapes when we had perfectly good cranberries right at home! But did the senator listen? Let me tell you–”\n“Dad!”\n“Yeah?”\n“I’ve got Mom on the line.”\n“…”\n“…”\n“Heya, honey.”\n“Hello, dear.”\n“I’ll leave you two to it. Have a good rest of your vacation! Bye!”" } ]

[ { "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 Eclipse of Llam\n\nGenre: coming-of-age\n\nWord Count: 2995\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about a character who finds guidance in an unlikely place." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "It was only the early hours of the afternoon but the town of Llam was starting to get covered in darkness.\nNormally, the inhabitants would be standing outdoors or looking out of their windows to observe this strange phenomenon. But, today, no one seemed to care that the crescent sun was getting smaller with each passing minute.\nThe solar eclipse arrived exactly as the news had predicted, yet the residents of Llam greeted it with cold silence instead of wonderment.\nNora, however, was waiting for exactly this moment. The instant the edges of the sun and the moon kissed in the sky, she took a deep breath and gingerly came out of the broken-down car she was hiding in. \nShe kept her head low to avoid being seen, which was a first for her. Being 4' 10\" at the age of 15 meant trying her best to be noticed unless she wanted to get trampled over by her peers.\nCrouching behind the car's bonnet, she looked across the street where her target stood proud- her old school building. The only structure in the area that hadn’t been damaged in the recent conflicts.\nShe had always loathed the place but now that it was occupied by the Major General and his goons, she noticed that her hatred for it had reached unfathomable levels.\nFighting her frustration, she tried to focus on the mission at hand. She was to break into the Major’s office and get access to his computer. Under normal circumstances, this would’ve been impossible. On this particular day, however, the chief of the goons was away to present a report on Llam at a peacekeeping summit.\nEven so, Nora reminded herself not to relax. The Major’s goons were still around and if she got caught, things could get pretty ugly. From what she could make out from her low vantage point, two guards were stationed in front of the building’s front gates and one was standing on top of the huge stairs that led to the entrance. All three of them were dressed in black from head to toe: the uniform of the goons. And as if this look wasn’t menacing enough, cradled in their arms were military-issued firearms but Nora was sure they had more weapons on their person.\nNora lowered her body and sat with her back against the car. The start of the solar eclipse meant that the plan should already be in motion. Any moment now her friends would create a distraction that she would use to slip past the guards and enter the building.\nNone of them had a watch, so they decided to use the eclipse as the signal to commence their operation.\nNora had no idea what her friends were planning to do. But she had to believe they would improvise to the best of their abilities. She didn’t have much to help her out on her reckless mission. All she had was her friends, a flash drive and flashlight in her pocket, and faith that everything would go according to plan.\nFaith that was slowly diminishing with the impending darkness.\nEven with the moon’s shadow now halfway across the sun, her friends had yet to arrive to distract the guards. Nora was slowly starting to consider the possibility that either her friends had got cold feet and bailed or worse, they got caught trying to do something dangerous.\nNo matter what the reason was, Nora knew that she couldn’t sit there any longer. Her nerves wouldn’t let her. She had to act, with or without a distraction. So, she put one knee on the ground and took a runner’s form. Small she might be, she was also as agile as a cat.\nShe was just about to make a run for the gates when she felt the ground beneath her vibrate. Looking up in time, she saw a tank turn into the street and make its way to the school building.\nNora’s jaw dropped. This couldn’t be good news. Judging by the guards’ reaction, they were taken aback by the tank’s appearance too.\nThis couldn’t possibly be her friends, right?!\nNora saw the third guard leave his station and join the other two out on the street. All three of them signaled the tank to stop but it showed no sign of slowing down. In unison, they raised their guns and pointed them at the armoured vehicle.\nNora guessed the only reason they weren’t open-firing was because they weren’t certain who was in it. Or, perhaps because they just weren’t simply smart enough to understand that the approaching vehicle was hostile.\nWith an almighty crash, the tank slammed into the front gates, narrowly missing the guards, who had the good sense to jump out of the way before they were turned to pancakes.\nThis was Nora’s chance. Before they even hit the ground, she was running at full speed towards the opening. In seconds she had crossed the street and reached the freshly-crushed gates, coming to a stop next to the tank, which was now resting at the base of the stairs.\nShe wished she could check if it was indeed her friends inside and if they were unharmed. But the clock was ticking. The guards still hadn’t recovered from their fall but it wouldn’t take them long. As silently as she could manage, she fled the scene, but instead of taking the stairs, she went around it. The school had a side entrance next to the stairs that she hoped would give her a safer and more inconspicuous passage to the Major’s office.\nLucky for her, the door to the side entrance was unlocked. Nora hastily stepped inside and locked the door behind her. The room was pitch black. Even so, a small part of her felt relieved that she made it inside the building. But things only got more dangerous from this point on.\nNora tapped her thigh lightly to confirm the flash drive was still in her pocket. From her other pocket, she took out the small flashlight. She was just about to turn it on when-\n“About time you got here,” came a bored, drawling voice from the darkness. It belonged to a man.\nNora let out a little shriek and dropped the flashlight. It clattered loudly on the floor but she barely heard it over her galloping heart.\n“Who’s there?” Nora whispered.\nThe man didn’t reply. Instead, Nora heard footsteps coming near her. A soft click filled the silence and the flashlight came to life. The man pointed it straight at her face.\nNora recoiled and shielded her face with her hands.\n“A little clumsy today, are we?” asked the man.\nNora was struggling to see him but the man seemed much taller than she was. And he had caught her. Nora hadn’t felt such despair in a long time. He’d been waiting there for her which meant her plan was doomed to fail from the beginning.\nBut how did he know? Has someone been spying on her and her friends? Or did someone betray her? She risked everything only to get captured instantly.\nAs if the man knew what she was thinking, he chuckled.\n“What’s your name, little girl?” he asked.\nLittle girl?!\nHer anger returned slightly and that helped her find her voice again.\n“My name is Lana and I’m 17,” she lied. Nora was impressed with herself. She wasn’t a very good liar but now the lies rolled off of her tongue rather naturally.\n“You don’t look 17, Lana,” he mused. “I’d say you seem closer to 13.”\nNora tried to glare at the man but the light was making it difficult for her.\n“You’re wrong,” she replied through gritted teeth.\n“Whatever you think your reason is for lying,” he said. “I assure you, it’s not necessary.”\nWith that, he turned the flashlight off and snapped his fingers. The room filled with brightness and Nora could finally see the person.\nThe first thought to cross Nora’s mind was that he couldn’t be a soldier. In front of her was the most beautiful man she had laid her eyes on. With his long blonde locks and sharp jawlines, he could’ve been a model. He also had the build and height for it too.\nAnd he was wearing a tux!\n“People lie to me a lot,” he continued. “But it’s pointless. I know them better than they think I do.”\n“Are you one of the Major’s people?” Nora asked, pretending to be unfazed by the man’s physical appearance.\n“I am no one’s people,” he smirked.\n“Then what’re you doing down here?” Nora asked.\n“Hmmm, that’s a good question,” he said. “But an even better question is, what are you doing down here?”\nNora remained quiet. No way was she going to tell him anything.\n“Humans these days are so untrusting,” he sighed. “Well, not that I blame you. Just the other day a guy tried to catfish me. Me, of all people! I had all his accounts deleted. He can rot in the dark ages.”\n“What’re you talking about?” Nora asked, perplexed.\n“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, frowning. “I forgot you’re one of the humans who don’t have any accounts. You poor little thing.”\n“What accounts?” Nora asked. What was this man’s deal?\n“Social media accounts, of course,” he said like it was the most obvious thing.\nNora gaped. She was trapped in her old school building with a madman.\n“Who are you?” Nora asked.\n“I can tell you,” he replied. “But I need something in return.”\n“What?”\n“The truth,” he said simply. “A truth for a truth, that seems fair. Why are you here?”\nNora stayed quiet.\n“Fine, I’ll sweeten the deal for you,” he said, exasperated. “Tell me why you’re here and I’ll give you my name and I’ll tell you where your friends are.”\n“My friends?” Nora asked.\n“Yes, the two psychopaths who crashed the tank outside,” he said. “I’ll tell you where they are.”\nNora considered her options. The exit to the room was right behind the man but she wasn’t too sure that she’d be able to escape easily. Fighting this crazy person didn’t seem like a viable plan either.\nSo, she decided to play along until she found her opening.\n“I’m here to tell the world the truth,” Nora said. “The Major is going to give his report and tell everyone at the summit how the people of Llam are free and are living in paradise. He’s going to tell them about all the amazing work they’ve done for us…”\nNora had to take a deep breath to calm herself.\n“When the reality is we’re living as prisoners at their mercy in our town,” she continued, her voice trembling. “We’re being treated like wild animals every day. They’ve taken everything from us and the world doesn’t know. And if the Major gives his report, they’ll think everything’s sunshine and rainbows here and turn a blind eye towards us. I won’t let him do that.”\nNora thought if he was one of the Major’s goons, maybe she’d manage to get a reaction out of him. But the man only stared at her.\n“And how are you planning on doing that?” he asked.\n“You’re forgetting something, mister,” Nora said cooly. “A truth for a truth.”\n“Oh, that’s right!” he exclaimed, suddenly excited. “I almost forgot. I’m meant to tell you who I am. Are you ready for this?”\nNora scowled.\n“I’m Codesila,” he said proudly. “The God of Social Media.”\n“Godzilla?” Nora asked, thoroughly confused.\n“Do you want to get cancelled forever?” he asked furiously. “I’ll let that one slide because you’re probably in a state of shock. You can call me Code if that’s easier for your human brain.”\n“God of social media… so, you’re like an influencer?” Nora asked slowly.\n“Influencer?” he repeated incredulously. “No, child, I am the reason humans have social media. Every engagement you get is my blessing. Every viral video is my divine intervention. Every meme is my gospel.”\nNora was sure she was going to die in there with this crazy person as her only company. Of all the people who could’ve killed her, why did it have to be this lunatic?\n“Oh, before I forget,” he added. “Your friends are being held on the third floor in the principal’s office, which is the Major’s office now.”\n“Are they okay?” she asked quickly.\n“Maybe not in the head, you better get that checked out. But they’re not that hurt,” he said.\n“I need to go save them,” she said and started heading towards the door.\nBut Code stepped in front of her.\n“Move,” she said. She would fight this deranged person if she had to but she would make sure that her friends got out okay.\n“I think I know why I’m here,” he said. “I’m going to help you.”\n“You’re going to help me?!” she scoffed.\n“Yes, but first, you need to be taken in,” he said.\n“What do you–” Nora started saying but Code snapped his fingers again and the room went dark once more.\nNora was about to protest when she heard the locked door behind her open with a click and someone stepped in. She turned around just as the lights came back on and found herself facing the barrel of a gun.\nIt was one of the guards.\n“Hands where I can see them,” he barked.\nNora raised her hands instinctively and looked around with the corner of her eyes. Code wasn’t in the room. It was like he vanished into thin air.\n“If I see you trying anything, I’ll make sure that’s the last thing you do,” the man growled. “Turn around and walk out of this room.”\nNora did as she was told. The guard shoved her hard with his gun and led her out. She felt like an idiot. Code was probably one of the Major’s men. He had been stalling Nora with all his insane stories while waiting for his goon buddy to show up.\nThe guard took her to the elevator at the end of the hallway outside the room. With his gun still glued to her back, he pressed the “up” button.\n“You kids had to pick today to create this mess,” the guard snarled. “I’m going to get an earful from the Major. Lucky for you, your friends told us everything. One of them nearly peed his pants.”\nHe laughed cruelly.\n“What are you going to do to us?” Nora asked.\nThe guard ignored her. The elevator doors opened and he gave her another shove. Once inside, he pressed “3”. They were going to the Major’s office.\nThe guard did not communicate with Nora for the rest of their journey except for the occasional jabs with the gun to lead her to the office. Nora deemed these unnecessary; she knew the way to the principal’s office very well. Going past her old classrooms now did not make her feel nostalgic. It all felt very alien to her like she was walking in these hallways for the first time. The fact that the place was now crawling with uniformed guards did not help either.\nIn what felt like an eternity, during which Nora tried and failed to think of an escape plan, they finally arrived. The man opened the door and pushed her in. The office hadn’t changed much. The large desk was still where it used to be, facing the door, with the enormous windows behind it. Nora remembered being blinded by the natural light streaming through the windows the last time she was there. Now, it had a magnificent view of the eclipse.\nHer eyes scanned the room and they fell on her friends lying on the floor, their hands and legs bound.\n“Nora! We’re so sorry!” They cried out loud when they saw her.\n“Shut up!” the guard yelled. “Now, girl, hand me the flash drive if you don’t want me to harm your friends.”\nNora bit her lips. All the evidence she had gathered against the Major and his regime was in that drive and she had planned to send them to every one of the Major’s contacts using the computer in his office- the only computer in Llam that had an internet connection. If the guard got hold of the drive, all their hopes would get crushed.\n“Now,” he roared.\nThe room got darker until Nora could barely see the guy anymore. It felt like nighttime.\n“We have reached totality,” Nora heard a familiar voice from behind the guard.\nSuddenly, the man collapsed and Nora saw another figure come into the room.\n“When darkness reigns during the day,\nThe line between worlds turns grey.\nGods walk among the humans again,\nRelieving them of sadness and pain.”\nCode’s figure appeared in front of Nora.\n“For an impromptu poem, that wasn’t bad, if I do say so myself,” said Code in his lazy voice.\nNora was dumbstruck.\n“What happened to the guard?” she asked.\n“I blocked him,” he replied.\n“What about the guards outside?”\n“I blocked them too,” he said. ”You plan on uploading the contents of the drive?”\nNora nodded.\nShe felt Code cross the room and reach the computer. In moments it came to life. Nora sat in front of it and saw the email application was already open and a whole list of IDs was typed in the “Send to” box with the subject line reading “Free Llam”.\nStill in a daze, Nora plugged in the drive and attached the files to the email. But she didn’t hit send. \nShe looked at Code and asked him, “Are you seriously a god?”\nShe saw his lips curl into a smile in the dim glow of the computer screen. He said nothing and instead tapped the mouse to hit send. \n“Your story has been sent to everyone’s emails and newsfeeds. You’re trending,” Code chuckled. “Now, your fate is in the hands of the people.”" } ]

[ { "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: Talk is Cheap\n\nGenre: coming-of-age\n\nWord Count: 1082\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story that includes someone saying, “You’ve got this.”" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Twenty years it took me.\nTwenty long, hard years.\nTwenty years to discern the meaning of just a few small words.\nBut then, that’s living and living is all we’ve got.\n“You’ve got this,” my Mother said these words whilst wearing a pained smile and then she let go of her very last breath, letting go of my hand and her mortal coil as that warm air wheezed out of her.\nThe transformation was shocking. I saw the life seep away from her and I wondered where it went. This wasn’t my Mum. Not anymore it wasn’t. She’d left me and she’d left me in the lurch. Those words emphasised that. I wanted to ask her what the hell she meant by those few words. She’d delivered the body of the joke and left me to work out the punchline all by myself.\nI felt so cheated. Like those badly edited ads that come in at a point in the film where they really shouldn’t. Like those film endings that aren’t an ending at all, but instead a bunch of questions that wind you up and leave you staring at the ceiling of your bedroom when the witching hour nudges you awake and leaves you with callous thought serpents for company.\nMy Mum had left me. \nI don’t think you ever get over that inevitable abandonment. She broke the contract that came into being as I grew inside her. She was supposed to be there for me. Always.\nAlways!\nWhen she died my life was dominated with a tag line that left me in its shadow for such a very long time.\nWhat am I supposed to do?\nMy Mum was my harbour. She protected me from the true reality of living. She allowed me to thrive and to be. I was her goddess, but she was no immortal. I dwelt in a temporary, loving falsehood and I took too much for granted and she allowed me to do so, always with an encouraging smile and a kind word.\nShe indulged me so much! She allowed me to believe that I was a grown up, whilst all the while I ungratefully existed in the protection of an ongoing childhood. \nBut the curtains fell open in the moment that she died. She couldn’t keep the pretence going once she passed and I was left alone. \nLoneliness is a strange and wonderful thing. I had family and friends and good people at work, but for a while after Mum’s death I was utterly alone. Nothing and no one could reach me. My grief kept everything at bay and it punished me for sins I had been oblivious to, and still am.\nFrequently I tried to conjure the ghost of my mother, sometimes with a force of will that could smite mountains, and despite her continuing absence, I would ask her, “what is it that I have got?”\nI knew she had the utmost faith in me, and that was also a mystery to me. I could not see what she saw and to my shame, I mistrusted her judgement and I chose not to value that faith of hers. In time I realised that I was being disrespectful and selfish, that my failure to see things her way was a deficiency that I was supposed to address. I did this and I did it for me, not her. Only afterwards did I realise that she was the inspiration for this act of mine and so much more.\nThe force and power of my mother’s love was invisible to me, but that is not to say that it was any lesser for that. It was I who was lesser for a while, but I could not resist her love and over time I understood just how much she had given me. She elevated me in a way that only a parent can. A parent’s faith and love in their child is incredibly powerful. The energy and focus it provides is truly wonderful.\nNo one tells you these things. But then they shouldn’t have to. They are obvious. I suspect that Mum did tell me and that she told me often, but I was not listening. Listening is a strange thing. For an age I mistakenly thought you listened with your ears. That’s funny isn’t it? Ears are oddly shaped meat that allow sounds to be captured. That’s all they are. Listening is something quite different. Saying ears listen is like saying that shoes walk and run. \nListening is doing. Listening is receiving something and actually using it. \nIt took me a long time to start listening properly and that was when I think I finally started to get it.\nYou’ve got this.\nShe was handing me the baton. Mum was telling me that I was ready. That I was more than ready. That she had done everything she could and now it was my time. My time to be. My time to live and to shine.\nLife is a funny old thing, because once I started to understand what she meant I felt so happy! And then in the face of that happiness I felt so utterly sad. Sad because I wanted so much to share my happiness with her. In that moment of wanting, I saw her on a bench overlooking a vast panorama and I imagined what it would be like to sit down next to her for a while and share my happiness and tell her the most simple of things and the most important of things. We would sit side by side and I wouldn’t look at her. That gifted moment was too big and powerful for that. Instead, I’d do what I’d done so often in her presence. I would look at what it was she was looking at because if it was important to her, then it was important to me. I would sit there and share that and her presence and I would allow everything to soak into me. I would listen as intensely as it was ever possible to listen and I would give myself over to sharing this gifted and precious moment with her. Sharing it with every fibre of my being. Accepting everything around me and allowing myself to be a part of something far, far bigger than either of us, and at the end of our time together, when it was time to break the spell, I would say the words.\n“I’ve got this.”" } ]

[ { "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: What's Your Favourite Type of Pie?\n\nGenre: coming-of-age\n\nWord Count: 1199\n\nPrompt:\n\nStart your story with a student on their first day of apprenticeship." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "“How long have you been doing this?”\n\n“Twenty-five years, sir.”\n\n“Remember your first, do you?”\n\nHe did.\n\n*\n\nThe air was so cold that the thick skin of clean white gloss that covered the room of steel and brick could have been ice.\n\n“Now, Albert, remember everything we talked about. We’re here to do a job. Simple as that. I’m the lead, you’re assisting. Easy money for you today, you’re here as a witness more than anything else. I’ll see to his bindings. Nothing for you to worry about.”\n\n“Yes, Uncle Tom.” As they waited Albert found that his main concern was whether it was proper that he had carried his satchel into to room with him. His mother had prepared ham and pease pudding sandwiches for them. Two rounds each, thick sliced, to give him strength on his first job. They sat there now, heavy in the satchel, wrapped in greasy paper, one good stride from the trapdoor. Albert’s stomach rumbled.\n\n“Mr Pierrepoint, not Uncle Tom. I’m Mr Pierrepoint in here, and so are you. Not that anyone should be talking to you. And there’s no need for you to be talking to anyone. Just pay attention to everything.” As Tom spoke he was checking the rope, testing that it passed smoothly through the metal eye to make the slipping loop. As calm as if he was fixing a puncture on his bike. He had taught Albert to do that too. \n\n“What if he talks to me?”\n\n“They sometimes speak to the guards, sometimes God, occasionally me, but nowt that requires a response. If he speaks to you, say nowt. Alright?”\n\n“Yes, uncle… Mr Pierrepoint.”\n\n“Good lad. When it’s time the guards will come, we’ll go out into the corridor and then into the cell together. I’ll bind him, we’ll come into here through the adjoining door there,” Tom pointed to a white steel door only a few feet from where they stood in the small windowless room. “I’ll put him on the spot, put the cap on him, fit the rope and then it’s the lever.”\n\nAlbert saw the chest-high lever, clean and oiled like something a railwayman might use to change the points. Uncle Tom had tested it the day before when one confident pull had made an eleven and a half stone sack disappear through the banging trapdoor. Albert had apologised in his prayers that night for allowing his thoughts to drift to a memory of a music hall illusionist’s trick. In the chamber there had been no climactic fanfare, only the bang of the swinging trapdoor as the heavy sack vanished and the rope snapped bow-string tight. Albert hoped the banging would disguise any other noise. As a butcher’s boy he’d heard the pop and crackle of many a neck, but not one belonging to a being that read the newspapers, or smoked a pipe, or mended his bike.\n\n“Do they just let you do it, Uncle Tom?”\n\n“They do, lad. They do. They usually come to us ready. But we must be swift. Whole thing should take seconds. He’s in, into position, bag, rope, lever. No time for questions, no time for suffering.”\n\n“What if we get our measurements wrong?”\n\n\n“We don’t, lad. Never. That’s what yesterday was about.”\n\nThey had viewed the man through the Judas hole in a cell door that, it seemed to Albert, could have held back an ocean, let alone a slim young man, pale in the grey light of a high, barred window. Albert wondered what the staring boy had done to find himself alone and so close to the end of a life that should just be beginning. Uncle Tom knew, and had decided not to say. If Uncle Tom had decided not to tell Albert, then it was right that Albert did not know, and he should not ask. It was hard to believe that the slight body perched on the edge of the low prison bed was eleven and a half stone in weight. Uncle Tom had known the drop length from memory. Albert had consulted his official Home Office table to check. Uncle Tom had been right, of course. Six foot two and a half inches.\n\n“But what if he does…”\n\n“There was only once that one spoke to me if that’s what you’re still worried about. Your dad told me a good trick for dealing with it. This prisoner was panicking. The guards had had enough of him. There were three of them instead of the usual two. They were expecting bother. He was ranting, appealing to me, trying to make out that what happened next was up to me and that I could save him. Clock was ticking, it was only getting worse for him. When he started on about his kids I used your dad’s trick. I said, “What’s your favourite type of pie, lad?” Stopped him. He couldn’t help but think about what I’d said for a second. It was only a second, but long enough that the bag was on and he was gone. The human mind is prone to easy distraction, Albert, and it’s a very powerful thing.”\n\n“But what happens if something goes wrong? What if he fights?”\n\n“What’s the drop length for a nine stone chap, Albert?”\n\nAlbert pulled his new printed table from his jacket pocket and read off the number. And then several others as Tom fired body weights at him. It was as he was returning to the chamber from taking his satchel to the guard’s room on his uncle’s stern orders that he noticed how peaceful the corridor was. His steps clicked in a monastic silence. The violent purpose of the place was neutralised by hospital cleanliness. Albert preferred it to the chop and chatter of his usual work in the butcher’s shop.\n\nUncle Tom and two guards were already waiting for him outside the cell door. As soon as he joined the group of older men they moved, speechless and solemn through the door and into the cell where their group became five without question or pause. Then into the cold chamber where the lever reduced the group once more to four. Twelve seconds, cell door to trapdoor, his Uncle Tom informed him later. He had done well. Next time he would have more of a job to do.\n\nAlbert had walked with the two guards back to their room to retrieve his satchel and wait for his uncle, who had stayed in the chamber to complete the work with the assistance of unseen helpers in the room below. When Tom joined him in the guards’ room they ate their sandwiches, which tasted better than any Albert had ever eaten.\n\n*\n\n“Twenty-five years of murder! You don’t have to do this do you?”\n\nThe guards took half a step closer.\n\n“No good man could do this!”\n\nAlbert reached into his jacket pocket and touched his old dog-eared Home Office drop table, where physics and biology conspired to do the law’s bidding.\n\n“You don’t have to do this. Please, for God’s sake!”\n\nAlbert took the man by the arm and asked him very calmly, “What’s your favourite type of pie, lad?”" } ]

[ { "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: What’s your favourite flavour of s**t sandwich?\n\nGenre: contemporary\n\nWord Count: 2197\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about someone taking advantage of some unexpected free time." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The calacatta marble floor looked duller today than normal, the thin borders of gold outlining each hand cut tile felt drab somehow, like they needed a pep talk. It was early but the house was already crawling. Cleaners and gardeners moved ghost-like trying to keep out the way, every so often creeping into vision and disappearing again. I padded along the corridor to the kitchen, dropping a towel on the way in the knowledge that before I turned around it would have already been picked up. It had been 972 days since we won the EuroMillions, £184.2 millions to be precise. This was the life we now led, one in which dropped towels disappeared like some kind of expensive déjà vu.\n\nThink of the life we’re going to lead now Charlie, no more worrying about work, you can tell your boss to go screw himself like you’ve always wanted. We can buy that house out in the Kent countryside and never need to lift a finger, all those hours crying about being made redundant gone! No one can ever make us redundant again babe, this is it, we’ve done it.\n\nObviously when we won we both quit work. Charlotte’s hairdresser friends cooed and doted on her whilst my old ad sales colleagues gave me stiff congratulatory handshakes as if they wanted me dead. At the end of the day, I was a millionaire and they sold crummy adverts in crummy newspapers to crummy brands for crummy money. The house was the first thing we bought, I remember us going on Rightmove.com and searching giddily with no upper price bracket. The sky was the limit and it was like being drunk, freefalling with the knowledge you can never die, just float on this eternal cloud of cash.\n\nI’m going to buy you a mansion Charlie, the biggest one you’ve ever seen, you’re going to have a room for everything you’ve ever wished for, a handbag room, a shoe room, a bloody bath bomb room whatever you want you can have. It’ll have land and we can do whatever we want with it, build a pool, a gym, a tennis court, whatever you want, we can have the bloody rapids from Centre Parcs! \n\nI walked into the kitchen and pulled a mug out of one of the endless soft close cupboards and placed it under the bean to cup machine I’d bought on a whim last year. It took too long and I yet again considered just getting a Nespresso. I had to squint because the kitchen was so bright, the floor to ceiling Scandinavian windows made you feel naked wherever you sat; like zoo animals on show to the camouflaged gardeners carefully sculpting a box hedge path down to the lake.\n\nI’m going to buy you a boat Charlie, a massive boat you can sail around and cut people’s hair on. It’ll be incredible, you can cut famous people’s hair in Monaco and then when we’re bored, we can move to Capri or wherever the hell you want. Or maybe that’s not big enough, maybe we could do a hairdressing jet! Take people from London to LA, go from Dot Cotton to Dolly Parton in 10 hours!\n\nThe lake was still, clouds above grey and threatening in the winter morning. Our sunseeker ‘Lady Lotte’ bobbed quietly in the water, neglected and in major need of a clean after laying unused for a year. I sat down to survey the scene, mug of overly groomed coffee in hand, on an overly groomed sofa which looked better than it felt. Today was the same as yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that; nothing on the agenda other than to enjoy early retirement.\n\nI’m going to buy you a round the world plane ticket Charlie, no more package holidays to Corfu we can go anywhere you want, Hawaii, the Maldives, point to somewhere on a map and we can go. Time will be no object we can go for as long as you want, no more 25 days annual leave, more like 25 years annual leave!\n\nThe first year was incredible. We barely came home, the new house just lay empty for months at a time as we ate our way round the world. After the fifth week in Venice we’d started to pine for some home comforts, Charlotte needed her family and I missed baked beans. So we came back, I had a full English breakfast as soon as we landed in Heathrow and we were onto our next project. Charlotte threw herself into four bathroom renovations, a full remodel of the boat house and landscaping the (already landscaped) garden.\n\nI’m going to buy you a business Charlie, something you can own, be your own boss, your own CEO, be the one setting the direction. You can do all the marketing and branding like you’ve always dreamed, spend hours drawing and designing and hire however many people you need to bring it to life. The future you want, I’ll buy it for you.\n\nI didn’t turn the TV on, I liked to sit in silence every now and again. When Charlotte was here the house was always full; of stuff, of mess, of people just living. She’d been gone for 6 months now. I still couldn’t tell you what really happened. After the last bathroom was done she said she needed a new project, which just so happened to be a plumber called Barry. She didn’t even want any money, just said she wanted to get back to a normal life.\n\nI’m going to buy you romance Charlie, our calendar will be filled with get away trips to Paris, Rome, Athens, a hotel filled with flowers waiting for you. I know you’ve always said you just wanted our date nights to be about the two of us but we need to think bigger, think better, think Las Vegas!\n\nI opened my phone to my calendar; a random Wednesday on a random week in a random year. No appointments, no meetings, no calls, just time. It’s funny what money can’t buy you. I’d dreamed of never working, of having endless money and actually all it bought me was people and gadgets to do things on my behalf; to spend my time for me. I looked at my hands, once weathered from playing rugby 7’s on a Thursday night, now manicured and clean, devoid of any stories to tell down the local pub. I didn’t even have any stories to tell Charlotte, my Charlie. She loved my stories and I loved to make her laugh. Our home was nothing without her, it was just a house, a box of bricks with no blood, no warmth. \n\nI’m going to be a better person Charlie, find my place and purpose. Maybe go on one of those retreats to India, find my inner guru. I know you said I should see a therapist but maybe I’ll find one in India, someone expensive and exotic. We have all this money now I don’t need to go back to that NHS therapist, there’s more important things we can do.\n\nWith nowhere to be, I got up and pulled a random set of keys out of yet another soft close draw and headed to the garage. I hadn’t even seen which key I’d picked up, I just stood in the middle of the small car park and clicked the buttons until I heard something open. I was still wearing my pyjamas, but I didn’t hugely mind. The 911 roared to life and the garage door slid up seamlessly, buttons and gizmos all working without having to do any actual doing. I pulled out into the drive, trying to decide which way to turn.\n\nI’m going to find some direction Charlie, I know you think I’m lost and I don’t know where I’m going, but this money has given me direction, I can buy anything I need now, I don’t need to do the work I can just pay for it to happen, surely?\n\nAfter a few minutes I pulled up into the local village, one of those which had nothing other than corner shop, a post box and a pub with a stupid name. I abandoned the car next to the village green and walked to the corner shop. The village was deserted, which I was thankful for considering that pyjamas had been a poor decision in hindsight. The frost overnight was still hanging onto the shadows cast by the trees over the green, making the Edwardian fronted shop look like something out of a vintage chocolate advert. I’d never really taken that in before, the delicateness of the light which cast it's way through the village.\n\nI’m not going to take no for an answer Charlie, this is our life, we’ve built it together, don’t leave me what will I do with the boat and the house and with 6 bathrooms, I don’t know which towels go where Charlie, I need you.\n\nA bell sang as i entered the shop, the middle-aged guy behind the till looked up and offered a brief smile before tucking his head back down into the local morning paper. I wandered up and down each aisle methodically. Through baked beans I had longed for once upon a time, past the newspapers I’d have greedily leafed through to see what adverts had appeared in a competitor’s issue, past the flowers I’d have considered buying. My life was a shell, I thought money would give me freedom but it just gave me hollow time to fill with nothing in particular.\n\nI heard the shop keeper shout something about whether I needed a hand far off in the distance and shook my head. Without picking anything up I walked back past the till and repeated the same smile he’d given me as I started to leave.\n\n‘All okay mate? He gently asked.\n\n‘Yeah all good’, I replied, just filling time.\n\n‘You’re the chap from up the road right, the one who bought the plot up by the lake, beautiful property that.’\n\n‘Thanks, can’t take any of the credit, my ex-wife was the creative one’. That ended that conversation. I knew he must know who I was, the prick who’d won the lottery and ruined their quaint village with loud cars and a speed boat.\n\n‘What are you up to now?’\n\n‘Not a lot to be honest. People dream about winning the lottery but as you can probably tell from the pyjamas it’s not exactly been the life changing experience I hoped for.’\n\n‘Fair play pal, but surely you have time and the means to do all the things you dreamed of doing?’\n\n‘All I have is time now to be honest, time and no bloody purpose.’ I paused, followed by a few seconds of loud silence which felt awkward enough that it needed to be filled. ‘I don’t know who I am any more, what I want to do, who I want to be, this isn’t free time it’s fucking lost time, it’s like a curse.’\n\nThe shop keeper paused again, looking down as if searching for something in the paper until his eyes met mine.\n\n‘Well mate, you just have to figure out what your favourite shit sandwich is.’ The guy said this as if it were the most obvious statement in the world. I hoped I wasn’t opening myself up to a nutter.\n\n‘And that would help me because...’\n\n‘Think about it, most of the time, life is shit, it’s a fact, it just can’t be good all the time. The quicker you realise that, the better. From there, you then need to figure out what your favourite flavour of shit sandwich is. You can’t always eat the best sandwich, you need to figure out which shit one you’d eat over and over and over again and not really get bored of it, that’s your competitive edge, the thing you’ll do that other people won’t do. Basically, you need to figure out what sacrifice you’re willing to tolerate.’\n\nWe both let this weird philosophical principle hang in the air for a moment. It made a lot of sense.\n\n‘What’s your shit sandwich?’ I asked\n\n‘Entertaining the weird and wonderful general public like you, takes a special kind of person in my opinion.’\n\nI smiled, in another life we’d have been friends. Still could be friends i supposed.\n\n‘Very fair. I’ve not worked in a long time, or even lifted a finger on anything really, so I don’t even know what the bloody flavours of sandwich are any more, which feels fairly pathetic.’\n\n‘Do you want a job to do, take some time to figure out your sandwich? My shelf stacker quit last week so I’m looking for a new one if you fancy it?’\n\nI’m going to find my purpose Charlie. I know I took advantage, I know I put things before us, before you. I want to change that. I’m going to change that. I’m going to put the time in, become someone who’s worthy of you, worth spending the time with. You’re my everything, my perfect sandwich." } ]

[ { "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: Benny Freedom\n\nGenre: coming-of-age\n\nWord Count: 2203\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about a character who finds guidance in an unlikely place." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Let me tell you why I’m running away. My old man ran off with another woman and refused to pay child support. That means my mother has to work two low-paying jobs to make ends meet. She hasn’t any time to cook or clean, and especially none for me. I have two twin brothers who are four years older than me and are supposed to help Ma by keeping the house clean and watching out for me, but instead, I have to do all the work while they sit around smoking dope.\n I saved up some money to buy a Fender Stratocaster knock-off, only to have them trade it for a bag of weed. I have had it! After stuffing my clothes, hiking boots, piggy bank, and bankbook into a duffle bag, I’m leaving tonight!\nThere isn’t anyone from school I will miss. No girlfriend, no friends at all. School is boring. However, I do have a flair for history. But what does knowing history do for ya? I’ll have to make a plan, of course, but for now, I am enjoying the freedom. Three a.m. in the morning, and I’m walking down a dirt road to nowhere with the constellation Orion overhead, holding his sword high. The planet Mercury shines like a spotlight off to the left. I smile and keep walking all night, never planning to return. \n At seven o’clock, I stop by the side of the road and use a big rock to break open my piggy bank. There is one five-dollar bill and two one-dollar bills, a fist full of quarters, nickels, and pennies. I stop at a place called Benny Freedom’s Diner for a chocolate-covered doughnut and coffee. That cost me a dollar forty-four. I’ll have to watch my money until I can get to the bank.\nThe short-order cook and, I assume, the owner is watching me count my change when he approaches me. “Is there some problem? You look concerned.” He’s wearing a white apron with a few grease stains and a name tag that reads Benny. He’d be average-looking if it weren’t for the scar that runs from his left cheek to his jawline. He spreads the money out flat and says, “Three seventy-five.”\n“Yeah. That and the six dollars in bills are all I have in cash until I can go to the bank. It’s just that all this change is heavy in my pocket.” He pushes his lower lip out with his tongue while scratching his chin. “You in a hurry?” I shake my head no, and he says, “Good,” and pours more coffee. Sitting on a stool in the corner, he takes a pack of smokes out from under the counter and lights one up. “What’s your name, son?” When I don’t answer right away, he looks up. “What?” he throws up his hands. “It’s just a question. Believe me, I really don’t care one way or the other. It’s just that you look to be about fifteen or sixteen years old and not in school. Instead, you’re sitting in my diner drinking coffee. So I figure you’ve run away from home, and I would like to know why because I’m nosey. I won’t call the cops.” He takes another drag on his cigarette and leans back, waiting for my answer.\nI stare at my reflection in the coffee cup and resent this guy for reminding me why I left home. “Timmy.” I quickly realize how childish that sounds, clear my throat to a lower octave, and repeat, “Tim.”\n“Well, pleased to meet you, Tim.” With a single swipe of his hand, he clears all the coins from the counter and puts them in his pocket. He then takes out four dollar bills and hands them to me. “That should lighten your load.”\n“Gee, thanks! I appreciate that.”\nBenny taps his cigarette on the edge of the ashtray. “No problem. So, you’re running away from home for some reason. Make sure you call your parents no later than tomorrow. Let them know you’re okay. Just because you’re mad at them is no reason to torture them. What are you going to do next?”\n“I don’t know. I thought I’d roam around the country for a bit. You know, see the sights.”\n“So you’re gonna be a hobo, uh?”\nGlancing into the distance, I mull that over. “A hobo, uh? Yeah, I like that idea! I’ll be a hobo!”\n Benny snorts a chuckle. “You know the difference between a hobo, a tramp, and a bum, don’t ya?”\n I take a sip of my coffee and scratch my head. “No, not exactly.”\nBenny takes one last puff and crushes out his butt while exhaling through his nose. “A tramp is someone full of wanderlust. He travels around but tries to avoid work. He doesn’t like being told what to do. A bum, on the other hand, doesn’t travel or work. They mostly beg for a living. Why? I don’t know, but I suspect they have mental issues, so I feel sorry for them. And then there’s the hobo. Hobos travel because they like to feel free. However, they’re not afraid to work either for money or food. They tend to be honest and will work hard if work is offered. But more than likely, when the harvest is over, they’ll move on.”\nI feel a sort of nostalgia in Benny’s gravelly voice. “You seem to know a lot about hobos.”\n A crooked smile distorts the scar on his face. “Well, I guess I should. I was one for thirty years.”\nBlinking rapidly, I exclaim, “Thirty years! What was that like?”\n“Pretty good at first. I was about your age when I took to the road. My parents had both died in a car crash, and I was sent to live with my grandmother in Illinois. She tried, but she was a little too old for a teenager full of piss and vinegar. So, to make it easy on her, I kissed her on the cheek one day and told her I would be back in a month. I never did make it back until I heard she had passed away. I still feel bad about that.”\nResting my elbows on the counter, I place my chin in the palm of my hand. “What made you want to be a hobo in the first place?”\nBenny sticks out his bottom lip and taps the counter with his index finger a few times. “I don’t know. Probably the same reasons as you. I was disgruntled with my life and figured I could do a better job on my own. One of the first things I did was to go down by the river where I knew four or five hobos would be hanging out. They answered many questions, like what I should carry with me. Things I would need for cooking and first aid. They also told me to bring plenty of socks and get good hiking boots. Keeping your feet in good condition is the most important thing you can do. They were the same bunch of guys that gave me my name. One asked me who I was, and I said, Benny. Then this fella named Hawkeye Jones yells out, “Benny Freedom!” We all laughed, but the name stuck.”\nBenny excused himself when a customer came in. He was an over-the-road trucker by the name of Lou. Benny seemed to know him real well, and hitching a thumb in my direction told Lou that I was thinking of becoming a hobo. “Oh yeah? Well, make sure he knows the ropes before you let him go.” Benny said he would and handed Lou a packed lunch to go. As Lou was leaving, he stopped to slap me on my back. “Welcome to the road, son. Stay safe.”\nBenny returns to the corner and strikes up another cigarette. “You know, Tim, I’ve been thinking. It costs a lot of money to buy everything you’ll need for living in the wild, as we call it. And even though you have a bank account, you’ll need a lot more scratch than that. So here’s the deal- you can work for me for a while. You know, until you’re ready to travel. I’m getting older and could use the help. You’d do dishes, wipe down tables, take out the trash, and things like that. What do you say?” He scratches his cheek while waiting for my answer.\nI take a moment to think about it. I mean, I just met this guy and don’t know him. And yet, I’m totally fascinated by his tale about being a hobo. I think I can learn a lot from him. “Okay! I’ll take your offer.” I stick out my hand, and we shake to close the deal.\nOver the next couple of years, he had me doing everything but washing the dishes. I resurfaced the parking lot, fixed the pipes under the kitchen sink, and reshingled part of the diner’s roof! He would regale me with stories of his adventures as a hobo. Like he had said, it was good initially, but things began to change as time passed. They weren’t just hobos and tramps anymore. Drifters and people that were hiding from the law. Drug addicts would smash your head in for the few pennies you had to buy drugs. It was becoming more dangerous all the time. Then came the night he got cut in the face.\n“Like I said, it was getting more dangerous because some of these guys were plain mean. One night, three of us were sitting around a campfire when this stranger walked up and squatted down to warm his hands. Big Nose Bobby says, “Welcome, brother. Have a cup of joe!” Right from the start, I could tell he was a nasty S.O.B. just from the look on his face. He kept staring at me from across the fire, just waiting for me to say something so he could attack. After fifteen minutes, I stood up and said, “I don’t know what your problem is, friend, but I suggest you leave and take it with you.” He was on his feet in a flash, with a switchblade headed for my left eye. I managed to duck enough to save my eye but got this deep cut on my left cheek.”\n“Oh, God!” I exclaim, “What’d you do?”\n“The only thing I could do. I killed him. I had enough witnesses not to get charged with murder but self-defense. That’s when I decided to settle down. I looked around until I found this diner for sale, and the rest is history.”\nAfter a while, Benny started teaching me how to cook to help out in the kitchen when things got busy. I got pretty good at it, too.\nWe don’t take much time off, but we close the diner every second weekend in August to attend the National Hobo Convention in Britt, Iowa. The “Jungle” is open to the public. Some events include the Hobo King and Queen coronation, hobo arts and crafts, outdoor church service, and a hobo memorial service. There is also plenty of hobo entertainment and music. There is always an abundance of food and Mulligan stew. \n Benny approaches me after coming home from the doctor. “Tim, I hate to ask you this, but I need some of that grubstake you’ve been saving.\n“Sure thing, Benny. What’s up?”\n“Doc says I have pancreatic cancer, and it doesn’t look like I have much longer to live. So, if you don’t mind, I’d like to start making funeral arrangements, but I need some money.”\nTears threatening to overflow, I try to fight it but to no avail. The floodgates open, and I grab Benny and hug him with all I have.\n“Aw, come on now, Tim. I’m okay with it. I’m pretty old and tired and need a break. He says ‘break’ like he’s going on a trip!\nI’ve left a will leaving everything to you. I know you can handle it. Hell, I’ve been teaching you since you first arrived twenty-five years ago! Laughing, Benny says, “I thought for sure you’d quit when I had you pave the parking lot! \n“Oh, Benny, you’ve been the best thing that ever happened to me. A guy couldn’t ask for a better mentor.”\n“Thanks, kid. You were pretty cool yourself. There is just one other thing I’d like you to do for me. After I’m gone, would you attend the convention and look up Pete Sells? He’s the man that keeps the book for the memorial service, and tell him I’m on the big walk home.”\n“Sure thing, Benny. Anything for you.”\n …\nAfter Benny passed, I went to that year’s National Hobo Convention, and Pete Sell announced to the crowd that Benny Freedom had passed away. He asked me if I would say a few words.\n“My name is Tim Ward, and Benny took me, a runaway kid, under his wing and gave me a wonderful life. So, if it is alright with everyone here, I would like to adopt my mentor’s name and become Tim Freedom.” A huge cheer rose from the crowd in approval." } ]

[ { "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: Anton Perfume\n\nGenre: contemporary\n\nWord Count: 1077\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about someone taking advantage of some unexpected free time." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "For a few moments in the lobby of the Viking Hotel, Anton Perfume forgot that it was winter. While he was not a busy man in the colder months, he made it a point to vibrate a few times a week. It consisted of drinking a nice scotch at the bar of a hotel like the Viking. Something with character that remains mostly empty until the summer tourists return. As he sips his scotch, he sends a pulse throughout his body. Nobody would be able to see what he was doing, but he could feel it. Across the globe, an old woman grabs her heart. She feels as though she’s in a state of arrest. Anton Perfume doesn’t know about the woman. He only knows that outside it’s below freezing and he has nowhere to be for an hour to two.\nThe generosity of time in that instance gave him a warm feeling. Something unique from the vibration. Something that smelled of jasmine and salt. A young couple was checking in at the front desk. Anton supposed they could be getting married. Winter weddings were more du jour as summer weddings on the island had become reserved for the ultra-wealthy. Anton saw these people come into his restaurant earlier and earlier each year. Memorial Day was no longer the beginning of the season, it was the middle. Now, tourists could be found walking on the cobblestones as early as Easter. Those without children decided to celebrate as soon as they could, and why not? For them, money may be plentiful, but life is still short.\nThere are places, however, where the volume of life is slightly higher. Anton Perfume finds that hotels with character always resonate with him on a kind of seismic level. Before he owned a restaurant, he worked in a hotel with character. It was also in no short supply of characters. He’d take their luggage to their rooms, and if they were a woman, and traveling alone, he’d linger in doorways and wait for them to notice him. Some gave him tips. Some rolled their eyes. More than a few invited him to come back after his shift for a nightcap and some conversation. Women traveling alone always told him that he reminded them of their fathers. It didn’t matter what the women looked like or how old they were compared to Anton; to a one, they would always say that he was the spitting image of their fathers.\nLooking back now, he supposed he could read a great deal of psychology into that, but instead he sips his drink. Free time wasn’t as free as it used to be, and the past was the only thing that could eat it up faster than human analysis. Still, Anton wondered which of those women from his youth were still alive. There was one that jumped to the forefront of his mind. A Nebraskan in town for her sister’s wedding. Her husband wouldn’t come along, because he said he had too much work to do at home, but the woman confessed to Anton that her husband and her sister simply didn’t get along. She was around fifty-four or fifty-five, and Anton was twenty-four.\n“I’m old enough to be your mother,” she kept saying, as he poured her another glass of wine, “Don’t you know that? Don’t you know that I could be your mother?”\nWith her hair down, she looked somewhat medieval. Like the Lady of the Lake. Her hair spread out over the hotel pillows and down over the side of the bed. Anton stayed with her all morning, and when she left to go to the wedding, he stayed in bed so he could keep smelling her on the sheets and on the blankets. He wanted that smell to invade his skin. He wanted to smell like her forever. There was that jasmine, but no salt. Coconut. She smelled like coconut--and Shalimar. That year, his father grabbed his chest at the breakfast table and took his last breath. Anton Perfume gave the eulogy. It was not short.\nA woman sits down next to him. She is around fifty-five, but that makes her around twenty years younger than Anton. She has a travel bag at her side, and she orders a negroni. Anton signals to the bartender, and he’s brought a second scotch. He has another hour or so before the meeting at the restaurant. There have always been discussions about selling to a group. Selling the name. Franchising. Consolidation of debt. Minutia like the cost of scallops rising and which server has a bad attitude. Anton used to sit in his office and wait for these kinds of meetings. He’d have to get into a zone of administration. He’d find himself rolling pens across his desk. He’d torment cuticles. He’d ask himself questions without answers.\nNow, he found no reason to worry about meetings. Meetings simply led to more meetings until one day you were no longer invited to meetings you never wanted to go to in the first place. The woman sitting next to Anton Perfume clears her throat. He looks at her. She’s a beautiful woman. Her fingers showed no sign of a wedding ring, but that wouldn’t have deterred Anton. He would have started a conversation with her. He would have asked her what she was visiting from and how long she’d be in town. He would have put his hand on his chest and caught his own breath.\nInstead, he took another sip of his scotch. The woman retires to her room. Anton Perfume looks over a photo on the wall behind the bartender. It’s a black and white photo from the day the hotel first opened in 1926. Everyone in the photo looks stern. It’s as though they forgot they were at a celebration. People back then were different, Anton thinks to himself, they didn’t make a show out of everything. It’s possible they thought those landmarks in time were nothing special. That there would always be something new to celebrate. That there would always be time.\nAnton Perfume tastes the way the ice waters down the scotch. He doesn’t dislike the taste. He just prefers to notice it when it happens. At a restaurant across town, preparations are being made for a meeting. It’s going to be someone’s last meeting, but it’s still too early to think about all that. There’s still time for something to change." } ]

[ { "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: Goodbye Darkness, My Old Friend\n\nGenre: coming-of-age\n\nWord Count: 1113\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about a character who finds guidance in an unlikely place." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "There must be some way to cheer the world up. It's rained recently. The clouds are moody and the grass is drooping, covered in tears. The tree in our back garden moans in the wind, trying to tell us how lonely it is. No-one listens but me. No-one ever listens but me.\nMy parents call me into the living room to receive my presents. Florida hands me hers first, and I take it gently. The poor thing is trembling, scared that I might hurt it. I try to smile reassuringly, willing it to be calm.\n\"Thank you,\" I say, more to it than to Florry. I unwrap it gently, and it giggles as if I'm tickling it.\nI look up at my sister and grin. A small canvas. She knows how much I love to paint. And so does the canvas, which is speeding through pictures to show me, paintings that I might paint in the future, suggestions.\nFlorry hugs me, and I say \"thank you\" again, this time to her. As our parents give me their presents, I hear her humming something, and gradually I recognize it. Hello Darkness, my old friend.\nOutside, the grass blades lift their heads to the sun, and their tears and worries evaporate.\n*****\nCody stared out of the window. I stared with him, thinking how sad it was that his birthday would start with grey clouds and wet grass, but I knew that he was thinking differently. I wished that I could know what was going on inside Cody's head. He never showed any of us.\nOur parents called him and he turned around. I handed him his present, seeing in advance the smile he would give, not really that interested anymore. I turned my head back to look out of the window again. More rain.\nOut of the corner of my eye, I saw him take his present slowly, like he thought it was made of glass.\n\"Thank you,\" he said, as politely as if I'd been a stranger. He unwraps it, giggling even before he sees what it is. A small canvas.\nI didn't know what it was until he opened it; Mum picked 'my' present for me this time. I hadn't really been able to care. Lately, I hadn't cared about much.\nCody smiled at me, and turned back to him, hugging him. I felt guilty for not caring, and I didn't want him to know what I'd been thinking.\nAs Cody's last presents were given, I looked out of the window again, humming. Hello Darkness, my old friend. The song had been stuck in my head for the last few days. It wasn't my favourite song - but I wasn't complaining.\n*****\nWe leave the house. Sophie, our little blue car, is asleep, but when our dad turns the key in the lock, she wakes up.\n\"Good morning,\" I say to her as I get in.\nI look out of the window to see her move, her first steps. It always makes me happy when she wakes up.\nI love looking at the world as it passes, waving to the trees by the side of the road and watching them wave back. I hear Florry humming again - the same song.\nI love being part of Sophie's social life - seeing her talking to the other cars as they drive past, sometimes racing them.\nSophie parks and we get out. I say \"thank you\" to her and give her a hug before running down to my favourite beach.\n*****\nWe left the house and got into the car. Cody said \"Good morning\" to it before getting in, but I only put my seat belt on and tried to ignore him. He looked down through the window when the car started, laughing and grinning as it growled.\nI could never understand why he did that - and all his other oddities. My parents say he's - different, and I'm never allowed to ask why.\nMy eyes stared out of the window, my brain stared into itself. Everything seemed dull. At least the sun had come out; a trip to the beach would be worst than bad without it.\nThe world passed uneventfully. The same fields, the same trees - cars so similar they might as well have been the same.\nI wished that something would happen to bring me out of this depression. Nothing seemed to have a point anymore. Hello Darkness, my old friend, I found myself humming.\nThe car parked and Cody got out first, hugging it and saying \"thank you\". Next was me, and as I stepped out, I realised that I had forgotten my shoes.\n*****\nThe pebbles tickle my feet as I walk to the shore, and the waves rise to say hello before joining their brothers and sisters again as part of the ocean. The wind strokes my hair.\nMy sister runs to the sea, pausing where the waves eat the sand, just in front of me. I stand at her side and face her, smiling. She hasn't been happy lately; now is the right time to show her, I think. I've always wanted to show her.\n*****\nI tiptoed over the rocks, trying to reach Cody. The stones stuck into my feet and hurt. I looked up and realised how far away I was from him. Taking a deep breath, I gave up tiptoeing, instead running, hoping it would hurt less. It didn't, but at least it took less time.\nI stopped at the water's edge. Cody stood beside me and smiled. Slowly, he took my hand.\nAt first all I could think of was my hand in his. He never, never touched anyone voluntarily. Then -\nEverything opens up.\nThe waves are jumping out of the sea to say hello to me, and I hear music notes, gentle but strong, as captivating as siren-song, as each wave bounces off the shore.\nMusic from heaven - the clouds are singing to us. Their notes are softer, they last longer, and both are beautiful.\nCody keeps smiling, so happy he can finally show someone his world. This is how he sees everything.\nI hear our parents calling, saying something that I can't quite hear. Then I see Cody's hair gradually fading darker, and hear sparkling, stammering music, and I know that it's raining.\nWe walk back to the car, hand in hand, enjoying together the tickling and singing of the rocks beneath our feet.\nI hug Cody, silently thanking him for showing me the music, and the light. I feel like laughing, or crying. All of this was only a hand-hold away. Goodbye Darkness, my old 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: “Guided by Aurora's Light”\n\nGenre: coming-of-age\n\nWord Count: 1234\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story that includes someone saying, “You’ve got this.”" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Sarah's face contorted in agony as she felt the primal, unbridled energy surge through her, tearing away the civilized layers of her existence. She was a cavewoman succumbing to the fierce forces of nature, reducing her to a creature of raw instinct and primal struggle.\n\n\"I can't do this.\" She mouthed silently, unable to find the breath needed to articulate her defeat.\n\nAurora, a frail and gentle woman with a perplexing inner strength, bent over and looked into Sarah's wild and desperate eyes. She clenched her hands and released a burst of energy from within her, like a profound guiding light, trying to break down Sarah's walls of defeat.\n\n\"You are a powerful warrior. Embrace the strength within you. You are tapping into the ancient power of women who came before us. Let it flow through you. You've got this.\" She whispered in a low growl, her voice resonating with an otherworldly wisdom that seemed to transcend time.\n\nSarah gripped Aurora's wrinkled, thin hands, her knuckles white with the strain of her pain. Her breaths came in short, ragged gasps, her chest heaving with each wave that crashed over her like a never-ending tide.\n\nSarah's every muscle quivered with the strain of her effort as if every fiber of her being were straining to break free from the confines of her own flesh.\nAurora's touch was a grounding force amid Sarah's increasing discomfort. Her hands were firm yet gentle as they massaged the pressure points on her trembling body, moving with the precision of a seasoned conductor, navigating the orchestra of Sarah's distress with a tender grace that belied her inner strength.\n\nAs a wave crescendoed through Sarah, Aurora applied the total weight of her body to the deep, radiating pain in her lower back, allowing her to catch her breath momentarily.\n\nAs Sarah's breaths quickened, the room seemed to shrink around her, suffocating her with the weight of anticipation and uncertainty. Each cry that escaped her lips reverberated through the sterile walls, mingling with the distant hum of medical machinery, creating a discordant symphony of birth and rebirth.\n\n\"You are not alone, Sarah. You are a part of the long line of warriors who have borne the burden of creation. Feel it coursing through your veins, the ancient wisdom of your ancestors guiding you through this sacred rite of passage. You are the embodiment of strength,\" Aurora intoned her voice, a chant that echoed through the very core of Sarah's being.\n\nSarah clutched Aurora's shoulders with desperate ferocity as another convulsive pang seized her. Tears welled up in her eyes, a testament to the relentless battle she was fighting within herself. She yearned for a moment of respite, for the torment to end and the perpetual agony to ease. Yet, even as the encroaching shadows of doubt threatened to consume her, a flicker of determination ignited within her, fueled by Aurora's unwavering faith in her strength.\n\n \"You're stronger than you realize. Your body knows what to do. Trust in the ancient power within you.\" Aurora resounded.\n\nSarah let out a primal scream, gruff and raw. Aurora's words rang in her mind like an ancient mantra, urging her to embrace the power within.\n\n\"You can do this. I'm here with you. The pain is a bridge to something extraordinary. Breathe through it. Focus.\" Aurora said, breathing in with her and exhaling in a rhythmic flow.\n\nThe air crackled with a charged energy as if the atoms around them hummed with the anticipation of a miracle in the making.\n\nConcentrating on her breath, Sarah closed her eyes, shutting out the world beyond the piercing currents surging through her. She immersed herself in the quiet depths of her being, plunging into the reservoir of dormant resilience nested within her soul. In this fleeting moment of stillness, she unearthed a fragment of time-honored wisdom, a hushed whisper from the origin of women who had endured this ritual throughout the ages.\n\n\"You're created to endure this pain. Use this power as a force to create life.\" The whispers sang.\n\nSarah opened her eyes and let out a ferocious guttural cry, one that mirrored the cries of innumerable women who had gone before her on the wild journey of childbirth. It was a lament, a plea, and an affirmation, all rolled into one primal utterance that thundered through the room.\n\nAn instinctual drive surged through her, and she surrendered to the incredible force of life within her. With one last feral scream that seemed to come from the depths of her soul, she gave in to the wild currents of labor, allowing them to carry her through a vortex of agony and ecstasy, of fear and transcendence.\n\nAurora's voice, a faint murmur in the resurrection, encouraged Sarah's intuitive revival. \"You're doing it, Sarah. You're bringing new life into this world. Embrace the power within you. You are not alone.\"\n\nSarah summoned every last bit of her strength, a flickering flame, to surrender to the fierce ring of fire. Her body became a vessel for the miracle of life, her spirit joining the timeless cortege of mothers who had borne the world's weight on their shoulders.\n\nAurora's voice broke through the flames of pain, her words a lifeline. \"You're almost there, Sarah. Your baby is coming. You're bearing your soul, like a soldier, like a cavewoman, like the embodiment of strength.\"\n\nWith one final, profound push, Sarah gave birth to a new life, her child emerging into the world with a cry that was a testament to the enduring spirit of humanity. \n\nThe room, which had once been filled with the sound of pain, was now filled with a quiet sense of awe as if the walls were bearing witness to the miracle of new life.\n\nAurora's aged eyes shone with pride and empathy, acknowledging the strength she had seen in Sarah and the countless other women she had helped through similar experiences.\n\nIn that instant, Sarah understood that the pain, the doubt, and the struggle were not just obstacles to overcome but essential components of a profound metamorphosis. She had accessed a primal wellspring of strength, linking her to the kin of women who had given labor to the world anew, generation after generation.\n\nAs Sarah cradled her newborn, she cast a grateful glance toward Aurora, whose unwavering support and guidance had been instrumental in her transformative journey. In that shared moment of profound connection, Sarah silently conveyed her appreciation for the wisdom and faith that Aurora had instilled within her, serving as a steadfast beacon of strength throughout the tumultuous ordeal.\n\nAurora's presence was more than just a source of comfort; it was a lifeline, a seed of unwavering belief in Sarah's ability to overcome her pain and embrace her inner strength. Her words, which resonated with a timeless understanding of the resilience of females, had ignited a fire of determination in Sarah, guiding her through the darkest moments of doubt and fear.\n\nSarah squeezed Aurora's weathered hand gently to express her gratitude for the crucial role she had played in her journey, acknowledging the profound impact of her steadfast presence and the invaluable gift of ancient wisdom that had strengthened her spirit. In Aurora's knowing gaze, Sarah saw a kindred spirit, a fellow guardian of the sacred passage of life, whose legacy of strength and compassion would forever be woven into the fabric of her own 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: Cancellation\n\nGenre: contemporary\n\nWord Count: 2663\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about someone taking advantage of some unexpected free time." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "My 11:30 a.m. meeting was cancelled today, giving me a free hour in a crowded day.\nI’m an events planner at a communications and marketing agency, and my schedule is always tight. I was promoted two years ago, and now there are several young women working beneath me. They need my supervision and guidance, particularly one of them - she’s not the newest, but she sometimes seems overwhelmed by small tasks that should be automatic by now, after six months of work.\nI still run events myself, of course; my first meeting of the day was with a mental health agency that’s contracting with us to facilitate their annual conference. This is the first time we’ve worked with them, and if we do a great job, they might commit to using us for the event every year indefinitely.\nFor the past two weeks, everyone has been telling me to cancel meetings, to take a day off. I haven’t taken a day off in ten years at this job, and I don’t intend to start now.\nThe only change I made to my office space two weeks ago was to re-arrange the photos on my desk and remove the one closest to the phone. Otherwise, I didn’t miss a beat - I picked up right where I left off.\nMy supervisor’s name is Cliff, and his office is down the hall and around the corner from mine. So when I showed up that first day, after the incident, and he popped his head in, I knew that he hadn’t just strolled by my office and spotted me. Either Valerie, my assistant, or one of the girls I supervise had tipped him off. It was aggravating, but I guess I couldn’t blame them. I might have done the same thing if the roles were reversed. If it was their name on everyone’s lips, their life everyone was talking about in hushed tones.\n“Eleanor,” he said, his tone surprised, stepping into my office. “I didn’t expect to see you this week.”\nThis week, he said. Not just today. How much time do they expect people to take off? Who was going to attack the pile of work on my desk if it wasn’t me? Who was going to make sure that Clarabelle is on top of her events, one of which is contracted with an agency I’ve worked with for the past three years?\nNo. I can’t expect others to do what I do.\n“I had a meeting I couldn’t cancel,” I told Cliff.\n“Which one?” he asked. He’s a charming man - he has to be, so much of our job is PR and schmoozing. He’s handsome, too, though obviously not my type. My wife Lara and I have been happily married for five years. He smiled kindly at me, but his eyes didn’t have that light, silly quality they sometimes had.\nI couldn’t tell him which meeting, because there wasn’t just one. My day was jam-packed - my days were always jam-packed. I couldn’t cancel a thing.\n“I had to come in,” I told Cliff. “I have to make sure Cecelia is on top of the Allie account.”\nThe pause that followed was awkward. I remember looking at Cliff for a second, maybe two, before I realized what I’d done.\n“Clarabelle,” I said hurriedly, avoiding his gaze. “Can you let me get to work now, Cliff?”\nI didn’t see him nod and retreat, but I heard the door closed. My eyes were burning.\nAn hour later, there was an e-mail in my inbox from Cliff, with the info for our agency’s EAP program and a brochure attached. I archived it.\nLara was the one who called me the day it happened. She’s a classroom teacher, second grade, and is usually the one our day care provider calls with emergencies. It’s hard for her to leave work, but her principal is understanding and very supportive of working parents. Really, nothing ever came up before that day. Not a thing since the day Cici was born.\nI carried her, and she looked like me, a little miniature Eleanor. My eyes, my button nose, my coloring. We used a sperm donor, and we were hoping to use the same donor if we have additional children someday.\nWe haven’t talked about it for the past two weeks, of course, but I can’t see that ever happening now.\nThere was a small child care center not far from our house, and Cici attended there five days a week from when she was three months old. They adored her - she was always a good-tempered child, even as a small baby. She rarely cried. She had just moved up to the twos class after her birthday, the month before the incident.\nBut the day in question was actually a Saturday, so it was unusual that we were both working and not home with Cici having a lazy morning. I was managing a conference downtown, and Lara had a professional development training - not something required, but a training she’d been wanting to go to for some time. She was anxious, being away from Cici on a weekend day. I was not, partly because my focus was the conference, which had several guest speakers flying in from across the country, and partly because of how excited my younger sister was to watch Cici for the day.\n“Can I take her to the playground?” she asked me excitedly, before I left that morning.\nI laughed. It was so sweet, the novelty of it, from someone who didn’t have a child of their own. “Maybe not this time,” I said reluctantly. “Just so she gets used to being watched by you.” Cecelia had watched her before, but not for such a long stretch.\nCecelia agreed. I hugged Cici, who wasn’t a bit distressed - she loved my sister - and I left.\nThe meeting that was cancelled was at 11:30, and it was 9 a.m. right now. I’d already had two meetings this morning, a 7 a.m. and an 8:30, and that gave me two hours to figure out what needed to get done during that open hour.\nI looked around the room for inspiration, trying to ignore the buzz of anxiety I felt. Everything for my upcoming events was under control. There was nothing I needed to re-schedule. I was on top of all of my grunt work, paperwork, contracts, thanks to all the weekend hours I’d been putting in.\nI felt as if I’d already had three cups of coffee that morning, which I hadn’t - I was trying to cut back on caffeine, hoping that it would help my sleep.\nI could not sleep.\nThe idea popped into my head suddenly, a light bulb moment. I’d have Clarabelle come in, for an additional supervision, to sort through her to-do list and make sure everything was managed for the Allie event, which was three weeks away.\nI sat down at my desk and opened up her Outlook calendar - we all shared calendar access, it made scheduling so much simpler - and saw that she was free. I e-mailed her at once.\nHey, I have a free hour, 11:30 to 12:30 - I’m going to send you a calendar invite so we can check in. Eleanor\nI sent the invite as well. A reply popped up almost immediately.\nGood morning Eleanor!\nI have a few tasks I have to cross off my to-do list during that hour. I’m so sorry! Can we catch up later this week?\nLet me know if you want a coffee, I may run out!\nClarabelle\nI stared at her reply for a long time. The exclamation points. The sweetness. The way she could sound charming even when refusing to do something her superior asked her to do.\nI’m afraid I have to insist, I typed, and pressed send.\nWhen Lara called that day, I dropped what I was doing and drove straight to the hospital, frantic.\nShe was sobbing when I got there, and I thought the worst immediately. I’ve never felt like that before - like everything inside me froze. I ran to her and wrapped my arms around her, but before I could fully embrace her, I found myself pulling her hands away from her face.\n“You have to tell me,” I said. The sound of my own voice - high-pitched, frantic, desperate - terrified me. “You have to tell me,” I repeated.\nThe second it took for her to catch her breath was the worst moment of my life. Well, at that point, it was.\n“Sh-she’s in s-s-surgery,” she said, struggling to breathe normally. “The d-d-doctors s-said to wait out here.” We were in a waiting area, I could see that now. There were families huddled together all around us.\nI sank into the seat next to Lara. She leaned on my shoulder, sobbing. “They w-w-wouldn’t let me go in to see her,” she whispered. “I asked. I w-wanted to be w-with her.”\nI shushed her, wrapping one arm around her. I needed to know what exactly had happened, but that could wait a moment.\nWhat I did next was inexplicable to everyone I know. While holding Lara with one arm, I popped open my work e-mail on my phone and typed out an e-mail to the managers of the conference I’d been facilitating, CCing Clarabelle and Valerie.\nI’ll most likely be out of the office for the rest of the day, but feel free to e-mail if you need anything and I’ll get right back to you.\nEleanor\nI waited until Clarabelle accepted the invite, as I knew she would, and then I could feel muscles that I hadn’t even realized I was clenching relax.\nThe thing about that day is that I should have known something was up.\nEven when she’s not watching my daughter, Cecelia and I text constantly. We’re four years apart in age - 33 and 29 - and we’ve always been close. She FaceTimes Cici, which is always a short-but-sweet call, but she and I are always in touch. She is incapable of seeing a funny meme and not sending it to me immediately; she is endlessly patient when I don’t reply consistently, either tied up with Cici or Lara or work. She texts me any and every time she is trying to make a decision - me, not our mother. There’s not an hour that goes by when I don’t have an unread message from my little sister.\nIt was eleven o’clock, late morning, by the time Lara called me, and twenty minutes later, after running three red lights, I was at the hospital.\nBut everything had happened by then. We just didn’t know it yet.\nOnce I had the new meeting on my schedule for 11:30 a.m., I dove into my 9:15 meeting, following by a ten o’clock call and a 10:30 Zoom meeting.\nI never called the EAP number that Cliff sent to me. Valerie sent me the same information, as did our company’s HR rep.\nI knew what was happening. I knew I was throwing myself into work.\nIt was fine. The cancellation today was a fluke. My schedule is packed for the next month, and I can keep it that way. I’ll have a back-up plan, like calling in Clarabelle, like I did today.\nI’m fine as long as everything keeps moving.\nThe doctor came out to tell us that Cici was okay. Lara straightened up, as if the news helped her regain the ability to hold her own weight, and asked if we could see her, and the doctor said yes.\nWe had been at the hospital for two hours at that point, and that was the first moment that I thought of Cecelia.\nThere was a neighbor who saw everything that happened.\nThey were walking out the front door, down the front steps, to go for a ride on Cici’s tricycle. There was a big bar in the back that Cecelia could use to push her around the block.\nThe neighbor was out watering her flowers and waved at them. When Cecelia waved back - she knew all our neighbors, she was always at the house - she lost her footing and slipped, an ugly fall. Her legs slipped out from under her and the neighbor heard Cecelia’s head hit the concrete step.\nThe neighbor started to run toward Cecelia, who was looking around, woozy. Our house is close to the road, and the street, while not exactly busy, is no stranger to speeding drivers.\nA car started to fly down the street. It was as if everything slowed down, the neighbor said, weeping. She saw Cecelia scramble to her feet and take off at a run toward the street, tripping and stumbling, to where she had seen two-year-old Cici toddling off toward the road. Then she watched as my baby sister dove, knocking Cici clear out of the way and taking the full impact of the oncoming car.\nClarabelle is late, and I cannot allow people to be late right now.\nIt all might have been a mistake. The truth is that Clarabelle reminds me a little of Cecelia - sweet, charming, a little spacey. In need of coaching. Benefits greatly from my advice and guidance.\nWhen people are running late, I have time to think. I sit at my desk, tapping my pen and thinking about the photo of Cecelia and I that used to sit beside my phone, the one I removed the day after the funeral when I came into the office.\nIt was two hours before I even thought of Cecelia. My only thought was of my child.\nNot a single thought of Cecelia, who’d been watching her.\nHow could that be?\nIt was impossible - inhuman. That I’d been in the hospital, my sister’s dead body down the hall, unidentified, and I had not known - me, who always knew every single detail of her life.\nThe neighbor who called 911 stayed with Cici - we were so grateful she did - and so there was mass confusion about Cecelia. Everything happened quickly, and it was assumed that she was a paid baby-sitter, not family. They were checking her phone, and reached out to our mother. Our mother knew before I did, and she\nwas three states away.\nFive minutes late.\nI have scheduled meetings from sunrise to sunset every single day for the past two weeks. They all look at me strangely, co-workers, clients - they don’t understand. I know Lara doesn’t understand, either - I’ve barely been home, barely been helping with Cici’s recovery. Cici’s doing great, though.\nDoing great, at the expense of her young, loving, selfless aunt, who died because -\n“Eleanor?”\nI looked up, dazed. I felt whoozy - light-headed.\n“Eleanor, are you okay?”\nClarabelle was at my side in an instant, kneeling down on the floor next to my chair. This was truly a mistake. She is so similar to Cecelia - so caring. It really was best for me to be around selfless jerks at this troubled time.\n“We don’t have to meet,” she said quietly. “Valerie tried to get me not to come. I know, it’s a lot -”\n“Don’t,” I said sharply. I looked up at her, meeting her eyes.\nShe looked at me carefully, then seemed to make a decision. I saw no trace of tears in her eyes, thankfully.\n“Do you want to tell me about it?” she said steadily. “Or do you want to talk about the speaker travel arrangements for the conference?”\nI straightened myself, repositioning my chair so that I was facing an empty chair on the other side of the desk - the visitor's chair. For meetings. “The travel arrangements, please.”\n“You got it,” she said, standing up and settling herself in the chair across from me. She took out her notebook and her planner, and we got started." } ]

[ { "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: Vanishing Point\n\nGenre: coming-of-age\n\nWord Count: 1478\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story from a ghost’s point of view." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Time stopped for me one Saturday night a year ago, at eleven-thirty-five p.m. I’d no sense of danger as I meandered home in the dark and if there was an omen present in the stars, then I missed all the signs. That’s not surprising because I’m not superstitious and my attention was elsewhere as I approached the crossroads.\nSylvie and I had argued earlier about my impromptu night out, and she’d sent endless messages to my phone expressing her annoyance. It was nothing to get upset about and I ought to have apologised rather than exchanged contentious kerbside texts.\nPing! Ping! Ping! \nMore messages appeared in the palm of my hand as I listened out for traffic. I wasn’t in the mood for a shouting match and suggested she ought to calm down and back off.\nThe green traffic light changed to amber as I rattled off my ill-chosen words.\nPing! Ping! \nI should have ignored her hasty responses when the traffic signal turned red, but I glanced down at my phone. The pedestrian crossing bleeped somewhere behind me as I stepped forward, tapping out a reply, oblivious to the oncoming vehicle. \nThwump!\nI’d barely set foot on the glistening tarmac before my future was decided. The collision’s devastating impact threw me upward, and I heard a furious screech. I completed an ungainly mid-air somersault and the Pontiac Firebird flew into a concrete lamp post. Its horn started honking like an irate goose and I hit the asphalt head first, still clutching my phone. \n#\nThe pungent stench of scorched rubber seared the back of my throat as I lay motionless in a dishevelled heap. It seemed like forever before I heard the creak of the car’s twisted door open ajar and spotted two blood-shot eyes peering out. The driver’s unshaven jaw jutted below his bruised face and he surveyed the carnage, considering the options. Overhead, the traffic lights changed to green, but all remained still at the junction. There’d been no passing vehicles or pedestrians present to witness our collision; we were both frozen in a nightmarish tableau.\nThe harsh scrape of a rickety sash-window interrupted the moment, and a woman screamed obscenities into the night’s starless void. Her angry voice had fierce competition from the Pontiac’s relentless honking, but it was strident enough to draw attention from her neighbours. The driver’s leather-soled boots crunched on fragments of glass as he stumbled out, gripping the doorframe with tattooed hands. I tried to call out, but my shattered chest wheezed in agony like an undignified party balloon, lacking the manners to deflate in silence or the enthusiasm to burst and be damned. The driver cursed under his breath as he backed away, abandoning his car at the junction. His eyes darted about as he fled from the yells of residents appearing at their apartment windows.\nMy eyelids flickered in pitiful spasms as I struggled to remain conscious. My world darkened as hypnotic mandalas danced in front of me before dissolving into lurid, pulsing specular highlights. The frequency and intensity of the visual disturbances diminished until they vanished from view and all went black. \n#\nTime had ceased and my head felt full of air. \nMy limbs were weightless and all the pain had disappeared.\nI opened my eyes and drew a sharp intake of breath because I was hovering up in the air above the crash site. My crumpled body was still lying on the ground below.\nThis isn't real, I told myself. It's just a dream. \nThe crossroads beneath me looked like a child’s scale model of an imaginary accident in a toy town. Miniature emergency vehicles arrived in a blaze of flashing blue lights, and tiny uniformed figures scurried about like ants in a sugar bowl.\nThe Pontiac’s V-8 engine was still chugging fumes and dribbling condensation from the exhaust pipe when the medics arrived. From my vantage point on high, I watched them insert a cannula in my arm and attach a plasma bag. They attempt mouth-to-mouth and chest compressions, which achieved little more than squeezing my shattered sternum and increasing the amount of structural damage to my diaphragm. \nTheir best hope was the defibrillator.\nStand back! \nThose guys mean business.\nClear!\nThere’s a spine twisting jolt. \nThen it felt like being sucked down by a plughole.\nImagine, if you can, falling from a cloud on a bungee rope. \nAn irresistible force pulled me downwards on an invisible tether. \nWith arms outstretched, I saw tiny sparks fly from my finger-tips to my rigid body. \nI was millimetres away from recovering my life before an unseen celestial force catapulted me back up to my ‘seat in the gods.’\nThe second time they administered the shock, the vortex drew me down again, but I got nowhere close to my shattered body and zipped up again.\nThe third attempt at resuscitation almost worked. \nIt felt as though I might have had a chance, having made a positive connection. \nThere was an air of expectation amongst the crowd attending my recovery. \nMy eyes fluttered open for a moment, but that was all that happened. \nI couldn’t hold on. \nThe spark of life had gone. \nI flew upward one last time; then nothing. \nMy mortal coil slackened, and I felt its eternal grip relax. The connection to the physical world drifted away from me. It was like watching a severed umbilical cord floating away from a placenta in a cavernous womb.\n#\nI could hear the activity at the crossroads and watched them manoeuvre my tortured remains onto a stretcher before loading it into the back of the ambulance. I studied that dark-stained spot on the ground where I’d collapsed, as if it were the one true thing in the world, which it was. \nMy resting place.\n#\nAn officer removed the keys from the firebird’s ignition and gave instructions to the vehicle recovery team to protect vulnerable bodywork from additional scratches. Before hauling it onto the low loader, they wrapped chains round its axles and swathed it in a loose-fitting tarpaulin until it resembled a last-minute Christmas gift, presented in haste to avoid social embarrassment.\nFrom up above, my last impression of the Pontiac was the Phoenix design on the crumpled hood; its beady eye peaking up at me between the tarpaulin sheets. I recall thinking how the car looked incongruous, hanging in mid-air as if they were training it to take to the skies and fly away. \nNo doubt they’ll straighten out the vehicle’s dents, adjust the paintwork, and someone else will have the pleasure of charging through town at a hundred miles an hour.\n#\nTime was broken. My way of measuring is gone now. Before the crash, my work-life marked the hours and days of the week; client meetings, risk assessments, and endless reports and responses; training sessions in summer and professional development in the winter. The weeks, months and seasons revolved in procession, each day a series of sequential vistas.\nIt also occurred to me, what a relief it to vanish off the face of the earth, escaping the corrosive tedium of a rigid daily routine and to vanish in a dream, out of my body in spirit form. Chains clattering empty to the floor. But that was before I grasped the unbearable notion of forevermore and total freedom.\n#\nThe Pontiac itself was a point of no return. Time is a rear-view mirror now, the past rushing backward to the vanishing point. I recall a visit to my former home and standing in our lounge while Sylvie boxed-up my former worldly possessions with her back turned. It was too sad to bear, so sad that it gave me a breathless, choking feeling to witness it. Somehow, my disappearance was already gone.\nI had already turned into a memory, a ghost. \n#\nSylvie blamed herself, of course. When they examined my phone records and uncovered my data usage, they revealed her frenzied messages. They surmised that I’d been reading them as I strolled off the curb into the path of the speeding Pontiac.\nThe lawyers didn’t spare her the details at the coroner’s inquest. Each sordid accusation and undeserved piece of malice painted its own picture and portrayed her in a poor light. Not that my demise was her fault. However, the insurance company was keen to reduce the proceeds given to my next of kin; citing her influence on my mental health and apportioning blame. In the end, nobody benefitted from my life insurance and the event wounded everyone. And I now have eternity to wander and wonder how to fill my days. I’ve no shelf life and no end date in sight. I exist between heaven and Earth till the end of time. When my family and friends remember me nowadays, it’s as an eternal twenty-seven-year-old who died before his time.\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: Writing Dry\n\nGenre: contemporary\n\nWord Count: 1803\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about a character participating in Dry January." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Writing Dry\nFriday.\nJanet sits at the kitchen table, staring at her phone.\n“Write a story about a character participating in Dry January.”\nIn all her 70 years, she’s never tasted alcohol. Well, there was that time junior year that left her heaving in the bathroom with her mother standing outside the door calling her names. Once, it turned out, can be enough.\nAfter that? Janet rubs her eyes, searching for relevant memories, anything that could be of use.\nCooking sherry surely doesn’t count.\nThere was that time Ed took her to that fancy restaurant and ordered cherries jubilee for them both. The squeaky cart, the waiter’s practiced movements, the flash of fire, her recoiling at both the flame and the smell of the burning brandy. Did she eat the dessert? Did she enjoy it? She couldn’t quite remember.\nEd will be up soon. Time to get breakfast ready. Eggs and toast today.\nSaturday.\nJanet sits at the kitchen table. She picks up her phone.\n“Write a story about a character participating in Dry January.”\nShe’d been entering these writing contests now for months, every week grabbing her phone to see the week’s writing prompts. Almost without fail, they stirred something. A character, a setting, some situation she could relate to. Sometimes her ideas turned into something real, stories she was proud of.\nBut Dry January. It’s been a full day now. And nothing. A drought. An idea drought.\nEd will be up soon. Time for breakfast. Pancakes.\nSunday.\nJanet sits at the kitchen table. She takes out her notebook, adjusts her reading glasses. She prefers to start in longhand and then move to her laptop only once she’s worked things through.\nA blank page. Nothing.\nShe reminds herself that she is a writer. All it takes is a little imagination. You can be somebody else. Anybody else you can think of. More than one person.\nSundays are easy. Just a muffin and coffee for Ed.\nMonday.\nBreakfast done, cereal bowls wiped clean, Janet sits at the kitchen table and opens her notebook. Ed was out late last night with his longtime friends. There’s something there.\nStory One. Comedy. It’s late at night in a smoke-filled man cave. Four bleary-eyed poker-playing buddies look at each other across the table, suddenly out of conversation. Alex takes a chug from his beer and says he’s heard about this thing called Dry January. Mack emits a loud burp and Jack and Freddy both groan, but Alex continues. Let’s give up alcohol for January, he says. Jack puts down his beer and reminds everyone that January has New Years and the Bowl games, so that won’t work. Then Freddy pipes up, suggests maybe February, but Alex shoots that down. Super Bowl. Mack, suddenly alert, says forget March. St. Patty’s Day. Freddy takes another swig from his beer and chimes in to say there are a couple of birthdays in April, so no to April.\nOver the next hour, they examine their phones, calendars, schedules. Every month has something. Mack realizes he needs to put his anniversary into his phone. Jack has forgotten to add the kids’ birthdays. And the cat’s adoption day. Alex says that’s not really a thing, and who drinks on their cat’s adoption day, anyway?\nThey start bartering over holidays and events, figuring out which are truly important, ranking them by the need for alcohol. Alex says he’ll give up his wife’s birthday if Mack gives up his kid’s graduation. The discussion teeters on the edge of becoming a bit heated when, finally, Mack says how about we agree to just give up the hard stuff. Beer is OK. Beer is just beer. There are nods. Totally reasonable. Tempers ease and they make a joint decision. Zero, zip, nada alcohol on alternating Tuesdays for the next sixty-two months (except for the first Tuesday in September because of Jack and Julie’s anniversary). Mack asks whether beer is OK. Beer is still OK, the others confirm.\nDecision made, they raise their cans in a toast. Finding them empty, they each reach for another one, pop them open, and drink to their continued good health.\nTuesday.\nIt’s Ed’s golf day. He gets up early, so Janet just makes herself some coffee and thinks. Ed loves his political shows, talking heads that yammer away at and over each other until it turns into an incomprehensible cacophony of red-faced, finger-pointing bluster. She picks up her notebook.\nStory Two. Social Satire. Mayor Jackson is up for reelection. The problem is he’s sliding in the polls. Some find him too woke. Others think, given his advancing age and increasing forgetfulness, he’s never fully awake. With the election months away, he gathers his campaign staff into his office to generate ideas. His chief of staff says that there are too many people moving in the from the next town over and it’s changing the demographics. His “Build a Moat” idea, though, is quickly shot down.\nGoing around the table, ideas are discussed and discarded until we land on Freddie, the aide to the junior assistant to the deputy campaign manager in charge of social media outreach. Freddie points to polling that says the Mayor’s numbers are sliding among a key demographic. Two increasingly powerful interest groups, Teens for Temperance and Parents for Prohibition, have joined forces and are demanding action to confront the growing prevalence of alcohol in our culture, our movies, our music, our very lives. Having gained the Mayor’s attention, Freddie clears his throat and proposes a citywide campaign for a Dry January.\nMayor Jackson has restless leg and is tired of sitting and needs to go to the bathroom. He makes a command decision. The next day, he announces the initiative at a press conference. National headlines and attention follow. Mayor Jackson’s base is energized. His fundraising soars. He extends the endeavor in February, and the following month, and the month after that.\nBy late spring, however, the press starts calling it a plan to Make May Less Merry. Campaign contributions start to dry up. Bars and restaurants suffer from lost revenue. People are caught on video getting physical over minor incidents.\nBy August, the election just months away, his campaign once again cratering, Mayor Jackson calls Freddie into his office. Freddie has looked at the latest polling and proposes transitioning from Abstinence August to Sipping September. It proves a great success, voter enthusiasm soars, and the proposal quickly morphs into Octoberfest for All.\nIt’s Election Day. As the voting returns start to come in, with his staff celebrating in the background, Mayor Jackson turns to Freddie and names him his new Chief of Staff.\nWednesday.\nJanet sits at the kitchen table. Ed says he’s putting on weight, so it’s just a granola bar today. She thinks about that movie they watched last night. Disagreeable people leading charmed lives who don’t realize what they have. She starts to write.\nStory Three. Serio-comic-satiric drama. Every other week, three successful millennial couples meet at one of their homes for a potluck dinner. It’s a tradition they’ve managed to keep since college. An adult night talking about real things. Off the table is any talk of kids and work. Everything else—politics and religion included—is fair game.\nOne evening, a few drops of bordereaux staining a new cream-colored couch, followed by one spilled glass of pinot on a beige rug too many, they come to the mutual conclusion that too much of their social life depends on social lubricants. Alice suggests they have a Dry January. James suggests they go further and extend it beyond the month. Frank says what the hell, let’s make it a contest. Margaret says great idea, we all chip in and the couple who holds out the longest gets an all-expense paid trip to a health spa downtown. Kevin says no, we need bigger stakes, Hawaii. Sylvia looks around the room at her friends, is skeptical, but finally gives in. They toast their friendship.\nIt starts out well. Everyone is supportive of the other. Over time, cracks appear. Tempers get short. Alice is seen crying while drying the dishes. Frank gets into a quarrel with his boss. Margaret forgets to pick up her mom from the airport. Sylvia realizes that, although she loves her kids, she really doesn’t much like them. Alice catches video of James on his nursery crib cam sneaking a drink that might be something other than water. Meanwhile, Sylvia’s post about the contest goes viral. Overnight, they are media celebrities. Paparazzi stake out their homes, trail them to everywhere, trying to land a scoop, evidence of someone taking a drink.\nThe couples meet again. It’s gotten out of control. They agree they need to stop and get on with their lives. Then Sylvia’s phone chimes. It’s an offer for a book deal. Another chime. A merchandizing deal, lucrative product endorsements, followed by talk of a reality show.\nMonths pass. Five of the six are assembled in a green room waiting for the premiere of their live cable talk show. But where’s James? Just ten minutes to go live. They start to get anxious. James finally arrives, pulling something from his overcoat. A bottle. Without saying a word, he takes a long swig, wipes his chin, and stares at the others. He then passes the bottle to Sylvia. She studies it, decides, drinks. In turn, they all take a drink. Before they head out to the studio, Alice suggests some mouthwash.\nMoments later, the six friends head out to the stage. The cameras show them holding hands, smiling wide. Ideal friends leading ideal lives. The audience rises to their feet in a standing ovation.\nThursday.\nJanet sits at the kitchen table. She leans forward and pages through her notebook. Her writing is filled with carets, cross-outs, and stray thoughts that curl around the edges.\nShe needs to pick one. Time is short.\nShe chooses, discards the other characters that have been swarming in her head for days. Poof. Gone.\nShe breathes in, deep and long, then reaches for her laptop and sets to work.\nEd can make his own oatmeal.\nFriday.\nJanet sits at the kitchen table. One final read through. She finds a few cockroaches, typos that have somehow managed to survive countless edits. All good. Save. Then one more final read through. And just one more.\nSave. Select all. Copy. Paste. Send.\nHer shoulders relax. She sighs and takes a moment to wonder who might read her story, like it, even go so far as to comment on it.\nBut right now, she needs to look at this week’s prompt.\n“Write a story about someone who wishes they could turn back time.”\nShe smiles. Easy. It will write itself.\nEd wanders into the kitchen, scratching his belly.\nDamn. She’s forgotten all about breakfast." } ]

[ { "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: Love, Death and Raquetball\n\nGenre: contemporary\n\nWord Count: 1260\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about someone whose time is running out." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "LOVE, DEATH AND RACQUETBALL\n\nJoe’s death was long and agonizing. The disease came and went, then came again a few years later and put the squeeze on like a giant boa. Terence’s was immediate. He lost control of the car exiting the highway, hit some pylons and the car exploded. Members of the Jewish burial society had to come with body suits and gloves to search for the pieces of him which all needed to go in the casket so that when the Resurrection of the Dead comes God can put him back together intact. His was a closed casket funeral. Joe didn’t have that problem. He checked out in one piece so he was good to go from the moment he passed. \n\nIn this life, they didn’t know each other, or perhaps they did, remotely, it hardly mattered. But they had a lot in common. Both men were in their 60s; they had swag, brains, money, influence, positions of communal leadership, families, children, wives and, yes, girlfriends. Did the wives know about the girlfriends? The wives didn’t let on that they knew, but they knew. That’s how it is; Watergate, Iran-Contra gate, Clinton-gate, men are no good at covering their tracks. Terrence’s was a transsexual, which didn’t lessen the betrayal. The girlfriends knew about the wives. One wife, Barbara, was an artist and the other, Terrence’s, did volunteer work with children with special needs. Terrence had a daughter with Down Syndrome, for which he blamed his wife. Not that he didn’t love the child, but the way he saw it, Laura would be made to do penance by overlooking and keeping quiet about his girlfriend.\n\nAngie, formerly Greg, offered Terrance the cat and the meow. He took them. She was fully intact, Greg’s legacy, and had a feline knack for landing on her feet. Terrence showed up when he wanted, when it was convenient for him without calling and Angie liked that. How real and un-suburban, he thought. They did lines of coke that he bought on the down low from a connection he made through his previous girlfriend, followed by rough sex that shook the tumble down apartment building where she lived. With Angie, all semblance of Terrence’s buttoned up day life vanished. He day dreamed of her versatility and sniffled his way through philanthropic meetings and religious services. His moods bounced around and kept Laura entertained if not a bit concerned that he needed professional help.\n\nJoe paid for his’s apartment. For that and the stipend he gave her she took care of all of his salacious needs on average one weekend per month. She had kids to feed and no child support coming in so why act coy. The idea that a man should remain faithful to his wife was lost on Joe. His dad and grandfather before him took mistresses. Their wives didn’t disavow them, why should his behave any different? Barbara the artist knew that Joe was splashing his paint onto someone else’s canvas. She blamed herself. Oral sex repulsed her and vaginal was a struggle without the popular lubricants that she read were carcinogenic and the women in her family had a history of cervical cancer.\n\nTerrence was on his way to see Angie when he died, when his car flipped over and exploded on impact with the pylons. At that instant, Laura felt a fleeting tremor like a subtle weight lift off of her soul. She would never forget it. She suspected some seismic shift in the world or in her life but she didn’t know what it was. She picked up the phone to call her husband; it went straight to his voice on voice mail. She left a message, hung up and sent him a brief text to please call her. She went outside to get in her car to go to the grocery store with her DS daughter and they found ten five dollar bills scattered about her front lawn. There was no apparent explanation; for all anyone knew they had fallen out of the sky. The young lady’s allowance was $5.00 per week that her father always gave her. She gathered up the bills while jumping up and down , laughing and shouting. She gave a few to her mother and kept the rest for herself. They hugged laughed and jumped up and down together.\n\nJoe was religious in the early years of their marriage when the kids were small, but as everyone aged he traded it in for the limelight, big money, side deals and side women. In his last twenty plus years he was spiritual as long as someone was looking at or listening to him. He had a certain fondness for the sound of his own voice; his kids teased on his death bed that it was probably the last thing he would hear and the one thing he would miss most when he departed this world. He tried to smile but the coughing drowned it out. Barbara winced when he coughed but she didn’t reach over to touch or comfort him. \n\nHe knew that his extra marital liaisons over the years cast a long shadow but he wasn’t sure what more to make of it. The God thing didn’t resonate. God brought peace not judgment, that’s as far as got with it. He had a few religious friends who would have disagreed but that was why he ditched religion, it was a buzz kill and spoiled the party. The idea that his demise, whenever it came, originated as a punishment from Above for his philandering splashed in the moat outside the castle of his ego and drowned there. The heavy toll it took on Barbara never entered his calculations or conscience. He lay there alternating between his bed at home and a hospital bed with days or weeks left, no one knew, thinking of his girlfriend and the good sex they had or of the magnificent business deals he had managed to pull off over the years. \n\nJoe lay dying in a 5th floor hospital room, dying. He knew it, Barbara knew it. The kids had said their last goodbyes. The room overlooked the freeway that Terrence was trying to exit when he crashed and died. Joe heard a loud thump like a sonic boom, got up with effort and looked out the window. There was a car on fire flipped over on its side with smoke pouring out. He told Barbara he wished he could do something for the occupant. Barbara came over to take a look. She gasped. Emergency vehicles rushed in from all sides, the sounds of their sirens muted by the distance and the thick window glass. ‘Now that’s how to die,’ Joe murmured to himself, his head resting against the window, ‘not in and out of hospitals for four years.’ \n\nThe getting up and walking 3 steps winded him. Joe went back to lie down. Everything hurt. Through the haze of the pain and the pharmaceuticals he saw himself 20 years ago dressed up to play racquetball at his club. He leaped back and forth on the court reaching difficult shots and scoring winners. He remembered the name of the guy he was playing against. It was Terrence, a good looking guy who Joe seemed to possibly recall said he had just had a baby girl. Joe smiled wanly with a remote satisfaction that he could still remember a name from so long ago in his current condition. He wondered whatever happened to him, closed his eyes and died." } ]

[ { "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: Home Cooking\n\nGenre: contemporary\n\nWord Count: 1804\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story in the form of diary entries, written by someone who has set themselves a month-long challenge." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Jan 1, 2024 - Primary resolution: a home-cooked dinner for every night in January. I live on unhealthy fast food, expensive ready-made meals from the grocery store, or nothing at all far too often. I hate that trite language, like \"new year, new you!\" Yet, this year will be different. A month of healthy, tasty, home-cooked meals is just what I need to kick off the year right - I'll save money and look and feel a whole lot better. Other resolutions: lose 40 pounds, quit all drinking, read one book per week, and make more money.\nDinner tonight was duck à l'Orange with all the fixings, and a really expensive Veuve Clicquot. I suppose that champagne goes against the resolutions, but it's a celebrating sort of day, and what else is better for my wicked hangover?\nJan 2 - Back at work. Blah. Rice and leftover duck for dinner.\nJan 4 - Forgot to log yesterday; ran the kids to practice and got them some McDonald's. Didn't eat anything. I was exhausted tonight, but dragged myself to the kitchen, sautéed some mushrooms, garlic, and spinach and put that on top of a microwave baked potato, with a pouch of salmon on top. I'm all in on this - it took me like 30 minutes, and saved me a ton of money!\nJan 5 - OK, so I think we need to revise these ground rules a little bit. Today is Friday, and we always have pizza and watch a movie on Friday. I'm not about to change that now, and since this is an individual challenge, I reserve the right to modify the rules. So: the resolution now is a home-cooked dinner every night in January, except for Fridays.\nJan 8 - Forgot to log for a few days, it's been busy! Peanut butter and jelly sandwich at 10:30 PM today. Not my best, but it's homemade!\nJan 16 - I need to be better at this. I can't remember what I had the past few days...come to think of it, I can't remember what I had for dinner yesterday. It's really cold out. I think I'm going to bed early.\nJan 20 - COVID test positive today. I feel like I could sleep for a week straight. Tried some soup for dinner, but forget that.\nJan 30 - Where does the time go? Let me catch you up - I got over the COVID, though it was as bad as they say. Guess I'm lucky I made it this far before catching it. Really, the worst of it was encapsulated in about 48 hours, but they were among the most dismal I've ever experienced. I'm finally starting to feel like myself, but I'm exhausted after the slightest activity.\nClearly, my plan for this month didn't pan out. January's tough, you know? Everyone has the winter blues, the kids are fussy about returning to school after break, and everyone is a little unmotivated from the holidays. February will be better - I'm going to start again next month. I spent the weekend looking at recipes online, though you really get caught in the stories. This one woman makes her own butter every morning in a handmade butter churn with milk from heritage cows, then bakes bread from scratch and cooks it in a wood-fired oven, all before 6:00 AM!\nFeb 1 - We're doing this right this month! No Friday pizza, I'll buy it for the kids, but I'll make myself something healthy and fresh. I'm committed. Overnight, my energy suddenly returned - I woke up at five this morning, ran on the treadmill, lifted some weights, and prepped pulled pork for the crock pot. I should have used that last month, coming home to a perfectly cooked (and ready to go) dinner makes things a lot easier!\nFeb 2 - Could barely get out of bed this morning. I think I pulled something in my back. Dinner last night was cereal - I forgot to plug in the crock pot. Advils and water for dinner.\nFeb 5 - Still in considerable pain. Waited an hour to see the doctor, who told me it was \"just a strain\" and to take it easy for a couple days. I'm sure I broke something, the least he could have done was give me some stronger pills. Obviously the dinner plan is off the table while I deal with this, I can't be expected to cook in this condition!\nFeb 10 - Back feeling better, but I won't be touching those weights any time soon! The treadmill, either - must be something wrong with the alignment. I should write the company and see what they have to say about that. Reminder for myself to do that at some point.\nObviously, I can't continue on the dinner plan this month, I already missed too many days. Start again fresh next month. Also, I modified my other resolutions; I think we look at things a little too optimistically at the start of the year. Instead of losing 40 pounds, my goal is to feel better in the way I look now. Instead of quitting all drinking, I will only drink 1-2 nights a week. Maybe three, but only if there's a holiday, and of course in moderation.\nReading books and making more money...one of those I know how to do, but don't always want to. The other one is just out of my control. Why don't we call those \"optional goals,\" and just see how it turns out?\nMar 1 - I was telling my son about my dinner plan on the way to school today. After rolling his eyes and saying \"again?\" he pointed out that today is Friday. You know, it would actually cost me more to cook myself something if I'm buying the kids pizza, and isn't the whole point of this thing to save money and time? I mean, yes, also eat healthier, but the occasional pizza hurts no one.\nEven, or perhaps particularly when writing in a journal I know no one else but me will ever read, I need to be honest with myself. If I start the whole month off with a cheat day, what sort of precedent does that set? Better to call off this month and start anew next. See you in April!\nMay 1 - I don't know what happened, I completely intended to start in April, but somehow it slipped my mind. Last week, I was watching a cooking show where they made a bunch of really fast meals in a wok, taking practically no time at all, which reminded me of my resolution. I was going to order a wok on Amazon, but Steve at work, he's a real foodie and he told me I needed a hand-forged carbon steel wok. They cost like $300, but I suppose it'll save me so much money in the end, how can I not?\nBaked potato/sauté thing for dinner tonight. I need to read the care instructions and figure this wok out.\nMay 2 - I think I figured out the secret to why those wok meals are so quick and easy, and I'm not sure it'll work for me. The cooking is lightning fast - I think it took less than five minutes to cook a shrimp stir fry. The prep, however...mincing garlic then turning it into a paste, dicing onions and peppers into tiny bites, thawing shrimp, removing the seeds from the zucchini...I was a good 45 minutes in before I even started heating the wok, and the back of my neck was all tight from bending over the cutting board.\nI figured I could go to the store and buy everything cleaned and pre-chopped, but doesn't that defeat the purpose? Plus, I don't know what I did wrong, I got the wok as hot as they said I should, but everything still stuck and everything in the dish was either burned to a crisp, or practically raw. The kids passed on it and I couldn't blame them, but I stuck it out and ate a small plate.\nMay 3 - Turns out I can't return the wok after I use it. Apparently, their \"lifetime guarantee\" is only if there's something defective with the wok, and I'm thinking that my disaster last night was user error. (Not like that treadmill - we finally figured out that the feet were not level, which made the whole thing off kilter. It wasn't in my head!)\nAug 14 - Just got back from our trip to Disney World...it was exhausting, but honestly, worth every minute. Watching the kids' faces light up over and over was so rewarding. We had enough time to spend a day at the beach, something I wish I could do every day. I have unpacking, shopping, and countless loads of laundry to do...but when things settle, I'll revisit my resolutions.\nNov 15 - How and why did this year slip by so fast?\nElephant in the room...guess I let this whole dinner thing slip these past few months, eh? Well, if I'm being honest, it's slipped from the start. As I sit here and think back, I do remember some really good meals that I cooked so far this year. A pork roast on a lazy Sunday that I forgot in the oven, and assumed would be dry as a bone, but somehow came out juicy and delicious.\nSpaghetti tossed in some olive oil and garlic and topped with a little parsley on a random Tuesday at 10:00 PM, after we watched The Godfather for the 100th time. A big casserole dish full of homemade mac and cheese after my son's team lost the homecoming game - he didn't want to eat at first, but by the end of the night we were all back for another heaping plate as we played a ferocious game of Monopoly.\nI think if you want to do something for 30 days, it's best that they aren't consecutive, after all. When you take away the spontaneity and turn something into a chore, you lose something of the joy in it all. Yes, I could potentially save money, lose weight, feel better, and all that if I were to cook every dinner from scratch. For some people, that might be a perfectly wonderful thing to do. For me, when I cook every day, I lose something. After all, nothing is free - there is always a cost to everything we do, it all depends on whether you find that cost cheaper or easier to bear.\nThe holidays are already upon us, so I think it's time to close the book on 2024 resolutions. I'll try again next year, after all, a new year is a great time for a fresh start." } ]

[ { "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 Axe\n\nGenre: coming-of-age\n\nWord Count: 1125\n\nPrompt:\n\nStart your story with a student on their first day of apprenticeship." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "“Today is the first day of the rest of your life,” grinned Duncan. I knew he meant it as a friendly gesture, but Duncan is one of those men whose best smile still registers as a grimace. Possibly because of the missing teeth and smell of onions.\n“Today is the day you begin the work you were born to do,” he went on with his gravelly, yet deep voice. With this remark, he reached out a meaty finger and pinched my left shoulder, feeling the muscles there.\nEven at sixteen, I was built like a burly lumberjack. My poor mother was constantly mending my clothes as it seemed I grew an inch every week—both upwards and outwards. My girth was mostly due to my father, who I never met as he had gone on one of the crusades—never to return. Whether he had died or disappeared into a faraway land, we never learned. Meanwhile, all I had inherited from my mother was our shared poverty and eye color—light blue like a spring morning when the saplings shoot forth their virgin leaves.\nEver since my father’s disappearance, Mother had survived by toiling as a seamstress and launderer in our village. She was proud of her work and had no desire to remarry. She was even more proud the day I was noticed by Duncan—and selected to be his apprentice.\n“This shall change our fortune’s for the better,” she had said, embracing me with arms stronger than they looked. “You shall see the entire kingdom! Imagine, my son…working for the king himself!”\nThis was a bit of an exaggeration, but I let her hold onto it. She was proud of me. Even if it wasn’t the line of work I would choose for myself, I knew I couldn’t let her down. The gold I would be bringing home was not something to walk away from. Even if it meant living a full two days’ journey away from her as Duncan trained me over the next few years.\n“Come over here,” Duncan gestured, his stink wafting over to me with the motion. He leaned over and selected a meter-long post of cedar and set it up onto a stone anvil. He then hoisted up a dark gray axe, its handle wrapped in flaking black leather. Holding it out towards me, he said, “Go ahead—swing.”\nI couldn’t help but frown. “Are there not other skills I need to learn first? Before I swing an axe?”\nDuncan let out a hearty laugh. “I am a firm believer—especially in this job—that you learn best through repetition. Now, go on—take it.”\nSo I took it—along with a deep breath—feeling the weight of the giant axe, adjusting my grip.\n“Now, come on, don’t be shy,” urged Duncan. For emphasis, he delivered an encouraging slap on the back which nearly sent me sprawling face first into the anvil. “Step up and swing. Let me see how you do it.”\nI shuffled my feet, adjusting them this way and that as I positioned myself in front of the anvil, my eyes settling on the cedar post sitting atop it. My lack of confidence flowed out of my stomach and into my hands, trembling. I gripped the axe tighter, hoping Duncan wouldn’t notice. With another deep breath, I raised the axe up.\n“Wait!” cried Duncan.\nRelieved, I let the axe’s swing fall backwards, letting it carry me a step or two away from the anvil—and the helpless cedar post awaiting my blow.\nDuncan stepped up to the anvil and moved a contraption into place on either side of the post. “Almost forgot the vice,” he chuckled. “Can’t have it rolling away after the first swing, can we?”\nAfter a few twists of the vice’s screws, he checked to make sure the cedar post was secure. Satisfied, he stepped away, gesturing for me to approach again.\nHesitant, I remained planted in place, axe still hanging down. “Wouldn’t it make more sense for me to practice on something—less thick?” I suggested.\n“Hardly,” laughed Duncan. “This is exactly the thickness necessary to learn the job. This is difficult work, you know. Not for the weak.” He approached with his grim grin, setting his two heavy hands on each of my shoulders. I stiffened at his touch. He noticed.\n“Loosen up,” he continued, squeezing my shoulders. “It’s alright to be nervous. The first time I swung an axe,” he laughed at the memory flitting through his mind, “I was awful, believe me. Barely nicked the post. And I had far less muscle than you do now,” Duncan went on, releasing my shoulders and admiring my frame.\n“Why, if I’d had your body at the same age,” he shook his head in amazement, “I would have had far less trouble. You’ve heard the story of Lord Randolf, I suppose?”\nI gave a quick, jerky nod. Everyone had heard about Lord Randolf.\nDuncan folded his arms, his humor disappearing as he took a deep breath. “That was the most embarrassing day of my life. A real mess. I thought for sure I’d never swing the axe again. That I’d be sent off to the mines. But thankfully…”\nHere he perked up again, his grimace-y smile returning. “We have a wise, forgiving leader. One who knows no one is perfect.”\nI gave another nod, slower this time, trying to swallow my nerves. Flexing my fingers along the axe’s handle, I wondering how I would ever grow accustomed to its feel in my hands. The feeling tumbled out of my mouth: “Do you ever get used to it? Do you ever wonder what it would be like to use this to…I don’t know…chop wood for fires? Or to fell trees for building?”\nDuncan frowned, considering the question with a thoughtfulness I had not yet seen from him. He set one hand on the cedar post clenched in the vice, his thick fingers delicate upon it like it was an orphaned child he was taking in. Then he turned to me again, fixing his gray gaze upon my blue eyes.\n“Remember, my young apprentice, we are kingdom builders,” he replied with an aspirational air to his gravelly voice. “Without us, the kingdom falls. Sure, we may not be building with brick or beam…but we are building order, fealty, and obedience.”\nDuncan let these inspirational words hover in the air for another moment, allowing them to sink in. He then walked over to the vacant fireplace and dipped his finger into the black soot. Returning to the cedar post, he used his finger to draw a crude face—two mournfully misshapen eyes and a forlorn, downturned mouth.\nStepping back to admire his work, he sighed and said, “After all, what would the king do without gifted executioners?”" } ]

[ { "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: Graveyard Dates\n\nGenre: coming-of-age\n\nWord Count: 2964\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story where ghosts and the living coexist." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Okay! Picture the scene! We’re seven college-aged, amateur ghost hunters trespassing on a huge graveyard late at night. Besides my infrared cameras, Lou's digital recorders, and Judy's various thermometers, we also had John and Charles who were psychic sensitives, and Mark's perpetually chattering, air-headed girlfriend, Beverly!\nSensing a strong ghostly presence in a secluded, tree-lined plot, John and Charles grew more excited and Beverly got more chatty when suddenly a voice snapped out from the shadows behind some large head stones.\n\"Quieten down people! You're making enough noise to wake the dead! You'll have the grounds keeper on us all!\"\nWell, we jumped, we screamed, and Mark had to grab Beverly to keep her from running into the darkness! Then a girl stepped out into the moonlight and waved, \"Follow me. We need to get away from the gate.\"\nBlame it on the adrenaline because we took off after her without a thought! We’d planned our trip for the full moon and could see well enough as we streamed through the low tree line, down a short slope, and around a small duck pond.\nWe stopped just past the last bench where a stand of trees threw a heavy shade on the ground. Our guide turned around. \"I think we’re safe now. Hello, everybody! I’m Cinnamon!\" and she stretched out her hand in greeting.\nDespite John being President of our Ghost Hunting Club, he is shy around strangers and didn't mind that I took over the conversation. \"Nice to meet you, Cinnamon. Thanks for the warning. I'm Brad Stewart,\" and I happily took her hand and shook it. Then by way of explanation, I held up my Flir i3 thermal-imaging camera and smiled. \"We're ghost hunting! You wouldn't happen to know where any are hiding out, would you?\"\nThen I introduced everyone. “This is Lou and Judy Short. They do EVP's with their recorders while I try to get an infrared picture of any spirits or orbs floating around. John and his boyfriend, Charles, are psychics and empaths and sense spirit energy. Mark is our driver and listens to the tapes the twins make. And Beverly. She's loud.\" Mark threw me a sour look but he's the one with the noisy girlfriend!\nI chattered on. \"So what brings you to St. Winston's graveyard on such a fine full moon night? Are you ghost hunting too? Do you live around here?\" I realized I was asking way too many questions of a stranger but it just felt natural to talk to her. To describe Cinnamon as cute would have been an understatement. Her dark hair was cut in a bob and her cheeks dimpled when she smiled. Under the moonlight, the furry pull-over sweater she wore was an indiscriminate gray with a darker scarf around her throat and a pleated, knee-length skirt over leggings that vanished into calf-high boots. No, I am not usually that quickly smitten by a pretty girl but this was my Junior year in college and I had a very busy work load so I hadn't gotten around to dating at all this year.\nShe tilted her head and looked up at me with that charming half-smile and I melted. \"I’m from around here and enjoy the peace and quiet here at night. So, you hunt ghosts? I know a few places you might find one! Come on!\" and it felt so right I didn't even feel surprised when she took my hand again and lead me down the path toward another section of the graveyard before stopping in front of a small mausoleum nestled between squat holly bushes. \"Your friends with the recorders should enjoy this!\"\n\"Back in the early 1800's,” Cinnamon narrated, “the head of this family had all three of his teenage daughters die of smallpox within a week. When he built this place for them, he added extra benches so the family could sit and still talk with them.\" The girl's eyes twinkled as she smiled at Lou, “Maybe they'll talk to you tonight.\"\nWith a grin, Lou strode to the entrance and beckoned to\nJudy, \"Come help me get the recorders ready!\" Mark sat up a couple of phone cameras the twins used to film themselves during their part of the hunt. Meanwhile, Beverly sat on one of the benches and opened a bag of potato chips.\nSoon the team was deep into their routine. While Lou ran the\nrecorders, John and Charles would ask questions and whenever their special senses felt a spirit, they would try to engage with it in hopes it would tell them more. Sadly EVP's, or Electronic Voice Phenomena, only showed up on the tapes when you played them back so this part always seemed a bit strange to me as my friends held one-sided conversations with the air.\nMy job was to take pictures in hopes a thermal image, or an orb, or really anything unusual would appear in them. After a while, John said ‘Good-bye’ to the two spirits he said had been attending our session. As we gathered up the equipment, Judy said, \"The ghosts must really be hovering close tonight. My thermometer stays dropped 20 or more degrees all around us. I had to go to the middle of that parking lot back there to get a baseline reading with my phone's weather app.\"\nUsually I get nervous if someone watches me work but it seemed so natural that Cinnamon was right there beside me, watching. I tucked my camera in its pouch and she surreptitiously slipped her hand into mine. I just hoped the smile I felt spreading over my face didn’t look goofy.\nAs we strolled slowly over toward the next plot of stones, Cinnamon confessed, \"I've always been fascinated by the beauty of the statues here!\"\n\"I know what you mean,\" I replied.\"Ever since Lou and Judy\nconvinced me to go ghost hunting with them, I've come to love\nseeing the artwork people have on their graves.\"\nCinnamon smiled, \"I think it's the angel sculptures I like the most. There are so many different kinds and most of them have special meanings. It's like how flowers are used to tell different\nemotions but the angels all tell of death.\" I glanced at Cinnamon’s face and saw a fleeting sadness pass across her gaze. \"There's Gabriel and his trumpet always threatening to wake everybody up and I've been told that when an angel is sitting on the grave it means the person died an untimely death. Other angels will hold an extinguished torch when the person passed too early.\"\nStepping a few markers further down she wistfully said, \"I wish\nthere weren't so many of these,\" and she petted a stone sheep on the head. \"So many children are marked by the lambs and the cherubs and there are so many of them, especially in the older grave plots.\" I could sense sadness intruding on the night's mood but I felt powerless to prevent it.\nWe walked in silence for a bit until we were standing in front of one angel who's wings swept up to touch at the tips high over the angel's head. The white marble of this one had developed a fine pattern of lichen that added texture to the moonlight and shadows. \"Brad?\" Cinnamon turned and looked seriously at me. \"You told me about your thermal camera but do you have one takes normal pictures?\"\n\"Certainly! I still have an old 35mm that uses real film. I even have to develop it myself. What's on your mind?\"\nShe was quiet a moment and looked down at the ground. \"I was just thinking how great it would be to come back in the daylight and take regular pictures of these beautiful angels.\" She looked up at me hopefully.\n\"That's a marvelous idea! This is the first time I've been here and I’m blown away by how beautiful it looks in the moonlight! I can only imagine what it’ll look like in sunlight!\" She smiled again and we started walking .\n\"What are those big monuments over there?\" I asked, pointing\ntoward some figures a hundred yards away. \"One of them looks like a Greek temple! And is that a pyramid behind it?\"\n\"Oh, that!\" She laughed at my excitement, bringing that\nquirky, half up-tilted smile back as her eyes twinkled in mirth.\n\"That's Rich City over there. It's where people with more money than sense prove that if you can't take it with you, you can at least spend a lot of it hoping people will be envious of what you had.\" She laughed as we strolled off toward them, the joy of the night rising between us again.\nEven with the sharp contrasts thrown by the moonlight overhead, the artwork and architecture of these structures was amazing. There were several politicians interred along with some big business names. Among the older edifices were even a few representatives of a fading aristocracy from an older age. \"This place looks more like a museum than a cemetery!\" I stated.\nCinnamon glanced at me and chuckled! \"I figured a ghost hunter would know the difference between a cemetery and a graveyard!\" Her smile grew wide to offset any possible hurt feelings. \"I know lots of people use the names interchangeably but cemeteries are just plots of land where you bury people. But graveyards,\" and she pointed across the way to the spires and bell tower of Saint Winston's Cathedral, \"graveyards are attached to a church. Even at a hundred and fifty acres this is still part of the churchyard.\"\n\"Oh, Cinnamon,\" John called as we came walking back. \"You seem to be very familiar with this place. Surely you have a favorite spot. Wanna share?” Cinnamon stared at him for a minute, then nodded towards another path.\n\"This is my favorite place here!\" Cinnamon beamed as she brought us to the base of a monolithic pillar that rose at least ten feet into the air. Crowning the dark stone edifice was a Seraphim of white marble; it's many wings spread out in greeting to all before it.\n\"Oh, my gods,\" muttered Charles. \"It feels like ALL the spirits are gathered here! It's so strong, I ...\" and he trailed off, tears streaming down his cheeks. John pulled him close and held his partner in loving support as the sensory data they were both feeling danced across their emotions. They seemed to glow and the beauty of the moment prompted me to lift my camera and take a set of close-up shots before pulling the focus back to take in the surroundings.\nI knew Lou would be at his recorders and hoped he and Judy could sense the bliss permeating this perfect moment. Then I was done with the camera and Cinnamon edged up to me and leaned her head against my chest! We stood there in silence for a while. This early in the morning not even a distant hum of traffic was heard so the only sound was a soft susurration of wind in the trees.\n\"I've gotten lost in thought for hours at a time here.\" whispered\nCinnamon as she slowly pulled apart. \"Thank you for letting me share this special place with you!\" She squeezed my hand briefly before letting go. \"Come on, I've got one more thing to show you all before morning arrives!\"\nWe slowly came out of the fugue this place had inspired and everyone followed Cinnamon to the primary path. While the wee hours were aging fast, there was still a while to go in this stillest part of the night. I was thrilled that I was spending it with Cinnamon. It was hard to believe we had met less than eight hours ago. It felt so right when again she slipped her hand in mine to hurry us along.\n\"What's happening to you, Brad?\" I questioned myself. I was familiar with the feeling of infatuation that comes with meeting a new girl but this felt different. Not only did my new friend look so like every dream girl I'd imagined, she was so easy to talk to. She was witty and able to discuss whatever topic came up. I'd heard a lot of friends talk about \"Love at first sight\" but never took them seriously. Was something like that happening to me? Me, who never seriously dated anyone even in high school?\nEventually the path led back to the duck pond we had passed earlier. Cinnamon stopped us at the benches about halfway along the shore. \"If we are lucky we will see the Green Lady walking through the edge of the trees over there! She only ever shows in the early morning so I hope I've timed our arrival well. And yes, I have seen her several times.\"\n\"Do you think we could get a response from her?\" Lou looked\nwistfully at his recorder then glanced at our guide.\n\"No harm in trying, although I don't think asking questions will help. She never stops her walk but there are local stories about people hearing her lamenting in some foreign language no one can understand.\"\n\"No problem,\" Lou replied. \"I think I'll just put one over there and see if anything comes of it. I'm getting tired anyway!\" As he and Judy wandered away to set it up, I pulled my thermal camera out and found a headstone to position it on. \"I think I'll set it to automatic and take a shot every three seconds. That should make for a nice gif if anything shows!\"\nI saw Cinnamon from the corner of my eye smiling as she watched me work and I felt a warm rush of happiness in my chest! John and Charles settled down in their typical meditative posture as they prepared to see what, if any, psychic impressions came to them. Mark and Beverly had disappeared for a bit of \"privacy\" and would catch up before dawn.\nI watched some mist drifting off the surface of the water. In a fit of unusual boldness, I put my arm around Cinnamon’s shoulder and gently snuggled her up against my side. We stood that way for a long while, silent, yet fully enjoying the companionship as we gazed across the pond together.\n\"There she is!\" whispered Cinnamon as a faint, phosphorescent glow began drifting through the tree trunks! While I couldn't make out any details at this distance, it did look like someone walking by. I glanced at my camera and saw it still patiently recording and couldn't help but feel excited in anticipation of studying the pictures later! The phenomena lasted only a minute before the glowing green figure faded into the trees and was gone. Lou let out a very impressed whoop of excitement. \"That was awesome! That’s the first time I’ve actually ever seen a ghost! Brad, I sure hope you got pictures!\"\nIt was a very exciting note to end our hunt on. Daylight was fast approaching and the sky was lightening to the East, washing out the moonlight that had served us all night. It was but a matter of minutes to get back to our starting place at the stone wall where a fallen tree had crumbled it a bit. Suddenly I realized I didn't want to step over the wall. I turned back to Cinnamon with a questioning look and a loss for words.\n\"It's okay, Brad. I have to be getting back too. I'm so happy I got to spend this beautiful night with you,\" and she stood on tiptoe to place a soft kiss on my cheek before swiftly turning away and hurrying back the way we had come. All I could do was watch.\nCharles smiled at me, \"You seem to be happy with your new friend, Brad. Can I assume we will be seeing more of her?\"\n\"I sure hope so,\" I smiled back. \"We've almost got a date to come back in the daytime to photograph the angels. We'll just have to pick a time -\" and I froze. A deep, cold pit opened in my stomach as I realized that I had not thought to ask for her phone number or address! I didn't even know her last name! \"Uh, I'll be back!\" I gasped as I turned and sprinted back the way the girl had taken! I was in a panic. Stupid, stupid me! I followed the path, calling her name even though I knew the grounds keeper's cottage was close.\nI was almost back to the stone covered knoll where we first met when I saw her ahead of me, standing in front of one of the large black stones. \"Cinnamon! Wait!\" I shouted.\nThen as I started up the gentle rise, the sun broke the horizon\nbetween two stones and caught me full in the eyes. I staggered a moment, then blinked to get the pain out of my eyes. With my head down, I ran on toward where the girl had been standing but she was gone. \"Cinnamon, Cinnamon! Where are you?\" I nearly screamed in frustration. I looked around and then stepped through the row of stones to see down though them. Still no Cinnamon!\nI started to head toward the next row when I heard my name whispered, \"Brad?\" and I turned and I saw her again and I knew I'd be spending a lot of nights in this graveyard from now on.\nThere was the dark, pixie-cut hair and the up-tilted smile, and her twinkling eyes staring out at me from the ceramic-printed\nphotograph on the headstone under the engraved words:\nCinnamon Radcliff\n\"Beloved Daughter.\nGone too soon but never gone from our hearts\"\nand the dates,\nFebruary 14, 1955 - October 31, 1973" } ]

[ { "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: Confessions of an Alcoholic\n\nGenre: contemporary\n\nWord Count: 2316\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story in the form of diary entries, written by someone who has set themselves a month-long challenge." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Jan 7\n My name is Dylan. \n One week ago, I wouldn’t have imagined writing a diary. A twenty-five-year-old man wouldn’t need that. But apparently, yes, he does. Or that is what my brother Joseph recommended to me anyway. According to him, this would make this whole process easier. The process of trying to let go of my flask. Until now, it has not worked out.\n So, let’s start again. My name is Dylan.\n And I have been sober for a week.\nJan 10\n I called my wife, Carly, around noon. She didn’t call me back. I called her back around midnight. She didn’t call me back. I left Joseph a voice message crying around seven the next morning. He did call me back.\n I blamed the flask. And no, I didn't go back to drinking. But in these ten days sober, I have had the worst hangovers in my life. I felt more drunk at that time than in my entire history in the bars. So, calling Joseph as I sobbed in the other line was really not my fault. It was the fault of my sober drunkenness.\n I met alcohol when I was a kid, and his absence was just too agonizing to take it alone. First, the apartment was shaking. Horrible earth tremors stopped me from showering, watching the TV, reading, or even picking up a cup of water. At night, the earthquake was more infuriating. I would lie down in bed and feel it. The tremors made my bed crumble under me. Sleep was already a challenging task to achieve. I would love to say it was because Carly wasn't lying beside me in bed. But it was because I did not have my flask.\n I got used to taking some sips before sleeping. Without it, I started feeling and realizing things. Like how alone I was, and it was then that I did feel Carly's absence. The bed became unbearable. Carly's empty spot was cold as a grave. When the tremors returned, I just slid out of bed and lay on the floor. I decided to wait there until the trembling stopped. After two days of lying on that dirty, cold floor, hugging my knees, I realized that it was me who was shaking, not the apartment. \n I left that part out in my conversation with Joseph. \nJan 11\n Carly didn’t want me close to her. She made that pretty clear. So why did I call her? Why? Did she roll her eyes when she heard my voicemail? Of course, she did. She probably told her friends about my annoyance. She probably told him. Eventually, she would tell him everything; it was a matter of time. She would tell him about his father's incompetence and his drunkenness. \n There was a time when she didn’t actually care about how much I drank. The times when she still expected me to change. The time when I still had hope to be better. The funny thing was that that time faded away without me even realizing it. Maybe I was too occupied attending the flask to notice. I didn’t notice the pregnancy test. Didn't even notice that she wanted to leave. Not until I came from another unsuccessful day at work, and nobody was waiting for me. \nJan 18\n I haven’t called Carly in those past days. I told Joseph I was ready for the challenge. I was a man. I could do it alone. Of course, I was wrong. \n The headaches furiously attacked me all day long. They brought a strange feeling in my stomach, like someone was punching me. As someone who spent his entire life being beaten, believe me, it was not a flattery feeling. Even so, I thought I could make it. I was sure. Although I only left my room to eat and even though I spent sleepless nights. I was going to do it for Carly, for me, and for him. \n But when I had the hallucination of my father visiting me at two in the morning with his belt and his own flask in hand, it was too much. I grabbed my car keys and rushed to my mother in law house. It took me about half an hour to find her house. She lived five minutes away. \n I begged Carly to let me in. I knocked and knocked, not even stopping when she threatened to call the police. Or when her mother joined in with the threats. When Carly finally opened the door, I did everything I saw my father do with my mom. I knelt and pleaded, asking for a second chance. I told her about the stupid Dry January challenge Joseph forced me to do. I told her I would do it for both her and him. Carly just stared, her hands rubbing her rounded belly. I thought she would let me in. That I would end up convincing her. Mom always let my father in. But she shook her head, eyes red, and moved her hands towards the door. \n “I’m sorry, but I don’t believe you anymore,” she said. “I look at you, and I can’t see Dylan. Only your father.”\n Then she slammed the door in my face. I stayed there, kneeling as I stared at the closed door. I must have fallen asleep because someone shook my arm around five, asking me to stand up from the floor. I woke with a jolt and looked up at the mortified officer glaring down at me. Carly’s mom was standing next to him. \nJan 20\n Joseph took me for a run. Apparently, I needed to get out of the house more. Joseph was used to it. He exercised, went to parties, and socialized with people. The things I never managed to do. I always refused to do anything he liked- mostly because I found it unnecessary and too much work- but that day, I accepted. He took me to the park. He didn’t ask me about how horrible I looked. Or why he had to pick me up from the police station one day ago. We just ran. \n We were running for just ten minutes when I blurted out the question. \n “Do you think I’m like our father?”\n I didn’t mean to ask, but I had to. What Carly said was eating me up. The memory of her words almost made me go into a bar. I was going to before Joseph called me to go running instead. Of course, I didn’t tell him that part. I was glad my brother found me before the flask. I was better from the withdrawal and did not want to start over again. I was no longer experiencing headaches, and my hands stopped shaking.\n But the nightmares and the visits from my father didn't leave. I wasn’t sure if it was a punishment or Caly's words tricking me. But my father talked to me at night; he lay on the bed next to me and even waited for me when I got out of the shower. The man was more present in my life now than when he was alive. He mocked me about how much I complained about him, and now Carly would be doing the same thing to my son. \n Now, it was not only just “I'm sorry honey, but your dad is an incompetent drunk.” Now, she would tell him that his father is just like his grandfather. The headaches threatened to come back every time I thought about it. Joseph took his time to answer me. I didn’t like that. After two laps, he asked me if I ever would hit my child and later blamed it on the flask. I answered no. \n “Then you’re not like him,” he said. \n We didn’t speak after that. We were supposed to go for dinner, but I told him I would eat at home. I stayed in my house watching Dirty Dancing. It was Carly’s favorite movie. Joseph called me to check on me later that night, and I told him I was watching Fast and Furious. I said goodnight on the phone and went to sleep. Father was already waiting for me when I entered my room.\nJan 24\n Have nothing to say today. It is raining outside, and I’m bored. \n 10 Things about me:\n 1. I've been drinking for as long as I can remember.\n 2. I think I started drinking at the age of ten. One of the ways I got back at my father was to steal drinks from his flask when he got distracted. Apparently, it wasn't a good idea because I was still stealing drinks fifteen years later. \n 3. I met Carly in college. I dropped college, but she didn’t. I didn’t know what her major was. I didn’t know if she was working. I only knew that she didn’t want to leave college because she wasn’t a dropout like me. \n 4. I proposed after she graduated. Her mother always told her it was a bad idea. Two years into our relationship, I proved to her that her mother was right.\n 5. I found out about her pregnancy four months ago. At the same time, I decided to start AA, but I couldn’t, so Joseph convinced me to do the challenge.\n 6. What father was I? I didn’t even notice that Carly was pregnant with my own son! I didn’t even know I had a son since I kept forgetting the doctor's appointment. \n 7. I wasn’t a great husband either since my wife ran away without even caring to take anything from her apartment with her. \n 8. She was just desperate to get away from me. \n 9. I was just like my father.\n 10. My father never got sober, not even for Joseph or me. I needed to be different. I wanted to tell my son I got sober for him.\n It stopped raining. \nJan 29\n Carly came over today. I was going out with Joseph. We were going to check AA meetings around town. He was going to pick me up around four, but when I opened the door, it was Carly, the one standing there. I stared at her, not sure of what to do or what to say. She always had that talent to make me uneasy. I was happy that at least that hadn’t changed between us.\n “Joseph called me and told me about your little challenge,” she broke the silence.\n I smiled and nodded. I really didn’t like how she called it a little challenge, but I remained silent. I couldn’t trust my tongue, not with her so close. Looking back, I should have asked her to come in. We stayed on the doorstep. She smiled at me, holding a blue envelope in her fingers. After not receiving an answer for my part, she just cleared her throat and raised the envelope toward me.\n “I thought you would want this,” she said. \n I took the envelope from her hands and opened it. A small photo was inside. An ultrasound showed a baby boy. My baby boy. I guess I smiled; maybe I cried. I brushed my fingers over the ultrasound, surprised it looked so clear. It was just a shadow of a lying head and what looked like raised feet. But for me, it was the most beautiful work of art I had ever seen. Carly smiled and told me how it was a healthy baby, according to the doctor.\n She told me other things, but I didn’t listen. I could only focus on him. \n I looked at her, biting my tongue to not ruin it. I didn’t want Carly to walk away and take my baby with her. But I wanted to tell her how sorry I was. I wanted to plead again, but this time for her to let me be part of it. I wanted to see him be born, to see him grow. Instead, all I said was thank you. She nodded, and I tried to return the photo, but she shook her head.\n “Is a gift,” she said. “Maybe next time you can come with me to the doctor.”\n “You want me there?” I was surprised.\n She raised an eyebrow. “You're the father, aren’t you?”\n I smiled and looked back at the picture. I was the father of this work of art. That was the first time in my life I ever felt proud. \nJan 30\n Joseph told me he was going to call me at midnight to celebrate my one month sober. He joked that it would be the real New Year's Eve. I insulted him a little, but I couldn't stop smiling afterward. I promised Carly I wasn't going to stop in January. Our relationship is at a standstill. She told me we would discuss it when I got to at least March without drinking. She still didn’t want to take anything to her mother’s house. So that was already a good note.\n I found a good AA group. Yesterday was our first meeting. It was horrible. It was amazing. It was both. But I held onto the photo of my baby the whole time and didn’t feel that bad. \n Later, I pasted the ultrasound photo into the alarm clock. I wanted to wake up every day and remember who I was doing all this. Joseph laughed at how cheesy I was, but Carly liked the idea. I called her today, and she answered me. We talked for an hour. Trying to figure out what to call our son. After that, I was so tired for no reason that I told Joseph not to call me at midnight. I went to my room, and my father was there with his flask. But my son's picture was there too. So I said goodbye to my father and told him he could keep his flask. I would keep my son." } ]

[ { "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: Nicotine\n\nGenre: contemporary\n\nWord Count: 1561\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story in the form of diary entries, written by someone who has set themselves a month-long challenge." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "12.20.2022 - Tuesday\n\nWell, California officially banned flavored nicotine. The gas station I would get my disposable vapes from was clearing its shelves today, so I guess now’s a perfect time to try quitting again. I would rather not switch over to regular ol’ cigarettes at this point. It’s not as easy hiding the habit that way haha. Plus, I never cared for them in the first place—too harsh and gross tasting. At least vapes tasted good and didn’t make me smell bad.\n\nI remember one time I tried quitting by tossing my vape into some bushes at the overlook by the ocean. I thought I was so introspective watching the sunset and working up the resolve to let go. It worked for about 24 hours. Then, I returned to the same spot after work the next day and found it resting in the leaves, waiting for me. Like a dog returning to its vomit.\n\nThis time will be different though cuz now it’s illegal. Sure, there are other ways to get it, like online or finding a shop that doesn’t care about the rules, but I want to use this added barrier to an addiction I should’ve left behind a long time ago.\n\nThey say it takes a month to change your habits, so I am going to shoot for that at least and hope it leads to permanence. I never made it longer than a week, but I have read the “quit lit” and understand what it takes. Alcohol was a bear to tackle too, but now it’s far in my wake and something I hardly think about anymore. Nicotine should be no different, right?\n\n12.21.2022 - Wednesday\n\nGah! I’m not sure what’s driving me crazier, the cravings, or my efforts to ignore them. I remember reading somewhere to ride the wave. Thoughts and cravings will come, but it’s counterproductive to strive to ignore them. Like, trying not to think about them is forcing me to think about them. Insanity! Acknowledge them, let them wash over me, do some breathing, and move on. It does pass given some time. Though the waves are many at first, I refuse to drown again.\n\n12.22.2022 - Thursday\n\nAt this point, most traces of nicotine should be out of my system. Since the body is efficient in processing it, withdrawal is mostly a mind game. With alcohol, there were shakes, sweats, pains, and ill feelings. All I’ve noticed now is a more voracious appetite for sweets and black coffee. There’s been a strange loss of feeling in my fingers and toes though, and they’ve been especially cold. This must be due to my heart not pumping as fast without the stimulant it had grown used to having. I’m sure my body will adjust soon enough. At least my chest pains have subsided!\n\n12.23.2022 - Friday\n\nI stopped by the lake today on my way home from work to calm myself down. The holidays are near and I am feeling the stressors of life weigh down on me more without the crutch. I don’t wanna take them home with me to my wife and kids though, so here I sit in a tree for a little while. The solid oak grounds me and the wind through the leaves is a salve to my raging soul.\n\nIt’s gray in the sky today, so the lake below looks dull, but that’s okay—it’s still a sight to behold. Little details have begun standing out to me more, like the small layer of fog down on the lake. With the calm wind blowing it across the surface of the water, it’s like a large host of tiny angels dancing. This brings me joy.\n\nI have missed these kinds of moments. Now I feel renewed and better prepared to go home.\n\n12.27.2022 - Tuesday\n\nONE WEEK! I have tied my previous record and it feels great! It helped these last few days were so busy with family in town and whatnot, but it’s a victory nonetheless.\n\nThough I have proper feelings back in my hands and feet, I forgot how many triggers there could be. After every meal, a small nagging creeps in for a “treat”. While driving, it’s comical how often I mindlessly reached for a nonexistent vape in the empty cup holder. Now that I am back at work, every time I’m on break the same nagging haunts me. I have a hard time knowing what to do with myself in these moments, but writing about it helps.\n\nAccording to the research, I’m supposed to start sleeping better at night soon. Looking forward to that!\n\nPatience has been easier to come by these last couple of days. In fact, in the middle of the night when my son awoke, I was the calmest I've ever been rocking him back to sleep. Not being so quick to frustration is a bonus for my family and helps me feel better about myself. Another thing to be grateful for now.\n\nWell, my 15 minutes are up. Better get back to it!\n\n12.28.2022 - Wednesday\n\nAh yes, the dreaded plummet after the thrill of victory. I forgot how deep this pervading sadness can be when I’m not manufacturing chemicals in my head. At least I know the time in the pit doesn’t tend to last as long once the cycle’s broken. It’s all a part of the recovery process. I have to remember this: one day at a time.\n\n1.3.2023 - Tuesday\n\nTWO WEEKS! Double the high score! :D\n\nI have to admit, not putting down “quit nicotine” on this year’s resolutions was nice. Although, I couldn’t help but take notice of the cans of chew on the back wall while fueling my car the other day. That’s also not a substitute I would be fond of cuz when I’ve tried it in the past, it makes my stomach churn. Besides, you have to spit with it and that’s not appealing at all. Still, I would only be risking mouth cancer instead of lung, throat, and mouth combined…\n\nNah, gotta shake the justifications or I’ll be starting the cycle all over again. It’s already taken me years to stay away for this long. I must press on!\n\n1.6.2023 - Friday\n\nI’ve just now noticed I’m not drinking as much water as I used to. The obsessive compulsion to wet my ever-present cottonmouth is no longer there, so now I have to consciously think about my daily intake. One more thing to learn discipline with I guess.\n\nI’ll also need to start cutting back on the coffee as it sure doesn’t help my hydration issues. Plus, it’s starting to feel like I traded one stimulant for another, except now I'm more tired and irritable in the evenings. *sigh\n\n1.10.2023 - Tuesday\n\nThree weeks in now. Not much to add today, but I do feel as though my body is finally recalibrating closer to normal. Homeostasis is the correct term, I think.\n\nThere have been fewer and fewer trigger moments, and the cravings have almost died down, so that’s great! Oh, and I’m more mindful of my wife’s desires and needs. We've had some great quality time together and the minor irritants no longer get under my skin as much. I had forgotten how much I love this woman!\n\n1.14.2023 - Saturday\n\nThe mind fog is back. It’s different than an overstimulated mind. That feels like I’ve hit a wall and there isn’t much I can do to press through it since I’m already amped up. This new fog feels heavier like my head is stuck in the mud. My poor brain must have forgotten how to regulate itself, or it needs more time to heal. IDK, but I hope it clears up soon.\n\n1.17.2023 - Tuesday\n\nFour weeks is technically a month, right? Never thought I would get here, but I am hoping it sticks this time. I suppose I'll check back in for the full month.\n\nI did notice a spitless option of nicotine pouches is still around. They took the flavoring out and labeled it a variety of things. All different shades of no flavor lol. Perhaps, I can fall back to those when this challenge is over. I’m so close now and will want to celebrate after all.\n\nHmm. Decisions, decisions.\n\n1.20.2023 - Friday\n\nOne whole month baby! That was a close one earlier this week, but I’m feeling a bit better about it now. :)\n\nI ended up weighing the pros and cons, and it was laughable how disproportionate the lists were. The pros were too many to count, and the cons were weak at best. That seems to be a similar trend among the substances I’ve chosen to abandon.\n\nIt’s wild the emotional roller coaster this can be. Frequent highs and lows at first, then a bit of a tapering out. Then, BAM! a craving out of nowhere.\n\nStuff has bubbled up to the surface that I have not thought about in a long while too. Buried things I was once running from by different means that I now have to work through with a sober mind. It’s tough man, but I’m glad I made it this far.\n\nThe plan is to see how long I can take this now. Indefinitely is what I’m aiming for and it feels more possible today than when I first began." } ]

[ { "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: Guests\n\nGenre: coming-of-age\n\nWord Count: 1201\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story from a ghost’s point of view." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I am woken up from a deep sleep by the sound of the front door downstairs unlocking and creaking open. Unfamiliar sounds waft into my home. I am groggier than I ever have been.\n“It’s huge!” I hear a woman’s voice say. I beam with pride. Her companion coughs.\n“And so dusty. And full of cobwebs. We’ll have to get the cleaning crew in here first thing.”\nI frown. I have always been proud of my family’s home, and to hear someone disparage it like this makes me defensive.\n“Well, that’s what happens when you let a place go to ruin for this long.”\nI’m trying to piece together what is going on, where I am, who I am.\nI am Laura. I am eighteen years old. I am in my bedroom, in my bed. I am safe. A splitting pain shoots through my head as I remember the last sensation I ever felt; the cleaving of my skull, the spray blood across the face of—that part is blank. But I know for certain that I am dead. Just like Mom and Dad and Andrew. We stayed in our home after the incident. We could guess why.\nWe tried to carry on as normally as we could, but over the years we got bored. You can only watch so many TikTok videos, play only so many games of Scrabble. Dust all the furniture so many times, and for who?\nAfter the search for our bodies was given up, the crime scene tape rolled up and put away, the news vans drove off to the next most interesting grisly murder scene. We became urban legend. I read about us on social media for years, but eventually that interest faded too. The sites that had seemed so ubiquitous in my life eventually crumbled as well. I don’t know what they were replaced with. No one bothers to tell us these things because no one visits. Not for us, anyway.\nOnce our phones and laptops stopped working, once there was no more WiFi for our router to connect to, it became impossible to keep track of time and the passing of the years. The punk kids who used to dare each other to throw rocks through our windows became punk teenagers who brought their dates in here with blankets and pillows and pilfered wine to have sex in our living room. Chasing them off was the only real fun we ever had as a family anymore, a replacement for game nights that we barely remembered.\nMaybe we got a little too enthusiastic about it because eventually even the punks stopped coming. Those teenagers grew up into ambitious adults who moved out and on to other cities and lives.\nEventually I assume they became grandparents and great-grandparents who got to die peaceful, natural deaths that allowed them an eternity of real rest.\nWe discovered pretty early on that we were unable to leave the premises of our homes, so it didn’t bother us when a chain linked fence was erected around it and then later replaced with a barbed wire fence. We didn’t need food or water. Couldn’t eat or drink anyway if we wanted to. But we could sleep indefinitely. We started taking long naps. Longer and longer.\nEventually I think I had stayed asleep for decades. Maybe centuries? Or only a few years, it was impossible to know.\nI imagined myself as a beautiful, enchanted princess waiting for a kiss. It was a much better story than being a boring old ghost.\nBut it was a breath of fresh air to hear real human voices enter our home. I had so many questions: Why were they here? What year was it? What was the world like out there? What plans did they have for this big, crumbling, tragic building?\nRemembering now with clarity everything about my purgatorial existence, I allowed myself to slip down through my bed, through my floor, through the ceiling downstairs as if through a deep swimming pool whose depths extended to the ground floor.\nI stared with wonder at the couple before me. They had to be in their 30’s. She had beautiful, shiny hair. Impossibly straight, smooth, and chopped close about her shoulders. Her clothes hugged her body with unnatural perfection, rippling in the sunlight to flatter her every move. She wore impossible high heels that shimmered and shifted as if the very molecules that made them up could anticipate the weight and cushion she needed as she moved her body and adapted to the demands of its motion.\nBriefly, I wondered if she was an alien. How long had I been asleep?\nHer eyes were the strangest of all. They were a deep blue, like the sparkling lake in a mountain forest with a bottom that no one had ever touched. I couldn’t help myself. I reached out and touched her hair. It was even softer than it looked. She jerked away from me and shivered.\n“This place is creepy,” she said to her companion. “And freezing.”\nHarsh but fair, I thought to myself bitterly.\nI turned to him. He had the same strange, rippling clothing. His skin was tan and perfect. Despite his age, there wasn’t a single flaw nor blemish. I suddenly realized how lonely I was and was shocked that I could still feel desire for this living body.\nI had been eighteen when I died, but years had passed since then. If we slept together, I mused, would he be the creep? Or would I?\n“Laura!” a sharp voice barked behind me.\nI turned with as much attitude as I could muster, irritated that I could never escape Mom’s bossiness and—unlike living teenagers—had no hope of ever doing so in the future.\n“What, mother?”\n“Get away from them,” she told me, and I watched the wind from her voice blow back the hair on the newcomers’ heads. The smaller hairs on the woman’s arms prickled.\n“Drafty in here,” she said as if to reassure herself, rubbing her hands up and down her arms for emotional protection as much as a futile attempt to try and get warm.\nI smirked with knowing. I was close enough to sense her fear, and it made me feel powerful.\n“It’s daytime,” I told Mom. “They can’t see me.”\nBut I could see on the worried looks they cast one another that they could feel our voices as otherworldly breezes in the cold, dark, spooky house and that they were already questioning every decision that had led them up to this point. Tonight was going to be so fun. I hadn’t realized how bored I’d been. How much I had needed this. My soul stretched with delight like a kitten looking for attention.\n“Family meeting in the attic,” Mom told me firmly.\n“Fine,” I groaned, but before I floated over to follow her, I couldn’t help it. I slammed the front door shut behind them. I clocked the lock too, just for good measure.\nShe screamed.\nI could hear his heart pounding violently.\n“Laura!” Mom said again, a more forceful gust matching her more forceful tone.\n“Cominggggggg,” I whined, leaving our terrified new victims behind me. For 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 Damsel and Diztrez\n\nGenre: coming-of-age\n\nWord Count: 2991\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": "“Now, little Diz, I think we're set, but can you think of anything else your momma would like to sink her fangs into when she’s done giving birth?”\nSaying this, the elderly mouse spider, Gra’ma Occatoria, tip-tapped eight steps back on spindly legs, revealing the feast she’d laid out on a platform made of hundreds of layers of silk. In the banquet-hall, the lowermost chamber attached to the central shaft of the burrow, which was illuminated by fireflies and glowworms secured to the webbing on the walls, the young spiderling with the bright red head, gunmetal blue abdomen and shiny black legs tottered closer, his chelicerae jaws drooling as he surveyed the smorgasbord.\n“Let me see,” he said, eight eyes roaming over the delicacies on display as he patrolled back and forth on a carpet of webs. “Moths. Beetles. Ants. One big, fat, juicy wasp. Lots of cockroaches. And a lizard? Gra’ma! Where did you get a lizard?”\n“Ohh, that is a special treat,” the ancient spider chuckled. “Your uncles Chel and Myg caught it last night. An incredible battle I believe, no doubt those two will regale us with an account at the party. So, what do you think? Will Madame Missoleni be content?”\n“She weavingly, webbingly will!” said Diz, whose full name was Diztrez but who was only ever addressed by the shortened version, not just because it was a shortened version but because he was well-known, as the most hyperactive spiderling in the cluster, for making himself dizzy by zipping around the burrow at great speed. “She’ll be hungry when she empties her egg sac, and she’ll love vomiting enzymes over that! Chel and Myg did great! I can’t wait until I’m old enough to man the trapdoors and ambush reptiles!”\n“Oh, you’ve a ways to go before that,” said Occatoria, chuckling and returning to her table. “There is one thing missing, a centrepiece, though I can’t blame you for overlooking it, as it just popped into our parlour a short time ago.”\nDiz looked at his grandmother in surprise for a moment then started to run around in circles. “Popped into our parlour? What do you mean? Something got caught in a trap-tube? How did you know, Gra’ma, how?”\n“Settle down, Diz,” Occatoria urged, reaching out to catch the panicking spiderling. Stopped abruptly, Diz stood swaying from side to side, all eyes rolling on his carapace as he steadied his legs. “I felt the triplines under the carpet vibrate, didn’t you?”\n“Um…well…I mean…I think I felt something but I was watching you lay out the feast and I wanted to make sure everything was…”\nOccatoria laughed.\n“It’s alright, Diz, you don’t have to pretend. Of course you didn’t feel it, was cruel of me to ask. But that’s what I mean. You’ve a lot to learn before you’re close to being ready to go hunting. So how about you concentrate on that. And how about you make yourself useful now by fetching the tasty morsel that’s gotten itself stuck in the southeast trap-tube.”\n“Me?” Diz asked, shaking himself to clear his head and dropping back down into a crouch. “You want me to go? On my own?”\n“Why not? You want to help, don’t you? And you can tell your momma you added the piece de resistance to the feast. She’ll be so proud of you, now one of the eldest of her spiderlings.”\n“Oh. Well…yes! I’d love to. But…what is it?”\n“Well, unless I’ve read the vibrations wrong, I think it’s a duskhawker damselfly. Double-spined and veiny-winged, she’ll make the perfect addition to our feast. Once I’ve incapacitated her of course. Now, be a good spinner and go fetch. I’ll leave the heavy-lifting to you, while I work up a batch of fresh venom.”\nDiztrez puffed out his furry, blue chest and lifted his carapace high, happy to have been asked to perform this important duty. It was the first time Gra’ma, or any of the elders, had entrusted him with a task of such importance and he felt proud and useful and mature.\n“Okay, Gra’ma! I’ll get that juicy damselfly here pronto!”\nHe hopped, all eight legs leaving the silk-lined earthen floor together, then scuttled towards the exit to the shaft.\n“That’s a good spinner,” said Gra’ma. “Make sure you wrap it well before freeing it from the web. Head and all. Damselflies are a tricky bunch, full of mistruths and lies. It will say anything to get free, so don’t believe a word it says.”\n“I won’t,” Diz called back, though he was only partially listening, so preoccupied was he with making his way through the set of silk and soil trapdoors that closed the banquet hall off from the rest of the burrow. “I’ll be back in two squirts of a spinneret!” he said, and then he was off, tearing through silk-lined, glowworm lit tunnels at tremendous speed.\nSlowing to tip-toe only twice whilst traversing the web-cushioned network of tunnels–once when passing the brood chamber where his mother was several hours into the birthing process and again when approaching the trapdoor that led to the assembly hall, where the rest of the cluster, including his father, patiently awaited the new arrivals–Diz made short work of reaching the southeast trap-tube and getting his eyes on the trespasser, who’d come to an embarrassing end, stuck to the silk-covered walls.\n“Damselfly!” he gasped, skidding to a halt at the entrance to the tube and spinning around in excitement. “Gra’ma was right!”\n“What’s that?” came a female voice from the end of the tunnel, and Diz noticed the captured fly come to a halt, ceasing its futile efforts to rip its trapped wings from sticky gossamer. “I see you there. Spider, right? Mouse spider? Hey, come on over and help me out! We’re in big trouble and you’re going to need my help if you want to survive!”\nDamselflies are a tricky bunch, Gra’ma’s words came back to him, as he lowered his glossy black cephalothorax and tentatively entered the passage. Full of mistruths and lies. It will say anything to get free, so don’t believe a word it says.\n“Sure I am,” he said, circling the tube as he crept closer. “I’m in so much trouble, stuck in webs, waiting to be paralysed and eaten and... Oh, wait. That’s you!”\nTrying to mimic his father and uncles, Diz lowered his bulbous, red head as he came to a halt above the fly and fixed it with as much of an intimidating gaze as his eight glistening eyes could muster, waiting for the mottled brown insect to quiver in fear.\n“Yep, that’s me,” the slender damselfly replied, rolling the red, orb-like eyes on either side of her head and emitting a strange buzzing from her thorax. “But it’s going to be you if you don’t listen. You think I came in here on purpose? Do I look like an idiot? I came in to get away from them, and you better listen, because just like they devoured my family in a matter of minutes, they’ll do the same to yours. I’d say without batting an eyelid but batting their eyelids is how they eat and those brutes are insatiable.”\n“I don’t know what you’re saying,” said Diz, giving up trying to look scary and manoeuvring to aim his furry abdomen and protruding spinneret at the fly. “And I don’t care. Gra’ma said you’d try to trick me. And she’s waiting for us, so I’m going to wrap you up now and take you to her. You’re going to be the centrepiece of a feast, you know, you should be proud.”\n“Oh, I’m ecstatic,” the damselfly sighed, as threads of silk shot from Diz’s hindquarters, wrapping around her as he ran in dizzying circles around the tube. “Can’t think how I’d rather spend an evening. Although, watching a croaking colony of cane toads devour a cluster of ungrateful mouse spiders is up there. Maybe I can do that while being your centrepiece. Oh, how I’ll laugh, knowing it could have been avoided if a spiderling listened!” \n“Cane toads?” Diz said, coming to a halt before the now well-and-truly incapacitated bug, only its head protruding from tightly wound swathes. “Pah. We’re not afraid of toads. My papa caught a toad by himself last winter. It fed us for days. Cane toads are afraid of spiders! They wouldn’t dare enter our warren. They don’t even know where it is.”\n“You think?” said the damsel, as Diz used his chelicerae to cut her free. “You weren’t listening, were you? I said I came here to escape them. One in particular. He saw where I went and trust me, after what I did to him, he’s not going to give up and leave me.”\n“What did you do?” Diz asked. Gra’ma Occatoria’s words were buzzing in his head, almost as loud as the buzzing inside his captive’s body. “Disturb his sleep with that noise?”\n“Worse,” said the damsel, now lying prone in silk wrappings on the floor. Diz squirted another web from his spinnerette, glued it to the fuzzy, white cocoon, and started to make his way out of the tube, dragging his prize behind him. “I had a run in with him, after he and his mate arrived in the wetlands. Didn’t think much of it at the time. Should have, but there were only the two of them so who was I to make a fuss? Even if Ol’ Lumpy took a shot at me while I was out catching skater bugs. \n“He nearly got me with that disgusting tongue of his but I managed to escape and lead him on a chase into the scrub. I won’t lie, I was worried. I’d never come across a toad before and it wasn’t just terrifying, it was repulsive. Lucky for me I’m pretty zippy. And I knew the lay of the land better than him. Was easy to lure him into a trap, just acted like I’d run out of steam over a hollowed-out tree trunk until he took a flying jump and fell in. Go me! \n“He tried to jump out but he was stuck pretty tight so I left him. That’s nature, right? I guess based on that logic I can’t complain he did manage to escape, reunite with his mate and create an army of wartoads over the summer. But now they’re running rampant, devouring everything they can get their tongues on, including my family, and that’s why I’m telling you to listen, because Ol’ Lumpy saw where I went and once he gets me, he’ll want you!”\nAll the time the damselfly spoke, Diz had been dragging her from the trap-tube into the main shaft of the burrow, down along it deeper into the earth, traversing the silky passages that led back to Gra’ma. When she finally stopped to take a breath he took the opportunity to reply.\n“That’s an exciting story, damselfly, but like I said, it doesn’t matter. Lizards, cane toads, frogs. Mouse spiders aren’t afraid of them. If they try to poke their squishy heads down here, my papa and uncles will web them up so fast they won’t know…”\n“Diztrez! What did I say! Don’t engage in conversation with the food!”\nDiz jumped and spun to find Gra’ma Occatoria’s elderly but still imposing form dominating the tunnel ahead. \n“G-g-gra’ma! Wh-what are you doing here? I’m bringing the fly back, look. I wrapped her up well, like you said.”\n“Not her head,” Gra’ma replied, skittering closer and pirouetting to aim her abdomen at the insect. “I came to keep an eye on things. Like I said, damselflies can’t be trusted.” \n“Ma’am, with all respect, I really think you should listen to -”\nA blast of silk from Occatoria’s behind cut the damsel off as a spray of web coated her head, sealing her mouth and leaving her eyes rotating wildly, the buzzing inside her getting louder. \n“That’s enough,” she said, turning back to Diz. “I don’t know what lies she was telling but now you see what I mean. Damselflies can’t be trusted, so best not engage with them at…”\nDiz was about to protest that he had indeed turned a deaf ear to the damselfly’s nonsense but it was at that moment that the roof above Occatoria exploded, raining dirt and mud down upon the elderly spinstress and allowing a plump, rope-like length of pink tongue to burst in, curl around her, pluck her off the ground and haul her up.\nIt took Diz a second to recognise she was gone, where she had gone, and what had taken her, and then he was shouting, crying, twirling and spinning on the spot, getting his legs tangled in the web that connected him to his prisoner before tripping and falling to the floor. \nJust as the tongue rammed in again.\nSomehow the sticky rope missed him and then, when it withdrew to prepare another strike, he was up, getting his legs underneath him and running like he’d never run before.\nAnd run he had to, because the tongue didn’t quit, continuing to drill through the ceiling behind him, causing him to shriek as he veered around a curve in the tunnel, the entrance to the assembly hall ahead. Behind him, the damselfly was doing her own version of screaming, that infernal buzzing she emitted louder now than ever, reverberating up and down the tunnel. He wanted to yell shut up, but it was the least of his worries, and as the door ahead swung open and he saw Uncle Myg look out, he opened his mouth to shout a warning…\nAnd then the roof collapsed, over the entrance to the hall, allowing a monstrous blob of lumpy grey flesh to drop through, all legs and eyes and mouth, belching as it slapped a tongue down on his uncle, dragged him twitching and jerking into its maw before turning and crashing into the chamber.\nShocked, horrified, young Diz staggered and tripped, crashing to the silk-covered floor, all eyes staring in disbelief as a second toad dropped in after the first, advanced into the assembly hall behind it, joining the attack on the cluster.\n“Papa!” Diz cried, trying to straighten his legs then realising he was moving without them, backwards, away from the fight. \n“No!” he cried, twisting to see the damselfly, who had managed to wriggle her wings free of wrappings that had torn during their flight, flapping hard and rising towards the ceiling, dragging him now as she entered another tunnel. “Let go! I have to help my family!”\n“Your family is gone,” the damsel replied, spitting strands of silk from her mouth as her mandibles ripped free. “Like mine. Be thankful I’m taking you with me.”\nDiz saw another toad drop through the hole before he was dragged out of the passage, skittering along the floor as the monster gave chase. He thought of his father and uncles, being set upon by hungry toads; he thought of Gra’ma Occatoria, slurped into the gob of a greedy frog; he thought of the damselfly and how he should have heeded her warning; and then he thought of his mother and her sac, when he realised her chamber was ahead.\n“Stop!” he yelled at the fly, whose buzz had grown so loud she might not have heard. Ahead, the hopping beast charged around the corner. “You’re leading it to…”\nA crumbling cacophony made him turn to see the ceiling collapse on the other side of the brood-chamber, at which they’d almost arrived. The damselfly fluttered to a halt. Diz went tumbling forward. A cane toad fell from the roof, the lumpiest one of all, plopped down on leathery feet, fixed the mouse spider with a ravenous glare.\nIts eyes bulged, its maw gaped, its tongue flicked out and licked the air. Diztrez, staring into a gaping abyss, wondered if Gra’ma was inside and waited for the tongue to strike its blow. \n“No,” said the damsel, when the cane toad burped and shuffled closer. “He’s with me. Same deal. We’re even now. Our business is concluded.”\nDiz watched as the toad lifted its head to regard the fly. A second seemed to stretch into an hour, then it sucked in its eyeballs, emitted a stuttering thrill and shuffled away, brushing past Diz and the damsel, joining its brethren as they broke through the door in the wall.\n“Wait, what?” said Diz, but then he was moving, rising into the air beneath the damsel, who had resumed flying, shredded sheets of silk flapping beneath her as she went through the hole. \n“Stop!” Diz cried, watching the burrow drop away below him. “We have to help mama!”\n“I’m sorry,” the damselfly replied, flying higher, faster, away from the grass-topped hillock in the midst of a marsh, her thorax no longer buzzing.\n“You led them to us,” Diz realised, swinging from a thread in the moonlit night. “With that sound. You told them where to dig.”\n“Had to. They got my family too, like I said, and Ol’ Lumpy would have eaten me if I didn’t help him catch the spiders who killed his mate. But we’ll be safe now. They’ll keep terrorising the wetlands but they’ll never bother me or you again. That’s a promise.”\n“A promise,” Diz repeated, trying to suppress his heartache, eyes searching below for a place to land.\n“You know what a promise is, right?”\n“I know,” said Diz, extending his head, clicking his jaws, cutting the strand of silk that held him aloft. “And I promise you,” he said, dropping from the damsel towards a waterlogged fen. \n“I’ll grow up, I’ll learn how to hunt, I’ll build my own burrow and traps, and then, when I’m ready, I’ll find you and those toads...\n\"And you’ll be sorry.”\nAnd with these words, Diztrez the mouse spider was picked up by the wind and carried away." } ]

[ { "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 Talk\n\nGenre: coming-of-age\n\nWord Count: 1475\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": "My parents’ anniversary was in the fall—the 13th of October. Every year, they left me at my grandmother’s house so that they could spend the weekend solely in one another’s company. I hated my grandmother’s house. It was creepy and it smelled of stale incense and mildew. Nothing made sense there. It was cluttered with bundles of wilted herbs in every corner. And she always made me help her with the baking. There were no videogames.\nThis last time was no different. My parents hadn’t been gone for more than an hour when she had me help her make M&M cookies. She was a terrible cook and a worse baker. Every batch either came out burnt or undercooked. One time she even mixed up salt and sugar. Her cookies are usually inedible. How do you mess up a chocolate chip cookie? They’re like the world’s easiest recipe.\nSometimes I felt like she was doing it on purpose, but I could never figure out why.\nShe was mixing the dough with her hands. She licked one of her bony fingers to taste it. Grandmother made a face and told me that we had forgotten to add something. I looked around at the ingredients we had strewn about on the counter.\n“Vanilla,” I told her, proud of my realization.\nShe asked me to go fetch the bottle from the pantry since her hands were already deep in the sticky cookie dough mixture. I sighed but did as I was told.\nMy grandmother’s pantry was a small room off the kitchen. She kept it meticulously organized with jars clearly labeled: flour, sugar, popcorn, anything she might need exactly on the shelf in coordinated glass containers, a precisely situated work of art in and of itself.\nI had never been in this room before. It felt like it didn’t belong in the rest of her house. Everything in every other room was cluttered and messy, but not here. Here, I could live in forever. Everything made sense. It was orderly, alphabetized, organized by height and color.\nFor some reason, the room made me sleepy. I was so comforted by the consistency of that pantry, I felt so safe that I wanted to take a nap. I hadn’t been sleeping very much lately. You see, having turned 14 that year, I had been plagued by dreams—sinful dreams. About classmates, teachers even, sometimes girls I’d seen in TikTok videos. Sometimes players from the football games my parents watched on Saturdays and Sundays. I’d wake up covered in my… well, in the evidence of my sin.\nI’d change the sheets myself, stuffing the crusty ones far into the back of my closet. Then I would wait until the weekend for a rare opportunity in which both my parents were out of the house, and I could do the laundry all by myself without having to answer any questions.\nAnd sometimes I would have these… urges. Urges so strong I couldn’t do anything about them. I felt like I was under some sort of spell. And I would succumb. It felt so good. But after it was over, I felt so wicked. I wasn’t like myself. I just wanted things to make sense, but they didn’t anymore.\nI turned to God for answers, but when He did not respond to my prayers, I turned to Google. I was comforted to find out that I was not alone with this problem. There was an explanation. I was being tormented by a succubus. It was the only explanation. I had tried everything that my research suggested: prayer, meditation, chanting at the demon to be gone.\nNothing had worked, so I had taken to avoiding sleep as a whole, knowing that in my dreams I would have no more control over my own body and would be unable to resist the demon that was visiting me.\nBut here, in my grandmother’s pantry, I finally felt safe. Nothing could find me here. I curled up on the rug, and I fell into a deep, much-needed sleep. I wasn’t sure how long I had been out when I heard my grandmother gently calling for me.\n“Caleb? Is everything alright in there?”\nI was roused from my sleep, and I hurried to grab the vanilla I had originally been sent here for. That’s when something hanging on the highest shelf caught my eye: a gold medallion hanging from a thin leather cord on a hook on the highest shelf—tucked behind an almost empty jar of sage. It seemed to hum, calling out to me seductively.\nI reached up to the top shelf to try and grab it off its hook, but I was too short.\nI looked nervously toward the door, but my grandmother had not come looking for me yet, so I decided to take a risk. I stepped gingerly on the bottom shelf, testing it to see if it could hold my weight. It groaned but stayed. Gaining courage, I put another foot on the shelf, then climbed to the one above that.\nI reached for the medallion. My fingers barely grazed it when—CRASH! The shelf under my feet gave way and everything came crashing down to the floor. All the jars and their contents. Glass shattered. I gripped the medallion and pulled it loose from the wall, snapping the hook as I fell with it in my grip, landing among the shattered glass on the floor.\n“Caleb!” my grandmother ran into the room, horrified by the noise and terrified by what she might find, but miraculously, lying among the shards of glass, I was unscathed. She saw the medallion in my hand and breathed a sigh of relief, though I saw admonishment behind her usually gentle eyes. She held her arms out.\n“Walk towards me,” she said. “And do not let go of that.”\nI held so tight to the medallion in my hand that I felt its imprint in the skin of my palm, but with it I was able to walk over the sharp pieces of glass on the floor unharmed.\nOnce in the safety of the kitchen, my grandmother pulled me into her arms, checking me all over for cuts or bruises. When she was satisfied she found none, she took the medallion out of my hand and hung it around my neck.\nFor the first time, I was able to look closely and examine the markings on it. Within the circle was what looked like three crosses pointing west, north, and east, with the northern cross having an S shaped line like a tail coming from the bottom of it.\n“What is this?” I asked her.\n“It’s time you knew of my true identity,” my grandmother told me.\nMy breath caught in my throat and the air seemed to grow cold around me.\n“I am a daughter of Lilith,” she said, taking me by the hands and looking me in the eyes seriously, like one might consider an adult. However, these words meant nothing to me. I stared back at her blankly. She tried again.\n“I am a witch, what some might call a demon.”\n“Like a succubus??” I blanched. I tried to rip the medallion off my neck while at the same time make sense of what she was telling me.\n“But you’re so… old?”\nShe laughed, unoffended.\n“I wasn’t always. I lived a long, beautifully enchanted life that others would consider evil. But the spirit of Lilith guided me and protected me. She will protect you too.”\n“But the demons,” I sputtered in protest. “I am already a prisoner of them.”\nGrandmother waved her hand dismissively.\n“There are no demons.”\n“But you said you were—”\n“I said that’s what they called me. I am simply a worshipper of all life has to offer. Lilith showed me the courage to give in without shame. She will show you the path.”\nGrandma blinked as if remembering something, then quickly added “But magic is not a suitable substitute for condoms, remember that.”\nI nodded. My body was starting to feel warm for the first time since it had begun to change. I felt something that was not fear or hatred.\nGrandmother pressed my hands in hers.\n“It is not the urges that are evil,” she told me as if reading my mind. “It is your fear of them.”\nI let the Lilith talisman fall against my chest, and I tucked it into my shirt.\n“Now,” she asked me cheerfully. “Did you ever get that vanilla?”\nDazed, I walked back to the pantry, which was neat and organized again, as if the spill had never happened. Had that been a dream? I grabbed the vanilla off the shelf and brought it back to her. Its nutty scent filled the kitchen as she added it to the dough.\nWe both mixed it with our hands." } ]

[ { "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: For The Experience\n\nGenre: contemporary\n\nWord Count: 1593\n\nPrompt:\n\nSet your story in a bar that doesn’t serve alcohol." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Tom Davies stepped into the Harp and Hound Recopub, and was immediately struck by the bluesy bass rambling from a jukebox, accented by the staccato pops of a cue sending pool balls scrambling. The lighting was mute and dusky, even though it was noon; a perfect complement to the wooden floor, and walls draped with team colours. And a waft of deep fried bliss followed a passing waitress.\nWell, he thought. I wanted a bar, and you can’t get more barsy than this.\nAnd anyway, any dive was good enough refuge from Nicole.\nHe approached a barstool and then nearly slipped off it when he saw the bartender. Gangly, pimple-faced, do-it-yourself haircut – the kid looked like, well, a kid.\n“What can I get you?” the bartender asked.\nTom started with “Are you–” and ended with a cough, before he blurted out “allowed to be in here.” He cleared his throat. “Is this a family business?”\nMaybe it was take your kid to work day.\n“Nope. Sole proprietor.” The bartender smiled. “Opened the place right after school.”\nJesus, thought Tom. Fresh out of high school and already running a bar? The weight of his own job, a temporary bathroom fixtures sales gig that was gradually stretching the definition of “temporary” into “career”, lodged itself in his throat.\n“Got my master’s and said enough of that.”\nFresh out of university then. Bit better.\n“So what’ll you have?”\nRight, the whole point of his trip: to drown his worries. To drown Nicole.\nTom frowned. That wasn’t a good metaphor at all.\n“I’ll have a pint of lager.”\nThe bartender poured an extremely faint beer without any head and slid it over.\n“That’ll be eight-fifty.”\nTom paid with a ten, begrudgingly remembering when a pint cost you half that. Then he took a big gulp and realized he was drinking water.\n“Dude, what the hell, man? This is water!”\n“Yup,” said the bartender, without batting an eye. “As are all our beers. Our liquors too.”\nTom blinked. “Dude,” he said, uncertainly. The guy had just admitted to selling him a glass of water for eight-fifty, like it was a normal thing to do. He finished with a whisper, “What the hell, man?”\n“We’re a recopub.”\nRecreation O’Pub? thought Tom. What the hell is a recopub?\n“A recovery pub: a pub for recovering alcoholics.”\nTom looked around the pub, at all the other patrons. People chatting, people laughing, people playing pool and watching the game and relaxing. And all of them, drinking water. Whether from beer steins or martini glasses, champagne flutes or brandy snifters, highball glasses or shots, it was all water. One guy even had a yard filled to the brim with the clear stuff.\n“But,” stammered Tom. He glanced at his own glass. “I don’t – isn’t this a terrible idea?”\n“Well, the principle was, we’d associate all the positive things drinkers like about drinking – the socializing primarily, pub games, live music on Fridays – with a non-alcoholic context. Water is a substitute for the somatic components. That is, the physical act of drinking. By itself it wouldn’t be enough, but with all the other parts, the hope was we’d rewire the reward circuits in the brain that sought out the drink.”\n“Does it work?”\nThe bartender shrugged. “It was going to be the topic of my PhD, only it turned out trying to get funding is soul crushing, and the prospect of risking a decade of my life on a maybe gave me ulcers. So instead I opened a bar. And I got customers, so…” He looked thoughtfully at the jukebox. “I got into school to help people, but it wasn’t what I expected.”\nTom glanced at his pint. “Dude, you charged me eight-fifty for a glass of water! I want my money back.”\n“Can’t do it. See, I didn’t actually sell you water. I sold you the experience. We feel it is critical to remind our patrons of the price of booze – both in terms of health, and to the bottom line.”\n“That’s bull.”\nThe bartender shrugged again. “Can I interest you in experiencing some water from a bottle of thirty year old Macallan scotch?” He reached up and presented the top-shelf bottle, filled with clear liquid. “Only thirty bucks a shot.”\nTom blew a raspberry. “What a ridiculous – I’m not here for any experience. I’m not some stinking drunk–” Then he grew real quiet and looked over his shoulder, but none of the other patrons seemed to have heard him. “I don’t have a drinking problem,” he finished.\n“You sure? You did go to a bar at noon, after all.”\n“No I – that’s not what this is! I just needed to…” Tom took a deep breath.\n“To get out of the house for a bit?” asked the bartender.\nTom nodded.\nThe bartender uncorked the bottle and poured a shot. “Here. It’s on the house.”\n“Thanks,” said Tom. He tossed back the shot without a second thought, and only then remembered that the whisky was actually water. “Damn it.”\n“So what’s on your mind?”\n“Sharing my troubles with a bartender? Isn’t that like the world’s oldest cliché?”\n“Okay, then don’t think of me as a bartender. Think of me as a psychology almost-was.”\n“That seems worse.”\n“Fair.”\n“Why do you care?”\n“Because you’re a customer. Oh! How about that. I’m doing market research on my customers. Think of me as a capitalist.”\n“Bartender it is.” Tom took another sip of his pint. Was he really going to confide in some stranger? Especially some kid this young? And obnoxious? And so very, impressively, intimidatingly accomplished for his age. Well, what’s the worst that would happen? It’s not like they’d ever see each other again.\n“So there’s this girl,” Tom began. “Nicole. She’s my–” He cleared his throat. “Girlfriend, I guess. Yeah.”\n“Go on,” said the bartender. “You don’t get along? You want out?”\n“Oh, no, not at all. I love her.” It just slipped out, but Tom realized it was true. “I love her.”\n“But?”\n“But… things are just moving very quickly. We moved in together six months ago – and like, I never really did that before, but I was fine with it. Only, it was a clear sign things were serious.”\n“And living together isn’t working out?”\n“It’s well enough, I guess. I’ve definitely had worse roommates. Only, like, a few weeks after that, we went and bought a new sofa.”\n“Okay?”\n“Yeah. And then a couple weeks after that, we went shopping for a washer and dryer.”\n“Okay.”\n“Because the old ones broke. And then–” Tom took another sip “–three months ago, we pulled the trigger and got a dog. And that’s what we called it: Trigger!”\n“Right,” said the bartender, his hand fidgeting on the bar. “And?”\n“And now she keeps hinting about us going to the next level! And what the hell is that? Are we talking married? Are we talking kids? Twins? Triplets!? Are we getting a cat too, and moving to the suburbs? And buying a van? And soccer practice and ballet and football and swimming and – I don’t know – ping pong probably.”\nTom downed the rest of his pint and wiped his lips on his sleeve. The bartender topped up his glass.\n“So you don’t see a future with Nicole?”\nTom’s arms dropped. “I… I don’t know. I love her. I love the idea of being with her. But everything seems to be moving so fast. A year ago I was bar hopping and going on road trips and I still kind of had a shot at being an astronaut – maybe – but this year I noticed a grey hair in my beard, and just this weekend my knee hurt from standing up. And there’s Nicole all chipper and like, ‘Next level! Next level!’ And I don’t know where she finds the energy.” He buried his face in his hands and released a frustrated growl, and then took a long steadying breath. Afterwards, he began on the second pint.\n“So let me get this straight,” said the bartender. “You’re getting older and realizing you can’t fulfill your childhood dreams, and you’ve got commitment issues to boot. And you call me a cliché?”\n“Not helpful.”\n“Sorry. Listen, it’s normal to get overwhelmed by this stuff, and not everybody is comfortable moving at the same pace. Have you tried just talking to Nicole about this?”\nTom stared at the bartender for a moment, drumming his fingers on the bar. “You really think that would work?”\nThe bartender shrugged. “I think if it doesn’t work, then you might have an answer about your future with Nicole. But you said you love her?”\n“Yeah.”\n“And you trust her?”\n“Yeah.”\nThe bartender shrugged again, as though the answer was obvious.\n“Thanks,” said Tom. He felt light, much lighter than he’d felt in months. “I think you’re onto something.” He finished the second pint, and set the glass down with a whump. “I’m going to do it! We’ll talk and figure this out together. You know, you’re pretty wise for your age.”\n“Uh, thanks?”\nTom grinned, feeling the elation growing. He slid off the barstool, looking forward to what the future held, focusing on the open windows and not the closed doors. So what if he lost some old dreams, when he could build a new dream with Nicole? It was time to move forward.\nThe bartender tapped the pint glass.\n“That’ll be eight-fifty.”\nTom dropped another ten, and then left with a wave." } ]

[ { "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 Whatever Thing\n\nGenre: contemporary\n\nWord Count: 1291\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story in the form of diary entries, written by someone who has set themselves a month-long challenge." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Jan 1, oops, the 2nd, Too hungover on the 1st, lol!\nOh my! What a big blank piece of paper I have here when I could be using that leather-covered expensive whatever thing that Grandma gave me. Where did that thing go? I last saw it under all the Xmas wrapping and kicked over to the side. Did it end up under the couch that Mom later threw out? If so, it is strictly AWOL, and of course, I will promise to transfer everything I am writing here into it, or it will break Grandma’s heart. How many times has Grandma had her heart broken? Darned if I know. Mom gives me the play-by-play, starting with ‘YOU NEED TO CALL HER! And ending with, “You know your Grandma doesn’t have long to live. Stuck in that apartment with a budgie and a cat that hisses all the time. Black cat hates everything. But brings mice home as a gift. With their heads bashed in.\nDead of course. Like whatever. I only wear black myself now. No one ever comments on it like I shouldn’t bother, either.\nJan8th\nShe called me up. Well, first, she tried texting. But I ignore everything, like usual. Nobody texts me now. Just the way I like it.\nJan whatever\nI have to move back home. Yeah, that or living in a group home that looks like an apartment building with so many rules it would drive me insane. If I scream loud enough, Mom will get all shaky and threaten to call 911. So, she’ll leave me alone. She’ll have to!\nMore Jan whatever\nDoing this diary blows! I sit and look out the window. One time, I sat and did absolutely nothing for two hours. Didn’t move. Tried not to breathe. Not so much, anyway. Amazing! Try not eating for a whole day! Then, breathe as little as possible. Listen to nothing. Be nothing. What does it mean to be alive? Does anything mean anything? Really? Why do I even care if anything makes sense?\nWhenever\nSo began the project. In the projects? Nah. Mom makes so much money on top of what she gets from Dad. I walk down the street and see such perfection. Perfect lives with expensive cars. Makes me want to key a few, but everyone has a doorbell cam. I would get caught so fast!\nAnyway, about that project. I’m going to interview people about the meaning of life. With my phone. Seen a few of them on YouTube. Thought I’d try it myself. I’ll report back.\nI talked to this really cool person first. He was just sitting in the sun on Air Pods with sunglasses and a drink in his hands, relaxing. Smiled at me for no reason, like anything that happens is fine by him.\nI’m not good at this. Shaky like Mom when I pop the question. It occurs to me that I’m alone so much that I hardly ever speak. So, the first time I open my mouth, nothing comes out! Here I am, looking like a garbage man, sweaty and not cool, and he really listens to me. Waits for me to get the words out of my mouth.\n“What do uh you um think the meaning of life is?”\nHe takes a big breath and then lets it out like I have asked the only question that could ever matter. “It's all in the moment. If I try to explain it, then I’m doing something for you that you can only do for yourself.”\nSo profound. I was blown away.\n“Thanks, man!” I say, waving as I walk away. It's what I make it. Cool. I go home and spend the rest of the day thinking about it. The project is done. Cool on the first try, no less! Whatever I want is what life is about!\n#\nBut I’m thinking. Damn it! I wish I could just turn off my brain and have a little peace while video gaming for a change! Mom says that I shouldn’t spend 12 hours a day video gaming, but then she buys me all the latest stuff anyway. What can that mean? Buying me off?\nShe hates what I play. So, it isn’t like she is interested in anything I do. Actually, I almost never see her. My bedroom door is locked nearly all the time. It’s great when she is gone to tell you the truth! I hate seeing her car pulling into the driveway, even when she works 10 or 12-hour days. It’s time to eat, she says. I told her I had already ordered pizza. Or Uber Eats. Or whatever. Can’t stand the stuff she cooks. Healthy stuff? Kale nearly made me barf the one time I tried it. I’m young, still. Why would I have to worry about what I eat?\nLike here she is right now at the bottom of the stairs, asking how I’m doing, even as I write this. My meal is ready. I’ll keep quiet until she bangs on the door! Pretend like I’m dead or something! My buddies online said it would make a really cool YouTube video if I recorded her yelling at me, saying she is all worried and stuff. Then she could bang on the door, wondering if I’m still alive…then I suddenly open the door and scare her silly! What a blast that would be! I wonder how many views I could get with a video like that!\n#\nI gotta restart the project. She called again. I wish I could get her out of my head! I only answered my cell because Grandma died. I’m supposed to go to the funeral. I told Mom I wanted to remember her the way she was. So, I’m not going! Mom was furious. Way worse than usual. I started yelling back to get her to stop, but she got more than just shaky. Didn’t even threaten to call 911. For once, she yelled more than I did. I got quiet and asked her politely to calm down. I had to promise that I would go to the funeral to get her to stop!\nLike, I’m really going to go.\n#\nMissed the funeral. Now, Mom wants me evicted. What, I ask? How can you evict your own son? She says that there are limits to everything and that she has reached her limit over “how I behave.” Like I cause her any real trouble! I keep to myself mostly. She doesn’t have to do a thing for me! She doesn’t have to cook; a maid comes to clean. I can do my own laundry. And it isn’t a question of money. Mom is loaded. Dad even more. Millionaires several times over. In fact, Dad might be worth upwards of a hundred million dollars or more if you count the investments that he doesn’t want to touch.\nSo anyway I told Mom to pay my rent somewhere else! She said she could not help support my “degenerate lifestyle.” Whatever that means. Am I really going to have to live somewhere and be poor?\nShe called again, and I answered on the first ring. I was too upset to game or do anything anyway. We had a long talk.\n“Contribute,” she said. She kept saying that word repeatedly. Told me that I was a “waste of space.” Said that the truth hurts. That life is hard and you have to work at making a life for yourself. Stuff I had heard before. Stuff my Mom always talked about. Stuff that Dad would have said if he was still around. What was my problem? If I had only one word to describe it, it would be this: Whatever." } ]

[ { "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: Rude Awakenings\n\nGenre: coming-of-age\n\nWord Count: 1581\n\nPrompt:\n\nBegin your story with a protagonist taking shelter under a bridge during a thunderstorm. An animal scurries past which shouldn’t exist. Against their better judgment, they decide to follow it out." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "\"Fuck! I can't believe this junk! \" Sam's old Tesla kept breaking down for no reason and the weather wasn't helping. Even a blind man could have seen this storm coming, bringing with it strong wind and aggressive thunder. \n\"Hello Triple A?\" \n\"Hello this is Triple A. How can we be of service?\"\n \"Thank God!\" said Sam as his uncontrolled thoughts of dim scenarios quickly came to a halt. \n\"My car broke down. I'm about 200 meters away from Newport. Between old Billy's gas station and Peter's Pinecone forest. I'm stuck in the middle of the road and there's a heavy thunderstorm over here and... hello?\" \n The phone line was disabled probably due to the lashing winds of the storm. \n\"Fuck!\" screamed Sam defenseless. He wasn't going anywhere and after using all his energy up screaming and shouting of sheer frustration inside his car, his body's natural reaction led Sam to take a much needed nap. There was something mystical about sleeping in the rain. The monotonous sound of the infinite raindrops splashing everything equally.\nRemembering in his sleep his complicated situation, Sam frantically woke up. He instinctively grabbed his cellphone to realize, not only that the signal was back but the storm had calmed down also. He took a deep breath before making his next phone call. \n “Dad! Listen, I'm stuck near Peter’s Pinecone, can you come pick me up. I need a ride to work. This piece of shit car keeps breaking down.\" \n\"It'll take a couple of hours son, I still have to feed them hogs and your aunt Lesdy might need some help with her new window set...\"\nHis dad's voice faded into the distance.\nHis help was no longer Sam's main interest. On the other hand, the diminutive creature that came out behind old Billy's gas station walking toward his car stole it completely. Sam initially thought it could have been one of old Billy's grandchildren. His strong genes are known all through town. However this thing, which appeared seemingly out of nowhere, had a face resembling a grown man, green and rusty skin and was carrying what seemed like a briefcase. Sam got out of his car, considering the easing of the weather and followed this curious thing into Peter's Pinecone forrest. Although diminutive in size, the creature displayed great stamina and lured Sam deeper into the forest. \n “Where did it go?\" said Sam catching his breath. \nHe derailed himself from the main track and found himself on top of a hill linked to another similar hill by a small bridge. Pinecones, almost like an army of clones, populated every possible square inch of forest.\n \"There you are!\" shouted Sam as he pinpointed the weird creature running downhill. As he accelerated, so did the weather and as quick as Sam made it to the middle bridge, thunder, heavy rain and aggressive wind struck Peter's Pinecone.\n\"Fuck! Not again!\" screamed Sam as he creatively utilized the bridge as shelter from the insidious weather.\nHe couldn't understand how in the world he got himself in this stupid situation. \n\"Awful weather, huh?\" Sam jumped shocked as he took a good look at that which had stolen his attention. \n\"Excuse me?\" stuttered Sam. \n\"I said. The weather is awful.\" \n\" Wha-What are you?\" \n\" Ah, it's the same every time\"\n \"What?\"\n \" Everytime humans come in contact with goblins, they can't seem to grasp the fact that goblins exist and equate experiences of meeting one to being drugged up or alien abduction\"\n \"I mean, no harm. It's just, I've been in my car for so long and the sight of you startled me.\"\n \"Startled?\"\n \"Yes. It's not everyday you see a goblin.\"\n \"Well, we do try to stay away from humans.\" said the creature and he fixed his petit tie.\n \"You-you've got a briefcase.\" \n\" Yes. I do. Haven't you seen a briefcase before?\" \n\" Yes I have. Why would a goblin have one?\" \n\"Because this goblin is a very important goblin in the goblin world.\" \n\"Goblin world?\" \n “As humans have their human world, we have our own goblin world. Hidden. In forests such as this one. All over the planet. My position within this goblin ministry world is to regulate \"false flag information.\"\n Sam looked at the creature with total bewilderment. \n\"Unlike humans, we goblins are extremely meticulous beings. We calculate every possible scenario and detail that might affect any of our decisions. Unfortunately, this type behavior has led to goblins making up false stories. You know, what you humans called “fake news.” In a purely logical scenario, adapting a fake news strategy to inflict control is highly beneficial. It allows you to manipulate and deceive whoever you want. As this phenomenon grew, goblins started inflicting self wounds and blaming other goblins for it. Sometimes it's real, sometimes it's to be seen as a victim to return the strike with unproportional measures. My job is to mitigate these actions within the goblin community.”\n Sam's eyes and ears were exploited by what he had just heard. As he stood there compartmentalizing his surroundings, he realized that the scenery was grandiose and beautiful. The rain and thunder matched perfectly with the heights of the pinecones and the darkness they created. Sam and the goblin, although completely different, stood still. Under this particular bridge mesmerized the natural aesthetic of the environment. \"Will you ever solve it?\" asked Sam to the goblin. \n\"Solve what?\" intrigued asked the goblin. \n\"Misinformation. Self inflicting wounds that justify atrocities?\"\n \"Although it is my job to stop it, I don't think I will. It will be deeply embedded within the foundation of the goblins for years to come.\" \nSam's sadness quickly changed to a more positive attitude as the storm was slowly relaxing. A small opening let the sunlight into Peter's Pinecone forrest. Sam's lifted his chin towards the sun enjoying the gentle warmth he was experiencing. Coming up with another question for the creature, Sam asked,\n\"So, what should we do?” \n“Well, I am not sure if this strategy will work in the human world but, when we goblins are trying to “unplug” someone from the evil energy wave power seekers blindingly walk themselves into, we usually call them or meet with them, depending on the gravity of their fake news, and we proceed to shout, from the top of our lungs all the reasons why their fake news story is fake. This is like killing 2 raccoons with one spear!” The goblin could see Sam's confusion. \n“We goblins like to eat raccoons, anyways. The yelling process awakens them from their own mind prison and two, well, liars ought to be screamed at.” \nSam’s eyes were blinded from the sun. He held his palm up to protect his eyes but the goblin was already gone. \nOnce Sam returned to the main road uphill, ambulances and police cars were searching everywhere for him.\n \"Son! There you are! We couldn't find you and we were starting to get worried.\" \n\"I'm ok. I just went for a little walk, that's all.\"\n Both Sam's father and paramedics find it hard to believe Sam was having a stroll under the terrible weather but as long as he wasn't injured, all parties agree it was a simple misunderstanding and poor communication. As Sam finally entered his office, Janice, his secretary said. \n“Mr. Coleman, we tried calling your cell phone but the signal was low…”\n “ I know Janice, the weather is terrible. I got stuck, long story. Tell me, what we have for today.”\n“Well,” said Janice. “Mr. Elon Musk keeps trying to contact you about that Mars story. He says you can exaggerate it as much as you want as long as it paints traveling to Mars as something “positive.” Also, the Chinese Government wants you to write a negative story about Taiwan. They specifically said “make it seem like they need us.” Also, the security minister of Mexico wants you to report a fake kidnapping, they need public support and rescuing a little girl can potentially elevate them in the polls. Lastly, Facebook needs 20 immigrant stories with a good outcome. Apparently the French president has personally asked his communication minister to uplift public opinion on immigration.” \nSam didn't move a muscle. He would usually frantically try to satisfy his clients orders but this time, he reminisced about his real or unreal experience in Peter’s Pinecone forest. He took a deep breath and very calmly asked Janice to call Mr. Musk's personal phone. Janice obliged. \n“ Sam! Thanks for reaching out, man. I need that story for this new magazine I'm working with and…” \n “Listen here you little fuck. Mars is not cool. Traveling to Mars is expensive and once you're there, there isn't anything to actually do. Oh! And did I mention there is no oxygen Elon. No oxygen! It means that if you don't have money to buy a six million dollar space suit, you can't go! Instead of going to Mars, why dont you fix your cars! “Self driving” is a long shot, not to mention they break down every 2 days because of maintenance!”\n“Woah calm down Sam! You sound tempered.”\n“I'm sorry man. I met this goblin under a bridge at Peter’s Pinecone and he said \"I need to yell at people that lie.”\n“ I would say you have either been drugged up or abducted by aliens! Stay focused and get me that story. I'll send you a new model soon.” \nSam Coleman obliged." } ]

[ { "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: Ronny's Retreat\n\nGenre: contemporary\n\nWord Count: 2963\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about a character participating in Dry January." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "“You are so full of crap, Ronny”, said Mad Max, “You ain’t no different from the rest of us. Fact is, you’re muddle-minded, and full of shit about what coulda, woulda, shoulda been”. Mad Max stamped his feet, flicked his cigarette into Station Road gutter. \n“Couldn’t, shouldn’t, wouldn’t”, chimed in Squidward, “I could tell you a thing or two about the things that I didn’t do”. Squidward rocked his giant bulk back and forth on the park bench, always in motion, never eating in public; it was a mystery to the other tenants how he stayed so fat. \n“Leave Ronny alone”, said Dizzy, the old whore, who lived on the second floor. She’d always been good to Ronny, probably because he never sought her services. She was slapping her big arms around her ample girth, trying to stay warm, \"Crazy is free, doesn't hurt anyone, does it?\"\n“Hurts my ear drums”, said Mad Max.\nNapoleon, the irascible superintendent of the Coalition rooming house, emerged from the building pursued by a plume of vapor in the cold night air. “I don’t want to see any trash on the grass, or on the sidewalk”, he declared. \nNo-Hope Jones doffed a non-existent hat, “Yessir”, which made Napoleon snort, whether with derision or satisfaction, it was difficult to say. \n“Ronny, you’re a goddam mess!” said Napoleon, “Are you still hitting the bottle? You know the Coalition policy, right? Zero tolerance”.\nRonny felt like a pinata at a child’s birthday party, and he needed a drink desperately, it being New Year’s Eve, and all that.\n“I’m going inside”, said Old Elvis in a deep sonorous voice that everyone suspected was fake.\n“We’re all going inside”, said Mad Max, pulling Squidward to his feet.\nRonny looked for the cigarette butt in the gutter, but it had burned all the way down to the filter.\n+++\nAt the supermarket checkout, a man in a sharp blue suit slipped a dollar bill to the woman at the cash register, gesturing ever so discretely at the indigent little man next in line. Blue suit left, and the woman greeted Ronny with a fake smile. “I don’t need your charity” said Ronny irritably. He slapped down a bag of cookies and a carton of milk, but then he caught sight of the twenty-dollar bill in the associate’s hand. “Holy Jesus! Wait there!”, he scurried to the liquor aisle, and returned with a quart of Fireball Whisky in his shaking hand, “Ring it up, sister!”\n+++\nStore-brand chips and salsa, donated by the local Food Pantry, sat untouched on the parlor room table. The girls, Dizzy and JoJo, were sitting on the sofa watching New Year’s Eve programming on the TV, ignoring the incessant chatter of No-Hope Jones. Napoleon was talking to Old Elvis about the playoffs over near the window, and Mad Max was hiding out in the corner, brown-bagging a beer.\nRonny staggered into the pantry, “Whaddya got there, Max?” he slurred.\n“Try hitting up someone else”, said Max with disgust. \n“Jeez. Just trying to be friendly, fella”, said Ronny, flashing his bad teeth.\n“Try Elvis and Napoleon”, said Max, pointing toward the window.\nRonny announced himself with a burp, and old Elvis moved half a step backwards, beyond the range of Ronny’s foul breath, “Ron, you’re cramping my style,” said Elvis.\n“We got any booze?”, said Ronny, eyeing the chips and salsa with green-gilled disdain. He was getting desperate for another hit, twitchy even. \nNapoleon appraised Ronny sternly. “Ronny, this is not a good look. You’re reeling around like a goddam drunk and stinking up the room with your Whisky-breath. You can’t even stand up straight, for Pete’s sake”.\nRonny hiccupped, “I’m fine! I just started on the celebrations a bit earlier than you, tha’s all”, slurring again, “I just need a December top-up”. \n“What you need is a Dry January”, said Elvis.\nNapoleon took Ronny by the arm and steered him out of the parlor, down the corridor and abandoned him in his room, where Ronny sat on the wretched old bed, drained the last dregs of amber liquor from the whisky bottle, and a familiar oceanic feeling welled up inside of him then stranded him on a barren shore.\n+++\nIt was morning and Dizzy was framed by a halo of New Year’s sunlight. “Napoleon has a message Ronny” she shouted from the far end of the hallway, “says it’s from Brad Pitt”. She laughed raucously and stomped away as if it was the funniest thing ever. The hangover was like a heavy damp blanket that weighed Ronny down. His head throbbed, his mouth tasted like the inside of a toilet bowl, the light was pressing into the back of his skull. \nNapoleon handed Ronny a piece of paper with the name “Mercedes” scrawled on it, and a phone number, “She said that Brad Pitt was interested in something called The End Game”.\n“You’re shitting me”, said Ronny.\n“Swear to God, that’s the message, word for word”, said Napoleon, crossing himself ostentatiously.\n“I need to use your landline”, said Ronny, holding the piece of paper in trembling hands like it was the golden ticket. “It’s important, I swear”. \n“Mercedes speaking”, it was a woman with a European accent.\n“Ronny, it’s Ronny Fowles here”.\n“Mr. Fowles! We’re so glad we found you”, said Mercedes excitedly, “we’ve been trying to track you down for weeks. Your wife gave us your number but told us you were at a writer’s retreat. We’d nearly given up on you”. \nRonny was momentarily confounded, but then he recalled that a trans fiend called Colleen, the only person Ronny knew with a steady job and a mobile phone, had offered to send out his script. Apparently, Colleen had improvised.\n“Yeah, I’m still at the retreat”, said Ronny cautiously, “have you read the script?” he asked. He didn’t want to sound too desperate, but his entire pathetic life was balanced on a pinhead.\n“We loved it!”, said Mercedes, “Mister Pitt read it, and just couldn’t put it down. He thinks The End Game is an important story that needs to get out there, be part of the dialog. He’s even discussed it with the NFL commissioner… We want an option if it’s not too late, please?” She sounded even more desperate than Ronny.\nRonny choked up, unable to talk. Napoleon took the handset from Ronny, “Who the fuck is this?” he growled.\nThere was a pause. “Is this Mr. Fowles’ agent?”, Mercedes sounded taken aback, but undaunted.\n“Yeah, this is his agent”, said Napoleon, waving at Ronny to chill. Napoleon jotted something on a scrap of paper, “You got that straight, Ma’am”. He hung up the phone and handed Ronny the piece of paper with the word contemporize written on it, “She says you need to make some revisions, make it more topical. It needs to be contemporized”. \n+++\nNews spread quickly through the Coalition grapevine, a jolt of hope for the deadbeats as they faced the new year. The tenants convened at the bench, sharing smokes, and strategizing. No-Hope Jones was puffed up and proud, like Ronny was his only son, and Dizzy was so excited that she loaned Ronny a Benny, which made Ronny all weepy. Even Mad Max stepped in, offering the use of an old computer.\nOfficer Burns, pulled up in Cruiser 002, rolled down the window, “Denise, these gentlemen treating you right?”, smirks and chortles at the sound of Dizzy’s real name.\n“Officer Burns, it’s Ronny, he got a call from Brad Pitt”, said Dizzy in her gravelly voice; she was nearly jumping out of her skin. \n“You’re messing with me, right?”, Officer Burns could sense a buzz of excitement among the Station Road ne’er-do-wells. \nNo-Hope Jones chimed in, “it’s for real, Officer, Sir. You remember when Ronny was hanging out at the library, scribbling away, and getting into trouble?” Officer Burns remembered the librarian’s complaints only too well. “It turns out, it weren’t no scribbling” said No-Hope, hooking his thumb at Ronny, “turns out our Mr. Fowles here is a genuine, God-given genius”. \n“Gee, Ron, that’s just great” said Officer Burns, shifting alternatively between awe and skepticism as he processed this news and the sorry sight of Ron Fowles, who looked pale and sickly, and badly in need of a grooming.\n“Yeah, a cool fifty thousand for the option to make his gay-boy movie”, said Napoleon triumphantly, punching the cold air.\n“But first he’s gotta contemporate”, said Ho-Hope.\nRonny felt like he was shrinking into a husk. His brain was fogging up, he needed a drink. The Benny was burning a hole in his pocket.\n+++\nBig John Curtis found Ronny lying dead-drunk in the warm vestibule of Myrtle’s Bar and Grill, just before opening time. \n“Ronny’s got frequent flyer miles with us” explained the paramedic to BJ.\n“Get him out of here, already”, said BJ, incuriously.\nRonny was momentarily conscious but delusional, “All you sweet girls, with all your sweet talk”.\n“He’s got the DT’s” said the paramedic, “The duty doctor will probably put him on benzo and antipsychotics, maybe a saline drip too”. \n“Don’t really care, just get him out of here”, said BJ.\n+++\n“I just gotta make it through January”, said Ronny to the ER doctor.\nDoctor Jain examined the rotting teeth at the back of Ronny’s mouth.\n“I’ve only got one shot at the prize, Doctor, and this is it”, said Ronny.\n“We’ll see if we can get those teeth seen to while you’re here, pro bono.”\n“I’m supposed to be taking a flight to Los Angeles at the beginning of February”.\n“For what?”\n“Brad Pitt wants to meet with me”.\nDoctor Jain scrawled something on a prescription sheet “Haldol, it should help moderate the…the hallucinations”.\n+++\nRonny dreamed he was a crew member on a clipper ship on the high seas of the Pacific Ocean, straining at cable-laid rope beneath a rip-raw sky. Astern, sailors were skinning seals and throwing the crimson carcasses into the ocean, which boiled with a frenzy of sharks, while screaming gulls circled overhead. Ronny lost his footing, toppled overboard, dragged into the briny depths by the anchor rope that twisted around his wrist. \nHe woke in a cold sweat; his room was spinning. He ran his dry tongue around the new landscape of his mouth, explored the healing wounds where previously he’d toyed with rotting teeth. The hospital wristband was tight on his wrist.\nDizzy was in his room, watching over him like a demonic nun, and she was steaming mad.\n+++\nRonny wrote the word CONTEMPORIZE neatly, in block capitals, on a blank sheet of paper and stared at it, waiting for a thought of substance to enter his mind and lodge there, but instead it felt like his head was a tombola drum, with fleeting images of unrelated people, places, and things, tumbling randomly inside. \nThe End Game script lay next to him, untouched. \n+++\nNo-Hope Jones was watching the third quarter of the Pats-Cowboys playoff game at Myrtles bar, when he spotted Ronny loitering, hunched up and sad-looking, outside in the street. He jumped from the bar stool, went outside, “Ronny, my man! Come inside and have a drink on me”. \nBJ stopped Ronny at the door. No-Hope protested but BJ was unmoved, “Don’t really give a crap about the Hollywood homo, he’s not coming in here”.\n“That ain’t fair BJ, you know it”, said No-Hope, squaring up bravely, and unsteadily, against the giant.\nBJ wouldn’t budge, “got no beef with you Nate, but he’s not coming inside.”\n“Let’s go to The Three Crows instead”, said No-Hope to Ronny, but when he turned around, Ronny was gone.\nRonny headed in the direction of Station Road, but walked right past the rooming house, past the railway depot, and he just kept going along Route 70 toward the setting sun, toward Hollywood, he was adrift on a small boat in a meandering river.\nOfficer Burns drew up in front of him in the cruiser, got out and marched him to the side of the road, pushed him angrily into the back of the cruiser. “You could have been killed”, he said, looking at Ronny in the rear-view mirror, “You addicts are all the same, wandering around like zombies into the jailhouse, the hospital, or death”.\nIt was irrefutably true, thought Ronny, we drunks are more alike than we are different in our enslavement; we live in the same bleak place beyond shame and humiliation, we lie, we cheat, we steal, we forget, we are consumed by self-pity and fear. “I’m still sober, Officer Burns”, said Ronny truthfully, hopefully.\nOfficer Burns didn’t seem to hear him, or didn’t believe him, “you know, there’s a lot of people got your back, Ron. Some of them folks that remember you from high school, your cousins over on the island, the Coalition people… they all saw a spark in you, once”.\n“I failed so many people, Officer Burns”.\n+++\nRonny flicked through The End Game script. It was unrecognizable, the work of a different hand, of a different person, a better person. He stared at the paper pad, at the word CONTEMPORIZE, and waited, waited. He needed to go outside, he needed to get something.\nNapoleon intercepted him in the hallway, “Mercedes wants to know how it’s going” he said, “I need to give her some kind of response”. He stepped close enough to check Ronny’s breath, to look him in the eyes. \n“Good progress”, said Ronny, “I’m near halfway done”. \n“That’s great Ronny”, said Napoleon, “You going out?”.\n“Naah, just needed loosen up a bit”, Ronny shook his right hand limply, “writer’s cramp”. \n+++\nDizzy knocked on the door and found Ronny sitting at his desk. Ronny placed the script on top of the writing pad. “Ain’t snoopin”, she said, “just checking up on you”.\n“You and the whole Station Road crew”, said Ronny, “are you taking turns?”.\n“I dunno what you’re gabbing on about, just checking on my pretty boy”, she slicked his stick-out hair down, stood back and gawped, Brad Pitt’s gonna want to know who your stylist is”. \nHe gave her a grin, and saw her wince slightly at the sight of his near-toothless mouth, \n“Elvis thinks it gives me character”.\n“It does that too”, she said.\n+++\nRonny visited the Food Pantry and bagged up handfuls of breakfast snacks, which drew the censorious eye of the matron, so he scooped up some useless root vegetables as he was leaving the church hall.\nWhen he got back to Station Road, Napoleon was on him like a rash, “What you got in that bag, Ronny”, like he was a customs agent on the lookout for contraband.\n“None of your business, Jimmy”, said Ronny.\n“I gotta take a look in the bag”, said Napoleon.\n“No, you don’t gotta”, said Ronny, hustling along the hallway.\n“Two more days,” said Napoleon. \nMad Max was watching all this from the stairwell. “No fuckin’ way the Golden Goose is gonna deliver the goods”.\n+++\nRonny handed the manila envelope to Napoleon, witnessed by No-Hope, Elvis, Dizzy, and Mad Max, “It’s called Dry January”.\nNapoleon weighed the envelope skeptically in his hand, “I don’t know ‘bout that. Mercy didn’t say nuthin about changing the name of the movie.”\n“How’d we know it’s f’real anyway”, said Mad Max\nNapoleon began to thumb at the edge of the envelope.\n” Don’t you touch that” said Ronny, suddenly jumpy, “just fuckin post it for me, if you want your cut, Jimmy.”\n“Jeez Ronny, lighten up a bit”, said Dizzy, “We’re all rootin’ for you”.\n+++\nThe rooming house was edgy that week, expectations hung heavy in the air. Nobody really wanted to spook Ronny, who mostly hid in his room, or ventured out to town on mysterious missions. Mad Max saw Ronny making enquiries at the ticket office in the railway station. Elvis saw Ronny looking at the For Rent listings noticeboard at the Rec Center.\n“He’s gonna check out and leave town before the shit hits the fan”, said Mad Max, sitting in the parlor room watching the Patriots crush the Jets.\n“He’s gonna move across town, to get away from us”, said Elvis.\n“No way you’re getting your money back, Dizzy”, said Mad Max.\n+++\nThe phone rang in Napoleon’s office. Mad Max was hanging around, as usual. “Max, call Ronny will ya. Mercedes wants to talk directly to him”, said Napoleon.\n“She pissed?”, asked Max.\n“Just go get him will you”, Napoleon said irritably.\nDizzy was leaving for town, but stopped when she overheard the conversation. Elvis and No-Hope were lurking in the hallway near the parlor. The whole Railroad crew seemed to manifest out of thin air.\nRonny came out of his room, and followed Mad Max to Napoleon’s office, walking through the solemn gauntlet.\n“It’s Mercy, she wants to talk to you first,” said Napoleon, trying to sound business-like, but it came across as petulance.\n“Ronny here”, he held the phone to his ear and stared at his feet for what seemed like an age to his small deadbeat audience, then he suddenly flinched, flushed bright red, and handed the phone back to Napoleon.\n“You still there Mercedes?” asked Napoleon, anxiously, putting the receiver to his ear. She was still there. The Railroad crew clustered close, straining for clues in Napoleon's expression. He scribbled something on the back of an envelope, and they squeezed past Ronny to take a look. \nRonny stood apart, he felt good, the constant ache for alcohol had abated, just a bit, just enough for him to gather and skewer his thoughts, which he would commit with ink to the blank sheet of paper that lay next to an empty bottle sitting on the makeshift desk in his lonely room." } ]

[ { "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 Secrets I Associate with Baking\n\nGenre: coming-of-age\n\nWord Count: 1207\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": "I remember the day that altered everything. It feels like it was only yesterday, but in truth, it was decades ago.\nThe kitchen air filled with cinnamon scented steam. Nana and I were having a baking marathon, filling another empty Saturday afternoon with our favourite pastime.\n “Darling, would you get me the brown sugar from the pantry?” Nana asked.\nI loved baking with her. It had always been predictably fun. It was when I felt my most carefree. Nana had a knack for baking, and she loved involving me in it. She never seemed to mind if I made a floury dust coating over all the kitchen surfaces. She said it was part of the experience.\n“What’s the point in baking without making a mess?” she’d say, with a smile.\nShe was always so effervescent and cheery. That was what made the item I discovered in her pantry so surprising. I went to the walk-in cupboard I knew so well. I’d spent hours, or even years, gazing at its contents, so I knew what was on every shelf. I liked to memorise all the ingredients, even if I didn’t know what each of them was for. They fascinated me. I hoped I would become half the cook my Nana was as an adult.\nI reached for the bag of brown sugar. It was secured shut with a clothes peg, so I lifted it down with care. As I moved it, I noticed an item stowed away behind it. It was an object I knew but that I never would have associated with Nana. It was a cauldron – one of those cast iron ones; the kind that only a witch would own. I almost called Nana into the room, but then I thought better of it. Why would she have it hidden away if she wanted me to know about it? I covered it up with some spare bags of flour, hoping she wouldn’t notice they’d been rearranged.\n“Mimi, did you get the sugar?” she called in her syrupy sweet voice.\nThere wasn’t a hint of anything menacing about her. There never had been. How could this perfect person have such a dark secret? I knew what I’d seen and there was no explaining it away. It wasn’t a plastic cauldron substitute that she filled with sweets for trick or treaters. It was the real thing. It had a strange, herbal smell that permeated the air, and it lingered in my nostrils. It was sickening. I suddenly didn’t have much of an appetite for cookies. I couldn’t find the words I needed to act like my normal self.\n“What’s the matter?” she asked, taking the sugar from me. “Cat got your tongue?”\nI looked around me, half expecting to see a black cat leaping out of nowhere, but there was none to be found. She must have been a cat-less witch, I reasoned. I moved towards her, regarding her tentatively. I’d never felt unsure of my grandmother before that moment. She was Nana until she had become a stranger with one small revelation. My mind ran away from me, like a careening vehicle. Who was the person standing before me? What other darkness might live inside her – invisible and unspoken to everyone that thought they knew her intimately?\nAt that stage of my life, my knowledge of witchcraft was extremely limited. It was limited to Sabrina the Teenage Witch and the television depictions presented of comedic witches or satanic sorcery. It was one extreme or the other – laughably innocuous or dangerously demonic. I didn’t know which force lived inside my Nana. She had always had a remarkably clear complexion. She was almost too perfect looking. She seemed to age in reverse. She had energy without bounds. For her physical age, she was as energetic as an excitable child. Maybe that was all she used it for. I desperately wanted to know more, but I didn’t dare ask her.\nWhat if it was a secret she planned to carry to her grave and my exposure of it led to her sending me to mine too? I tried to picture her performing spells, or curses, or whatever it was she felt inclined to do, but I couldn’t. It just didn’t add up.\n“Why are you behaving so strangely?” she asked me. “You’re acting like you don’t know me.”\nI laughed her words off, but I was beginning to understand there was nothing I could hide from her. It seemed that she could see through me like I was made of glass. She knew my fears and she knew my intentions. There was no point in trying to be secretive about it. She was the queen of secrets. You can’t fool someone like that.\n“Let me guess,” she said. “You found something you shouldn’t have in the pantry.”\n“How do you know?”\n“Just a hunch. I get tingles that tell me these things. Some people might call it intuition.”\n“Why do you do it, Nana?”\n“It’s a family tradition. It’s carried through the generations. Your mother highly disapproves of course.”\n“Why does she?”\n“She doesn’t like it whenever I tamper with the natural course of things.”\nShe was using big words with me, but she always had, and I fully understood every one of them. She had exposed me to an adult language that enabled me to grasp concepts I should have been too childlike to comprehend. It was a skill that proved useful in that moment.\n“What is it… that you do?” I asked, stumbling over the words.\n“I stop people doing bad things. Isn’t that what everyone wishes they could do?”\n“How do you do it?”\n“By whatever means I find necessary.”\n“Do you kill them?”\n“I wouldn’t say that – not directly no.”\nI knew I was physically backing away from her, but she grabbed me by the shoulder and pulled me closer to her.\n“I can protect you in ways no one else can,” she said. “You know that girl that was bullying you in school?”\n“Lucy?”\n“Yes, I solved that problem for you. Didn’t I?”\n“She moved away.”\n“Yes…,” she said, meditating on what I said.\n“Isn’t that what happened?”\n“Does it matter? It solved a problem of yours and I will always do that for you. Maybe I’ll even show you how to become one yourself. It feels like the time is right.\"\nI nodded, more to please her than because I had any interest in doing that. But whenever you’re a child, you’re easily led, and you’re influenced by the most powerful adults around you. That was exactly what she was.\nAfter that, we baked the most delicious gingerbread that we’d ever made. Nana threw in some ingredients I couldn’t identify. Maybe that was what made her baking so addictive. Then, she got out the cauldron and she showed me a potion she liked to make, she showed me how she chanted, and we put a curse on the nasty downstairs neighbour – the one that always complained about the smells issuing from her apartment.\nThat was the moment when I grew up, when I received my initiation into the world of witchcraft from which there has been no exit since." } ]

[ { "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: Baking with Nanna\n\nGenre: coming-of-age\n\nWord Count: 2063\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": "One of my fondest memories from childhood was baking cookies with my grandmother. Of course, life gets in the way as you grow older and at 19 years old, I hadn't baked with Nanna in a very long time. \nThen my mother died. It wasn't an accident or a murder or anything like that. No, it was good old cancer... \n......\nI was 14 and it was bedtime for my sister and I. My sister had jumped into bed with my mom, begging her to allow her to sleep there rather than her own bed. My mom had surprisingly relented.\nAt around 3am I woke from a dreamless sleep to find my sister in my bedroom doorway crying softly. I sat up with a feeling of dread gripping my stomach.\n\"What's wrong?\" I asked, pulling the covers back and getting out of bed. My legs shook but I had no idea why I was afraid.\nShe turned her tear stained face up to me and sobbed, \"Something's wrong with mom. I can't wake her up.\"\nI felt ice grip my heart and I brushed past her into the hall, heading for my mother's room. I was dreading looking inside that bedroom. When I got there, I felt for the light switch and flicked it on. I was ill prepared for what I saw. \nMy mom was laying on her back across the bed diagonally. Her eyes were open, and a strange gurgling sound emitted from her throat. My mother was rarely ever sick. She never got colds or the flu. In my perception back then, my mom was indestructible. She was this all-encompassing god-like figure to me. I was afraid of her and yet I loved her in a very suffocated way. She was the impenetrable bubble that enclosed me and shut me away from the world.\nI leaped onto the bed in a sheer panic and gripping her shoulders, I jerked her into a sitting position and shook her as hard as I could.\n\"Mommy, wake up!\" I screamed, tears now running down my own cheeks.\nThe gurgling sound stopped, but my mother just sat there, staring straight ahead, completely unresponsive.\nWe didn't have a phone at the time, our bill hadn't been paid. So, in my bare feet and nightgown, I ran as fast as I could next door and pounded until our neighbors woke up and came out. \nI did my best to describe what was going on, in spite of my hysterical sobbing. It felt like a waking nightmare. Surreal and terrifying.\nThe husband ran back to our house with me while his wife dialed 911.\nThe next thing I knew, there were paramedics and police surrounding my mother in the small bedroom. \nShe came out of the grand maul seizure to find herself surrounded by emergency personnel along with her two daughters who were crying and obviously frightened.\nThey got her onto a gurney took her to the hospital where they ran tests and scans on her brain. I remember being allowed to see her just before they did the CAT scan. She had a cage-like contraption on her head. They had drilled into her skull and then screwed the thing onto her head in four places. I remember the trickles of blood dripping from the screws down her forehead. It was something straight out of a horror film and it was happening to my mother.\n.....\nThey discovered a tumor on her frontal lobe, right on her center of communication. She was scheduled for surgery, and it was performed a few days later. With a scalpel. This was about a year or two before laser technology was implemented into the operating room.\nThe surgery took about eight hours and when she came out and we were brought to her bedside, she couldn't speak, couldn't write, and she seemed to have shrunk to about half her original size. That bubble I mentioned shattered the minute I walked in and saw her lying there, helpless and small. The fear dissipated with it.\n......\nWhen my mom died a few years later, I was 19 years old and after being sheltered and deprived of the opportunity to gradually grow accustomed to the cruelty of the world that existed beyond our house and our church and school, I was struggling to adjust.\nI finally decided it had been too long since I'd spent an afternoon baking with my grandmother in her cozy, familiar kitchen.\nI went to her house a few days after my mother's funeral. My Nanna and my mom didn't see eye to eye on many things, but the way we were treated was at the top of the list. They argued constantly about such things as Christmas and other holidays. Nanna hated that her granddaughters were deprived of things that brought so much joy to other children. We had to watch as other families got into the holiday spirit and had so much fun. Meanwhile we did our best to pretend we thought it was silly to believe in Santa.\nNanna asked how I was doing, and my shoulders drooped.\n\"Is it bad that I haven't even cried?\" I asked her, guilt flooding my soul.\nShe put her hands on her hips and looked at me with narrowed eyes. Finally, she shook her head and as she turned toward the kitchen she said, \"I really wouldn't be surprised if you felt nothing but relief!\"\nWe went in and began collecting the ingredients for chocolate chip cookies. I thought about what she had said, and I was surprised to realize that she was not far off. My feelings were confusing to me and getting used to the idea that my mother had been abusive and that other kids really were not treated the way we were, that it wasn't normal and wasn't right... well it was a process.\nNanna asked me to go to her walk-in pantry and get the chocolate chips.\nI went to the pantry door and opened it. My heart leaped into my throat when I saw a little girl standing there searching the shelves. I looked back at Nanna and almost asked her who it was, but something stopped me. Instead, I went inside and softly closed the door.\nThe child looked up at me and suddenly my throat constricted. Tears filled my eyes. I don't know how it was possible and to this day I wonder if I had been dreaming, but... the little girl was me. She was me at the age of around 8 or 9.\nHer eyebrows furrowed when she saw me, as though she felt like she should know who I was but didn't.\n\"Who are you?\" She asked in a stern voice. \"Where's Nanna?\"\nI held my hands up, palms facing outward and said, \"Please don't be scared, I won't hurt you!\"\nHer eyes narrowed and she said, \"I'm not scared.\"\nHer head tilted to one side, and she said, \"You look familiar to me. Are you my cousin?\"\nIt took me a minute to reply. Finally, I shook my head.\n\"N-no, I'm not your cousin, I'm...\"\nI didn't know what to tell her. I tried to imagine if I would believe me if I told myself the truth.\n\"I'm you.\"\nI said it with a shrug. I know me and honesty is always best with me. I do not appreciate being lied to in order to shield my feelings or to avoid making me angry.\nFor a minute or two we just stared at each other with wide-eyed wonder. \nAfter a minute or two she said, \"Okay. I believe you. Why are you here?\"\n\"I was going to ask you the same thing.\" I replied.\nShe rolled her eyes and said, \"Well I'm baking cookies with Nanna, obviously.\"\n\"Me too.\" I laughed nervously.\n\"Does Nanna know your here?\" Her eyes were suddenly wide as the situation seemed to sink in. \"This would really freak her out and mom might get mad if she sees you. She won't be back for a while, but if you're staying here, we need to hide you.\"\nI shook my head and said, \"No, no, I don't think it's like that. If anything, I think you are in the future, not me in the past.\"\nIt struck me how pretty she was. I had always thought I was ugly back then. When I saw my child self from different eyes, I couldn't understand why.\nI shifted my feet and leaned against the shelf. I looked down at the floor.\n\"Mom died.\"\nI said it so bluntly and so suddenly it shocked both of us. I had no idea why I had just blurted it out. I immediately wondered what I was thinking, and should I have told her that? What kind of effect would this have on the following years of my life?\nShe stared at me as though I had grown a second head.\n\"I don't know why I told you that. I probably shouldn't have, I'm so sorry!\"\nShe shook her head, tears starting to form in her eyes. She stepped closer to me and hesitantly put her arms around my waist. Surprised, I looked down at her and finally hugged her back, lightly at first. Then my heart shattered, and I sobbed. It felt like a dam broke inside me and I held onto her as though my life depended on it. I was not crying for my mother. I was not crying over the loss of her. I was crying for the little girl who stood there in my arms, so strong and so unwavering. Yet she had endured so much pain and so much loneliness. She was still enduring it and would have to for several more years and I wanted so badly to protect her.\nShe held onto me, her face buried in my chest. When the tears subsided finally, I let her go and she smiled up at me.\n\"Do you feel better, now?\" She asked with a proud look on her face as though she had just fixed me and was admiring her handiwork. In a way, she had.\nI nodded, wiping my face on the back of my sleeve, and let out a small, embarrassed laugh.\n\"I'm sorry.\" I said.\n\"Don't be. You're strong and you'll be okay. I can tell. You will be okay without her.\"\nI nodded. I knew that what she said was true.\n\"I wish...\" I started, but she interrupted me as if she already knew what I would say.\n\"At first I thought you were here to rescue me somehow. You know... from her. But that couldn't happen because it would change things and create a... ummm.. what's that word? Par... it starts with a P...\"\n\"Paradox\"\n\"Yes. A paradox.\" She shook her head and crossed her arms over her chest. \"No. I think I was here to rescue you instead. And don't feel bad, you already know I'll be alright. Now go and live the rest of your life.\"\nShe pushed me gently toward the door.\nI opened the door, but before I stepped out, I looked back at her and said, \"She's just a person. She isn't God and she isn't right. By the way, you are not ugly. You are beautiful.\" \nHer eyes widened.\n\"Do you mean that?\" She asked.\n\"Would I lie to you?\" I raised an eyebrow.\nShe grinned and shook her head.\n\"No, I don't think you would!\"\nI just smiled at her and turned to open the door. When I looked back, she was gone.\nNanna was just coming around the corner with a worried look on her face.\n\"There you are! I was beginning to think you'd forgot where the pantry was and got lost!\"\n\"No Nanna. I didn't. In fact, I've never felt more found in my life!\"\nWe linked arms and walked back into the kitchen to bake cookies.\nFrom the author:\nMy grandmother died when I was really little but that was really what it was like between her and my mom. The rest of this story is true except I didn't meet my childhood self in the flesh and blood, but there was a moment in front of a therapist where I did break down and cry for the innocent little girl that I used to 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: Howler\n\nGenre: coming-of-age\n\nWord Count: 1528\n\nPrompt:\n\nYou arrive at a destination you promised an old friend you’d visit after they passed, only to find them there too." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Coffee skin and almond eyes, Rae had the most ferociously infectious laugh. I was in awe of her ability to stir up humor in the most dire of predicaments, her head often rearing back exposing a mouthful of cackling teeth. It never mattered what we did, I knew it would always be a deep dive into something that would fill my otherwise dreary little life with wonder and surprise.\nOnce we found ourselves abandoned in the city, the bus leaving our seventh grade field trip without us. I had begun my meltdown, while Rae crafted us an unadulterated adventure. The school trip had been to a museum, but close by was a zoo. She grabbed my hand and took off running and there we went, sneaking through the turnstiles of the zoo entrance obscured by a pregnant mother with toddler in tow.\nRae had me distract the fellow at the snack counter by feigning a fall, she grabbed a bag of popped corn, some chocolates and a coke and dashed out of sight while I quickly scrambled and followed her, my slightly-oversized red sneakers nearly making me execute an actual fall.\nWe looked at the giraffes and elephants, the other land animals from the great African continent, we checked out the polar bears and the birds, the snakes and the bears, but our favorite was the monkeys—particularly the howler monkeys from Central and South America.\nWhile we tried to imitate them, they seemingly laughed at us as one in particular drew nearer to the perimeter bars separating us and them.\n“Look,” Rae had managed to breath between belly-flipping laughter, “that one is wagging it’s finger at us. Looks like old Mrs. Creapsters.”\nMrs. Creeter was our gym teacher who was continually admonishing us for our lack of syncopation and messing up the chalk drawn lines in athletic drills and games. And I had to admit, the monkey did have the same protruding chin and beady little black eyes—minus the glasses—which made us laugh even harder.\n“I wonder if we could bust this one out of this zoo prison,” Rae said when she’d managed to get her breath back, giving me a strange look.\n“Oh no, I’m not going in for that kind of subterfuge,” I had said, knowing that you couldn’t put any thing past Rae.\n“But don’t you think they’re miserable in here?” she had said in all seriousness, a somberness gracing her face that I’d rarely seen her show. “It’s one sad life. I’d hate to be locked up like that.”\n“Yeah, me too,” I remember saying feeling a bit afraid of how much grief Rae seemed to be feeling for the hairy creature. I reached out and grabbed for her hand and held it, feeling it tremble in mine.\nThey say the comedic people often go for laughs to cover up the hurt they are feeling, maybe that was true for Rae, I was never certain at the time though I probably should have known it all along.\nThat afternoon, safely back after feigning that we’d sat in the museum lobby until closing and a nice security guard drove us back to our school where my parents were frantically waiting, we took Rae home. I didn’t know much about her home-life, but I knew Rae only had her mom to look out after her, that her dad wasn’t really in the picture and that Rae’s mom did her best but struggled.\nLater that night, I texted Rae and said that we should try to go see the howler monkeys someday in the wild, asking her if she’d like that. We agreed that we would indeed do that and pinky promised on it the very next day.\n“So, in order to go, we’ll need money and permission,” I had said looking out the tops of my eyes, my head tilted down, so as to look very serious. “If we start saving now, maybe we can go when we graduate.”\nAnd that became our plan.\nThat summer, we both managed to get summer jobs at the zoo, working at the little silver snack stand with the rainbow umbrella that we’d looted on that nefarious school trip escapade. During our breaks, we’d often go to see the various animals, and our feet often carried us back to those howlers.\n“How can such small creatures make so much stinking noise,” I’d said to her.\nRae smiled and then just shook her head. “I’d still like to bust them out of this place. They don’t belong here.”\n“Well at least we will go see them. We’ve got five summer’s to save up,” I had said.\n“Definitely.” she offered, giving me that same look I’d seen before that sent a chill up my spine.\nThat was the thing with Rae, she was fearless but there was also something very fragile about her too, something I couldn’t quite reach, like a porcelain plate teetering on the edge of a very high window sill on a windy day.\n###\nThe news reporters all said it was an accident, but I knew it wasn’t.\n“Teen at Zoo Dead, Mutilated by Monkeys” read the headline. The news indicated that she’d gotten too close, that the door to the enclosure had been left unlocked and she’d been drug inside and killed by the troop of primates. Officials were determining next steps for the lethal monkeys, meanwhile authorities reported her mother had been committed to a mental institution.\nI went through those first days and weeks as if walking through a blinding blizzard, making moving motions, but utterly directionless really. Like all tragedies, weeks turned to months and then to years and time moves on. Boyfriends. College. Marriage. Jobs. I thought about Rae often but I didn’t talk about her much, it was all too painful.\nOn my thirty-second birthday, my husband Frank presents me with an envelope. He’s smiling at me and I love the way his eyes light up his entire face.\n“What’s inside?” I ask him.\n“Well, why don’t you open it and find out?” he says.\nInside the envelope is a trip. Two tickets to Costa Rica and a two-week itinerary of everywhere he has planned for us to go.\n“No way!” I squeal, beside myself with excitement.\n“You got four weeks to pack love.”\nAnd so, travel will be added to the list of time moving on.\n###\nWe arrived in Costa Rica, a country of pristine and wild beauty, and we’ve been here for five days already. I’ve been to a coffee plantation, ridden in an oxcart, spied sloths, exotic bugs and the most colorful of butterflies. There is so much enchantment here that I feel like magic certainly lives here, like a fairy or a troll might pop out at any corner.\nFrank isn’t feeling great today and so I take the opportunity to explore the grounds at our hotel in Monteverde. They call the place we are staying a mountain hotel because we are high in the jungle in the cloud forest. I’ve got my green birdwatching binoculars around my neck and I’m staying to the fixed paths.\nI see movement in the trees, so many birds, and then I see a monkey. I steady my binoculars and sure enough, it’s a howler. I can tell from it’s dark body and light colored lips and I am reminded once again of Mrs. Creeter. And then, I’ll be damned if the creature doesn’t wag it’s finger at me.\nI know I shouldn’t, but I move closer. It seems to be beckoning me; it’s forefinger curling inward and back out in a come hither motion.\nThe wind picks up and I hear a rustling sound and then I jump as a figure approaches me. It’s a girl, with almond eyes and huge grin.\n“I have been waiting for you Sheila,” she says to me. “I knew you would come.”\nAnd there is Rae, just as she’d been so many years before.\n“I set them free. You see,” and one of the monkeys comes down and takes her hand.\n“But you can’t be real,” I’m crying now. “You’re dead Rae. How can this be true.”\n“Any and everything can be true Sheila. All those adventures we had. You didn’t possibly think we could do any of the things we did, but we did them. The line between what we think is possible and what isn’t is so thin.” And then she laughs—that giant, cacophonous Rae laugh. And the jungle shakes. The sound of howling beings, a few voices at first and then what sounds like a hundred monkeys all at once screaming and hooting and and the trees become alive with sound.\nI look again and Rae is gone and all I see is the backside of one howler leaping back into the trees and being engulfed by sound. And the sound lifts up everything. Fear. Sadness. Loss. All are lifted to the treetops and beyond and I know that Rae is okay now and that I’ll be okay and that wonder and surprise can continue to delight and light up even the most fragile of souls and dreariest of days.\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: The Dry Underground\n\nGenre: contemporary\n\nWord Count: 3020\n\nPrompt:\n\nSet your story in a bar that doesn’t serve alcohol." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "“Get me a virgin!”\n“Sir?”\n“I want a virgin in my hand immediately!”\n“Sorry, sir. Can you be a little more specific.”\n“How’s this for you? I want a sweet tasting virgin wetting my lips like cactus juice to a thirsty desert dweller - salting my tongue with the perspiration that only hard, solid rocks can create around the rim of tender delight.”\n“Ah, I understand you now, sir. One Mocktail Margarita with ice coming up.”\nJordi Waxer sat himself down on a stool, as he sidled up to the long bar on a late weekday evening. Situated in the trendy Soho speakeasy at the edge of London’s West End, it was noticeably void of any other customers - due to the government’s latest attempt at curbing public alcohol abuse. The declaration of a new law designated the whole month of January to be a dry month - in which no alcohol could be purchased or consumed in public places. On the final day of what so far the government had deemed a success; a certain edginess had creeped into the public psyche, causing an unanticipated side-effect of cynicism, verbal protest, and absence from all forms of physical social intercourse.\n“Got anything I can get into my mouth?” Jordi suggestively asked.\n“Will some nuts do?” The bartender asked – playing along.\n“As long as they don’t trigger my allergy, I’ll take some.”\n“You have a nut allergy, sir?”\n“Only to ones that choke me,” Jordi continued his juvenile double entendre method of conversation. “Hey, listen,” he added more soberly. “Any chance of some real booze in my drink? After all, there’s no-one else in here to see.”\n“Sorry, sir,” the bartender apologised. “When the law says Dry, it comes with legal trouble, if breached. Unfortunately, we’ve had to lock all alcohol away until the first of next month.”\n“What is this?” protested Jordi. “Chicago in the 1920s? Do those nabobs in parliament realise the duress they’ve put us all under?”\n“Well, as a bar owner, sir. I can only tell you that their edict has most definitely had a knock-on effect to our business. I’m running on a skeleton crew.”\nLeaning across the bar, the bartender briefly glanced past Jordi’s shoulders. Feeling secure that no-one was sitting in any of the wall booth tables, he loudly whispered a small confession.\n“Between you and me, I’ve had to resort to the Dry Underground to bring revenue in.”\n“What’s that? Some type of transport job?”\nPouring some cocktail mix, ice, and lime juice into a shaker, the bartender closed the lid on the mixer, then dramatically – as if pre-rehearsed; shook it first over his left shoulder, then quickly switched to his right shoulder, before randomly shaking the ingredients, while answering Jordi’s question.\n“The Dry Underground, sir, is a network of buyers and sellers of beer, wine, and spirits; helping to stock up people’s drinks cabinets in their homes. A bit like Uber Drinks instead of Uber Eats but ordered secretly on a phone App. It seems that overnight, the non-teetotalism sector of this country’s population has seemingly become closet drinkers to avoid public shaming.”\n“That’s a bit cancel culture, isn’t it?”\n“How so, sir?”\n“Suddenly, drinking alcohol is not socially acceptable, and those caught imbibing get lambasted to the point of prosecution.”\n“That’s today’s society, sir. New generations of influencers are raising the levels of social acceptance.”\n“And lowering the levels of common sense,” added Jordi.\n“Indeed, sir.”\nWatching the bartender dip a clean margarita glass into a lime juice-filled rimming tray, Jordi continued airing his personal views.\n“And what happens when the government decides that the population has gotten too fat? Are they going to re-introduce food rationing?”\n“Who knows, sir,” the bartender distractedly replied, as he dipped the wet rim of the glass into a separate shallow tray – this one filled with salt.\n“Perhaps, we’ll all be ordering from Uber Diets, instead,” he added. “It’s a young world, now. Full of young people with young ambitions, but an uncertain future.”\n“Did you know,” Jordi changed topics. “Throughout history, the people that ran our government were always older. Do you know why?”\n“Why, sir?”\n“Because, they had gotten to an age where common sense overruled youthful ideology. A practical sense and sensibility empowered to make reasonable decisions, and the fortitude to keep the left in check, over there.”\n“Over where, sir?”\n“Over the English Channel.”\n“Are you referring to Leftists, sir?”\n“Yes, those that spread conspiracy theories and flat-Earth gobbledygook. The fascists.”\n“Never really followed the trends out of Paris, sir.”\n“I’m referring to fascism, not fashion.”\nThe wide grin on the bar owner’s face shook Jordi out of his rant.\n“Oh,” Jordi acknowledged. “Got it! Let’s keep politics outside of your doors.”\n“Quite frankly,” the bar owner offered up his viewpoint. “I never was one for politics.”\n“Well, you should be,” Jordi insisted. “It is the duty of every one of the king’s subjects to challenge the system. I’ve been doing it since the Seventies of my youth.”\n“Is that right, sir? You wear it well.”\n“Thank you. I’m told that I was bred from a youthful gene pool.”\n“No, sir. I meant the song title, You wear it well, by Rod Stewart. That was during your youth, was it not?”\n“Yes. It came out at the tail end of the Skinhead movement, I recall. When being a Skinhead was a mere fashion statement – long before it was embraced by neo-Nazis, whose continuing dark association with fascism has completely ruined the innocence of the Fred Perry brand.”\n“Were you a skinhead, sir?”\n“Heavens, no! Public school banned us from even wearing a Ben Sherman shirt. To our educative overseers, the clothing represented something more militant.”\n“Like the Boy Scouts, sir?”\n“Ha! Very clever. You have the perfect wit for your vocation.”\n“Thank you, sir. I try my best.” \nWithout missing a beat, Jordi continued with his schoolboy recollections.\n“However, the masters – in their self-centred wisdom, allowed us to have short, cropped hairstyles. I think it reminded most of them of their years in the king’s service killing foreigners. When they decided cropped hair was essential for attending lessons, we obdurately stopped going to the barber and grew our hair out. In protest, some of us even started wearing the iconic Levi 502 jeans, Doc Maarten boots, and Crombie coats; while others at the time, adopted a more hippie look with false wigs, bead bracelets, fur-lined coats, and ban-the-bomb necklaces.”\n“Sounds like you’re not one for following rules, sir.”\n“Not when they contravene freedom of expression. You know, the funny thing was that long hair, short hair, even no hair; we all got along with each other. If there is one thing education can teach, it’s respect. Unlike the secondary school educated youth who always seemed to have a problem with each other, even though you couldn’t really tell them apart – dressed as they were.”\n“Familiarity breeds content - they say, sir.”\n“It does indeed. However, their uneducated divisions appeared more tribal in demonstration.”\n“Tribal, sir?”\n“At the Church of Fanaticism – every Saturday afternoon.”\n“You mean football, sir?”\n“We had Ruggers, you see. They had football - the gentleman’s sport played by thugs, apparently. Whereas there are those that say rugby is a thug’s game played by gentlemen. If you think into that too deeply, one might say that broken-nose and cauliflower-eared gentlemen are just thugs in disguise. We appreciated the sporting gestures, of course; and the friendly rivalries between schools and teams. That should be what competition is all about. But all those cloned youths – dressed alike, hanging out below lampposts in the parking lots of council estates; were seemingly divided just by the colour of their football scarves. It’s amazing how two groups of like-minded people can be separated by a simple colour. Furthermore, it was surprising to me then; how I got caught up in the lower social ethics of that gentlemen’s game.”\n“Red or blue, sir?”\n“Well, I was a blue.”\n“No, I meant the straw. What colour would you like?”\n“…Blue, of course. Once blue, always blue – don’t you know. Due to that partisan sense of loyalty; to this day, I still can’t wear anything red. Lucky I’m conversative, wot?”\nThe bar owner hesitated, as he took in Jordi’s political declaration. Like his father before him and his father before him, the Labor party had been, and was the only voting choice in his family. Not wanting to be sucked into a pointless debate, the bar owner kept his focus primarily on football.\n“Divisions have always run deep in the gentlemen’s game,” he offered up for conversation.\n“Indeed, they do,” Jordi agreed, taking the bait. “Bit like world conflicts based on religion and geographic location. Everyone thinks they follow the righteous path, giving them a sense of superiority over the other.”\n“Religion and politics, sir.”\n“I do beg your pardon. Consider them parked outside your door. Not to be discussed within the confines of your handsome establishment.”\n“No harm done.”\n“…Rollerball had the right idea,” Jordi offered up his own conversational bait.\n“Rollerball, sir?”\n“Oh, forgive me. Another seventies thing. A movie starring James Caan.”\n“Not seen it, sir.”\n“It was set in the future where corporations ruled without challenge. Corporate teams of roller skaters dressed like American football players competed for dominance over each other. In the story, there are no wars, no sickness, no poverty, just Rollerball. But, with every game, the level of violence ramps up, until death becomes integral to the sport.”\n“Fascinating, sir. And distinctly American.”\n“Yes, indeed. Additionally, the film depicted that all books had been digitized and edited to suit corporations – stored on a supercomputer, called Zero. Then, when the protagonist queried Zero on who made corporate decisions, it refused to freely disseminate any of its information.”\n“Intuitive concept for so long ago. I mean, the seventies still had reel-to-reel storage tapes in computers, and took up large spaces.”\n“Quite perceptive of the writer - who must have been inspired by your forbidden bar topics.”\nDragging his thumb and forefinger across his lips, Jordi motioned his resolve to keep politics out in the cold, before continuing.\n“In the film, James Caan’s character, Jonathan; becomes a cult hero, worrying the corporations, who subsequently plot to get rid of him. You see, his popularity threatened the essence of Rollerball – it’s underlying agenda, which was to instil into the public, the futility of individualism. Yet, there he was – innocently challenging corporate dominance, creating a schism in the fabric of corporate power.”\nAfter several final shakes of the drinks shaker, the bartender scooped some ice into the margarita glass, then proceeded to pour the concoction into it.\n“There you go. Voila! One Virgin Margarita on the rocks with salted glass rim.”\n“I’ve just realised,” Jordi pointed out. “Our conversation has included a curious number of isms.”\n“Isms, sir?”\n“Systems of belief. Varying degrees of ideological philosophies. Take your Dry Underground, for instance. Your philosophy is to obey the rules and at the same time, to bend them. That’s another ism. A question of moralism.”\n“Ah, sir. That’s a very debatable subject and a favourite of mine. You see, I’ve always been a believer that rules can’t be bent. Certainly, they can be stretched outside of their definition or intended meaning, or even broken. Bending implies that there is a place in the rule where you can not follow it, but still not have not followed it… How’s your drink?”\n“Hmm? Oh, sorry.”\nUsing his straw, Jordi swilled his mocktail, then sipped some of it through the tube.\n“Surprisingly good. But I can tell there’s no alcohol in it. What was all that about not have not followed?”\n“It’s all about circumvention, sir. Ethics, in fact. Breaching the rules was not something we of the Dry Underground took lightly without careful consideration of the consequences, if discovered; and the potential propagation of the sickness that Dry January has attempted to tackle. The Dry Underground – in its stripped-down state, is like an antonym, an adversary of Dry January.”\n“Hmm. A rival of equal measure.”\n“A drinks joke. Very good, sir. Glad to see you’ve moved on from the innuendos.”\n“Sorry. Innuendos and suggestive conversation are a lingering unappreciated product of my youth. Back then, the media saturated us with constant intimations in television programs from Benny Hill to Are you being served.”\n“Before my time, sir. However, I have heard of Benny Hill. He is what the younger gen call, a perv.”\n“It’s all a matter of perspective through time, I suppose. Old Benny was harmless, really. He just acted out the perceived archaic male intellect toward the fairer sex. But let’s focus on the alcohol industry, shall we? That is far from being an innocent bystander.”\n“Sir?”\n“Creating cocktails with names like A Slow comfortable screw against the wall, Sex on the beach, Blowjob. All breaking the Monty Python, nudge-nudge playful overtones of my generation. Full-on drink promotions and enticements that associate alcohol with fornication.”\n“Yes, sir. A regrettable combination for some – come morning time.”\n“Indeed. Guilty as charged at times. I used to joke that I never went to bed with an ugly woman, but most definitely woke up with a few. Of course, that was an insecure thing to say – simply borne out of narcissistic vanity.”\n“You’ve left out a few drinks there, sir. There’s Slippery Nipple, Between the sheets, Screaming orgasm, The leg spreader, Bend over Shirley – to name some.”\n“Poor Shirley. Forever labelled a loose drink… What’s in it, exactly?”\n“Raspberry vodka, lemon-lime soda, and grenadine.”\n“Why Shirley and not Emma or say, Gertrude?”\n“Because it’s a modified Shirley Temple drink.”\n“Isn’t that just ginger ale and grenadine with a maraschino cherry on top?”\n“You know your drinks, sir! Yes, it is. But add vodka behind her with lemon-lime soda, and it’s supposed to make her a very naughty girl.”\n“Rather sexist and disrespectful to Shirley, and all women – for that matter. In my day, the female persuasion was treated with a lot more respect.”\n“Innuendos aside?”\n“The sexual revolution was supposed to bring to light the argument that women also enjoyed sex.”\n“Heaven forbid, sir!”\n“Quite. Erm, sorry. Are you being facetious?”\n“A little barroom banter, sir.”\n“Ah, indeed. Fast forward fifty years and the new Ladette culture has them all behaving like men – getting drunk, freely fornicating, etcetera, etcetera.”\n“You mean, behaving like men have always done, sir.”\n“Precisely! I would hazard a guess and say that, as a result of our promiscuous philandering, humankind will eventually arrive full circle, and we’ll all be related to each other one day.”\n“Like a global proverbial Tennessee.”\n“Or the Royal Family.”\n“Would you like another virgin, sir?”\n“What!? Oh, I see you’re not shy of an innuendo or two.”\n“It comes with the territory, sir.”\n“No, I should be getting on home. I can only take a certain amount of mocking-tail in one evening. The drink – although tasty – just lacks the buzz one is comfortably familiar with when spiked.”\n“But there is one thing to be said for this evening, sir.”\n“What’s that?”\n“The conversation was still stimulating.”\n“You know, that’s quite accurate. Perhaps, pubs and bars are really the gathering places for interactional opinions, and that alcohol is just the ice breaker of silence. Without it, this place is well… just like a church gathering.”\nJordi’s vocal observation caused the bar owner to break out in muted applause – as he chuckled to himself.\n“I’ve never looked on it that way, sir. But I may just get that printed onto a T-Shirt. Alcohol, the only religion. Yes, I like that. Although, the Dry January committee may censure me for that.”\nThe bar owner’s quip alerted Jordi to pose a controversial enquiry.\n“I say, how would one go about ordering from the Dry Underground?”\n“You can order straight from me, sir. However, the government has assigned a Dry January auditor to inspect my end-of-month stock, and he’s due at any time tonight. Anything short of the stock take at the beginning of the month could result in my loss of licence to sell alcohol.”\n“Oh, I wouldn’t worry too much about that.”\n“Why is that?”\n“…I am the government-assigned auditor.”\nSeveral uncomfortable moments of silence caused the bar owner’s heart to palpitate to stress level. Sensing this, Jordi smiled a comforting expression, grabbed a loose pen from the bar, and started scribbling on a napkin; before sliding it across the countertop.\n“All stock present and accounted for,” Jordi declared. “That’s my address. How soon can you have a bottle of tequila and some margarita mix delivered to my door?”\nWith a sense of overwhelming relief, the bar owner pulled out his phone, tapped a few things into it, directed Jordi to pay-wave his smartphone on the transaction terminal, then handed Jordi his receipt. Quickly filing the bar receipt into a hidden drawer under the counter, he flashed Jordi an appreciative look.\n“It will be waiting for you when you arrive home, sir,” the bar owner proudly answered.\n“Splendid!” Jordi exclaimed. “Thank you for being such a purveyor of hospitality, and absorbing my petty opinions like a sponge soaking up water.”\n“Like a sponge, sir, opinions eventually dry up. And what kind of bartender would I be, if I couldn’t offer a friendly ear to all who need a moan?”\nWaving, Jordi turned to leave. Then, while exiting the door; he shouted back, “I shall return for one of your delicious cocktails when this damned nonsense has finished. Toodeloo!”\nLooking at his watch, the bar owner decided it was time to close. Locking the door behind Jordi, he turned to face the bar – as a smile stretched across his face. Briefly surveying his surroundings, he muttered a verbal reminder to himself in anticipation of the deluge of customers expected the next day.\n“I’d better bring up the reserve stock because it’s going to be a wet February. A very wet February…”" } ]

[ { "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 Soul\n\nGenre: coming-of-age\n\nWord Count: 2788\n\nPrompt:\n\nYou arrive at a destination you promised an old friend you’d visit after they passed, only to find them there too." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Tragedy, no… worse. Devastation. Once upon a time hasn't always been there for everyone, especially Willow. Childhood stories were cut off for her because of one death, her best friend, Anna. Untold secrets fill Willow's mind with fogged thoughts.\n\"Willow!\" Sara, Willow's mother yelled from the kitchen.\nStomping down the stairs, Willow speeds into the kitchen to eat breakfast before school starts. Sitting down, a plate full of food is placed down in front of her. Digging in, she thanks her mother with a wide smile.\n\"Slow down, sweetie! You don't want to choke now do you?\"\nSmiling awkwardly, she takes smaller bites to please her mother. \"Mom, I have to go soon or I'll be late!\"\nQuickly shoveling food into her mouth, Willow stands up and heads towards the front door. Sara follows her to the door with a very confused expression.\n\"What's the rush?\" Sara asks, watching as Willow slips on both of her shoes and grabs her bag.\nOpening the door, she steps out while answering. \"I just don't want to be late!\"\nSmall taps are heard coming closer to Willow. Turning around, she's met with a small smiling face.\n\"Willow!\" Anna said as she swung her arms around Willow's shoulders. Laughing, she hugs her friend back before backing up.\nIt's their first day of second grade and they both had on matching green dresses with white stripes going down. Anna was extremely excited considering she loved going to school way more than Willow.\n\"Are you ready?!\" Willow says with an enthusiastic tone. Clasping hands, they start to skip to the bus stop with their parents not far behind them.\nStepping into school, Willow heads straight to her locker to see Ryan leaning against it on his phone. Walking up to him, she opens her locker which startles him, causing Ryan to jump slightly.\nWhen seeing Willow, Ryan smiles while putting his phone in his back pocket. \"Hey! You're here early.\"\nRolling her eyes, she grabs a book from her locker before shutting it. \"Can't I ever just come to school on time without anyone questioning why?\"\nAs they start walking, Ryan seems to be thinking very thoroughly before making a 'tsking' noise. \"No, it's unusual for you.\"\n\"You're so mean!\" She teases, which draws a laugh from Ryan.\nWalking into their classroom, they sit in two seats next to each other in the middle row. Their science teacher is their favorite teacher since he allows them to sit wherever they want, as long as they're working.\nDing, ding, ding.\nGoing quiet, the class still talks, but it's quiet as the teacher walks in. Her outfit is very colorful, and all the kids love the cool colors. Standing at the front of the class, she writes her name on the board, 'Mrs. Helen.'\nTurning around, Mrs. Helen claps her hands together to quiet down the little ones. \"Hello class, I'm Mrs. Helen. I'm sorry I'm late, I just had to run a few errands, but now that I'm here, let's start some coloring pages!\" Joyous cheers fill the room as Mrs. Helen grabs a few stacks of paper from her desk.\nGoing to each table, she gives every student three different pages to color. After handing them out, she lets them begin the coloring while taking attendance.\n\"Anna, look at my cow!\" Willow happily turned her paper around so Anna could see. Two other kids at their table also looked with an amazed glint in their eyes.\n\"Wow, that's so good!\" Exclaimed one of the kids, making Willow very happy but also a bit shy.\n\"Thank you.\" She says while trying to hide her smile. Anna and the other boy agree before they all go back to coloring and talking about their lunchboxes with their favorite movie characters on it.\n\"Willow.\" Hearing her name called, Willow raises her hand as Mr. Henderson scans the classroom.\nPutting her hand down, she places a folded piece of paper onto Ryan's desk, that's connected to hers. Looking at Willow, then the paper, he grabs it and shamelessly unfolds it without caring if Mr. Henderson sees.\nAfter school, my house -Willow\nNodding, Ryan crumbles up the paper and shoves it in the side pocket on his backpack that's currently laying under his chair. Facing the front of the classroom, he doesn't give any more attention to Willow.\n***\nUnlocking the front door, Willow walks in and places her back pack on the floor, along with her shoes. \"Mom!\" She yells loudly, while walking into the kitchen.\nA sticky note is laying on the center island. Reading through it, Willow finds out her mom's grocery shopping.\nWalking to her room, she hears the front door open. \"Made it first!\" She laughs as Ryan grunts to the stairs. He has a spare key to the house, they take separate buses so sometimes it's a challenge to see who makes it first. \"Looks like someone's taking out the garbage!\" They had made a rule if you lost: you take out the trash.\nRolling his eyes, he sighs before trudging back into the kitchen. Willow walks up the stairs laughing.\nOpening her bedroom door, it makes a quiet squeak sound as she shuts it. Her phone starts to vibrate, so Willow grabs it from her back pocket to see her mom calling.\nPicking up, Willow says, \"Hello?\"\n\"Oh sweetie, I'm back, can you help carry in the gro- Oh wait, nevermind. I'll just get Ryan to help.\" Sara brings the phone away from her ear so the last thing Willow hears is a barely audible 'Ryan!'\nWalking into Willow's room, Anna looks around to see all the bright colored walls and toys scattered across the floor. Not minding how messy it is, she just walks around and looks through a few things, which Willow doesn't mind.\nPicking up a small green necklace, Anna turns around while holding it up in the air. \"This is so pretty!\" She speaks cheerfully.\n\"Oh, I never wear it. Mommy said it was a family hair-loom, whatever that means. But you can have it!\"\nHer smile seems to widen, if that's possible, as she hugs Willow in a tight embrace before asking her to put it on her. Turning around, Anna holds up her hair while Willow helps put it on. The necklace is too big for her, but it still looks good.\n\"Wow, I never liked how it looked on me but it looks extra pretty on you!\" Willow says with a memorized voice. Smiling shyly, Anna says thank you before saying it would look fine on Willow too.\n\"Do you have any markers and paper?\" Anna asks, to which Willow nods and runs to one of her drawers to grab them.\nShutting the drawer, Willow sits down at her desk with her sketchbook and pencil. Beginning to sketch something out, she concentrates very hard before it's broken with the sound of the door opening.\nSighing, Ryan shuts the door slowly as if he'll be forced to do more chores if he doesn't. Flipping around, Willow gets back to sketching as she hears Ryan approach.\nLeaning over her shoulder, Ryan takes a look at the drawing that's almost completely sketched out without any details. Squinting, he tries to see if he recognizes the person, but no one comes to mind. Sitting on the side of her bed, he silently watches her continue.\n~~~\nFinally, Willow does the last bit of shading before realizing three hours have past. It was a realistic portrait but it took less time than what you would think.\nRyan had sat next to her for three hours as she drew to watch how a portrait came together, and he enjoyed watching a simple out lining turn into a photographic looking piece.\nIt was a girl, a little girl. There was no coloring since it was fully done in pencil but the way she was shaded you could tell there was something beautiful about her. A big smile was on her face with small dimples on each cheek. Then, Ryan noticed what she was wearing. It was a necklace, a very familiar one at that. Looking at Willow, he saw the same necklace around her neck.\n\"Is this you?\"\nLooking at the picture, Willow shakes her head no before looking back at Ryan. \"No, it's not me.\"\n\"They have the same necklace.\"\nSmiling, Willow brushes her fingers against the green colored stone. Quickly putting her hand in her lap, her thoughts reach back to the last ones of Anna, the ones she wants to forget.\nShaking her head, Willow stands up with a loud yawn and stretches. \"I think it's time for bed.\"\nChecking the time on his phone, Ryan stares at it confused. \"It's barely seven, why so early? We haven't even gone down for dinner yet.\"\n\"Well then, you can go eat dinner, I'll go to bed!\" Grabbing his arm, she pulls him off her bed and shoves him out of her room before slamming the door shut. It's silent before a small 'goodnight' is heard from the other side of the door.\nSighing sadly, Willow sits down on the edge of her bed and looks at the picture one more time before switching off the lamp and laying down. Slowly, her eyes start to drift shut as Willow falls asleep.\nA car comes straight towards them. Anna rushes in front of Willow as the cars collide together. All that's heard is faint screaming with the light sound of a horn blaring and tires screeching.\nWillow's head pounds against her skull. Pain rakes over her small body and she can't seem to move. Opening her eyes slowly, she can feel herself laying down, with weight on top of her.\nEverything hurts and tears prick at her eyes as they start to fall and don't stop. Moving her head as carefully as possible, she realizes the seats are above her.\nLooking down, Willow sees Anna laying on top of her. One hand is behind Willow's head while the other one is under her back. Anna's dad is almost bent in half, while her mom is halfway out the windshield.\nTrying to shake Anna, Willow barely moves enough to wake an ant. \"Anna.\" Her voice is small and raspy, as if her voice was just missing and returning. \"Anna, wake up.\"\nAnna barely moves, it's slowly and only slightly. She's able to roll herself onto her back next to Willow and face her, but her eyes are barely cracked open. Willow looks at her beat up face with tears streaming down her cheeks.\n\"Anna, we have to leave.\" Smiling sadly, Anna seems to try and laugh but her body only shakes in what looks more like pain than anything else.\n\"W-Willow.\" Willow could barely hear her voice, and almost started sobbing when hearing how awful it sounded. \"Y-you have to leave.\"\nTears start to leave Willow's eyes faster as she even thinks about leaving Anna behind. \"No, Anna, I'll drag you out.\"\nEvery limb in her body hurts but Willow somehow grabs Anna and crawls out carefully with her. When people see them, they gasp and run over to help but Willow stops them, there's too many people surrounding them.\nHalf their legs are laying in the car window still, but Willow couldn't move anymore and just lays on the stomach next to Anna while she lays on her back.\nQuiet sirens are heard in the distance. \"Anna, do you hear that? They're coming to save us.\"\nSmiling, Anna slowly nods and faces up to the sky. \"Willow, can you take your necklace back.\"\n\"What, wh- no, Anna, stop. W-we can make it.\" Willow's only ten and doesn't know what to do. Thoughts race around her hurting head as she tries to come up with a plan.\nLoud sirens are all they can hear as people walk up to them and lay them on stretchers as others go to the cars. Willow tries to say she doesn't want to be separated from Anna, but nothing comes out.\n***\nCries are all Willow could hear, families crying, her's and Anna's. Anna and her parents died, Anna's parents had died a month ago, during the crash. People had hoped Anna would survive, but after being in a coma for two weeks, her heart just stopped beating.\nWillow didn't know how to react, so she just stood in the hallway with a blank expression as tears wouldn't stop spilling from her eyes. Everyone was already inside the room, but she couldn't do it, she just couldn't.\nSitting down in a chair, Willow just waits for hours before her mom comes out with tear stained cheeks.\n\"Let's go.\" Is the only thing she had said when seeing Willow never came in. On the car ride back home, no one talked, it was dead silent.\nWeeks had gone by and Willow still cried every day for hours, she still couldn't go in a car without thinking about it. One night, Sara had come into her room and gave her an envelope saying,\n\"This was laying in the drawer in the bed side table next to Anna.\" Then she left her room. It took a month for Willow to get the courage to open it, and inside was the necklace, nothing else.\nGrabbing the necklace hanging around her neck, Willow plays with the stone before letting it go. She was walking in the forest, a forest by Anna's old house.\nHaving the same dream of Anna's death, she finally decided to do as Anna said.\n\"Willow.\" Willow stops coloring and looks at Anna who had a serious expression on her face that only made Willow laugh since it was so unusual. \"This will never happen, but mommy told me: 'if I ever die before you then go to our favorite restaurant.' I started thinking, because my teacher told me I do that a lot, I want to say the same thing to you! If I… what does die mean?\"\nThinking through the question, Willow finally comes up with an answer. \"Mommy said it was someone who took a long nap!\"\n\"Oh, okay. When I die you have to go to…\" Anna leans in closer and lowers her voice so she's whispering. \"My secret place!\"\n\"Secret place?\"\nNodding, Anna looks around as if they weren't alone in her room. \"I'll show you!\" She stands up and holds out her hand towards Willow. \"Just remember what I told you! I'm not talking about a small nap, I mean a big nap! If that's what die means.\" Willow smiles and nods while following Anna out from her room.\nIt's still here, the small shed. Inside Anna's dad had decorated it with a sofa and table so she could come and color or hang out inside whenever she wanted since it wasn't far from their house. Inside wouldn't look the same, but maybe it would bring back some good memories that Willow has forgotten.\nWalking to the door, Willow slowly pushes it open as it makes a loud screeching sound. \"Don't remember that from when we were younger!\" Willow laughs as she fully pushes open the door.\nWillow freezes in place. Someone's sitting down on a tall stool in the corner of the room just staring at her. She looked exactly like Anna, just older. Her hair was a light blonde, while her eyes were a sparkling green color.\n\"Uhm, hello?\" Willow says as she steps into the shed.\nThis girl looks her up and down before smiling, she even had the same dimples as Anna. \"Willow, it's me, Anna.\"\n\"What?\" Willow laughs. \"This isn't funny, that's just a cruel joke.\" The girl stands up and walks over to her before grabbing the necklace. Willow noticed how you could almost… see through her.\n\"I'm glad you still wear the necklace, I still can't believe you gave me a family heirloom!\" Her laugh is light, and the same as Anna's. \"I know you don't believe it's me, but at least listen please!\" Willow thinks about how this person is probably crazy but she'll listen anyways. \"You have to move on, I know we grew up together but now Ryan's there for you. I've been watching over you and I think if you just let me go you'll be able to find a bit more peace within yourself.\"\n\"W-what, how do you know Ryan?\"\n\"Like I said; I've been watching over you. Just please listen to my words, I know you can do it, I mean you came here.\" Smiling just as brightly as Anna used to do, she seems to fade until there's nothing there.\nIs Willow going crazy or has Anna just come back?" } ]

[ { "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: Bare White Knuckles\n\nGenre: coming-of-age\n\nWord Count: 3056\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about someone who is shackled by fears of failure, until they break free." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Pat’s eyes were draped with purpling black bruises and his knuckles were swollen red. The skin was torn off the peaks of his knuckles, leaving hollow pussy scabs. All throughout that first day, I can remember Pat Gardener laughing in his casual hick way, “Hey-ho.” We all noticed, but no one asked him about how he got those black eyes.\n\nThat was the day when Pat ran to make the yellow bus at my bus stop for the first time. His ruddy face blotched up from running when he boarded. He laughed and said “Hey-ho” as he scooted past the bus driver and sat down next to me.\n\nThat was the day when yellow caution tape around a police cruiser parked by the gym entrance indicated a policeman had committed suicide in the early morning hours. We learned later that it was because the parents of a girl in our class found out they were sleeping together and threatened to press charges.\n\nAs a kid, it seemed odd that someone would throw their life away over a scandal. No matter what the consequences, there had to be a way through it. But, I would come to learn that there were a lot of things that could happen to someone where you don’t ever see your way through it—things like this made more sense as time went on.\n\nPat laughed as we were ushered inside. I would have never been exposed to his hick ways if it wasn’t for us having last names both starting with G. \n\nThat was the same day the entire school was cleared back out to the yellow caution tape because of a bomb threat. We were always having bomb threats. I really don’t know what it was that made people do it—obviously, in this day and age you could get expelled if you were caught—but people really couldn’t stand homeroom, I guess.\n\nThe policeman’s body was gone when we came back outside as if it hadn’t been there soaked in blood only an hour before, what was left of the head cocked lifelessly to the side. The blood was still caked on the front windshield and the fog was still warm on and dissipating on the bloodied driver’s side window. Even though he was gone, little spots of pink remained visible on the windshield like wads of chewed bubble gum.\n\nPat would tap a pencil on the desk or put it behind his ear, and leave his Geometry book open, face down on the little music stand he used as desk space in the band room where we had homeroom. Sometimes he would pick up sheet music and scribble on it so it would be impossible for whomever would be using it later to read and he’d make fun of the kids in the band. \n\nDuring homeroom, in halting conversations about rock bands and cheerleaders, Pat would make fun of the balding Hispanic boy in the corner. His name was Reno Savides. I laughed at the jokes even though it made me sick. Reno’s head had splotchy tufts and clumps which were rearranged with the seasons or were replaced by bandanas. We knew Reno was balding because of chemotherapy treatments for his leukemia. \n\nWe were too loud with our early morning jabbering and Mr. Simon would walk over to stand by us with his retro tie-die t-shirt and long blonde hair and when we got quiet he’d say, “I hate this as much as you do, but just behave as long as we’ve got to be here.”\n\n* * *\n\nOne day in September I was over Pat’s house, and we were sparring. It was what we did after school when we didn’t have practice and it was nice enough. Both of us had trained in the martial arts. We thought we were undertaking a spiritual quest by continuing our training, that the act of play fighting was cleansing. We romanticized the violence. Really, we just liked to fight. We stayed outside bare-chested on one of the last warm evenings of September and moved like mirror images for hours. \n\nSweat formed into sticky candy under the plastic sparring gloves. There were moments when I hated him and wanted to see blood drip down those round bear cheeks, cutting off the cocky grin that would flatten and tense just before a foot landed in the soft tissue of my stomach. \n\nThe sweat felt cool against my body, and the speed and exertion of the strikes and the grappling that ensued after each flurry of blows blurred out everything else, like a camera focusing in on a tight shot. But it was always the sweat that anchored me to the reality that this was somehow different than Mortal Kombat the video game.\n\nThe body blows left real bruises. The strikes to the face stung, whether giving or receiving. The possibility of irreversible injury—even death—was real.\n\nThe sounds of slapping skin, the whoosh of a fist cutting the air, an elbow joint cracking under the weight of a fully extended punch, the metallic taste in the mouth when some blood was loosed from the gums by a face shot, the heightened smell of the warm plastic gloves, the thud of blocks jarring the bone of the soft inner arm, and sharp screams, then slow riposte—the flatness returning—the interlude between strikes. \n\nThat one elongated moment, however, was disrupted, as it always must be, by a too-swift, too-hard blow that put me on my back. I coughed and gasped, trying to suck some air into my burning solar plexus.\n\nLooking up past his outstretched hand, all knuckles, I got a good look at Pat’s physical presence. From the vantage point of the ground, he appeared larger, his shoulders as wide as the saddle of a mountain pass and his arm as large as the branch of an old Oak tree. How could something so solid be so fragile, I thought.\n\nThe large GMC pick-up truck Pat’s father drove pulled onto the driveway. Pat’s father looked over at his son as soon as the red door closed, and he moved around the shining fender. “Pat, get inside, ay wanna talk to you ‘for suppa.”\n\nPat’s father was the largest trucker I’d ever seen. He wore jeans, a torn white V-neck t-shirt, a flannel jacket, and beneath his browning white and red Budweiser trucker cap, his red hair streaked out and draped his shoulders. His whiskey breath made it hard to stand near him as he spoke. \n\nI looked through the windows of the small kitchen as I left Pat’s to go home for dinner. Pat’s father was yelling at him, hands jabbing in accusatory juts by his face. Pat’s father pushed him against the kitchen cabinet. \n\nPat hit the wood panels with a sharp clear clack before straightening up. He was cocooned in a fetal pose against the wall now, brown eyes averted toward the window where he could see me watching. His father tossed him back across the little room and he squealed like a dog whose foot had been stepped on inadvertently. \n\nI heard the crumple of Pat’s body against the linoleum floor next, and I saw the look in his father’s eyes, though I could no longer see Pat—he was gone out of frame. \n\nPat stood up oafishly, regaining his footing. He threw weak deceptive stunt punches. He tried to defend himself by pushing his father’s shoulders and screaming shrilly, “Don’t, stop s-t-uh.” His arms moved fast.\n\nBut every boy is scared of his father. \n\n* * *\n\nLater that September, Pat came in with a shaved head. I asked him about it. He told me he had a card. He was excited as he showed it to me. He pulled it from his wallet with a serious look. It was white with little blue letters and his name was signed with a black ballpoint, thick letters searing the otherwise muted face of the little paper. “You do you,” I said, and didn’t ask anything else about it or spend much time with Pat after that.\n\nOne night we were all out at the bowling alley though. It was a school night, and everyone was bored. Pat had brought his friend Jeremiah. We let Pat bowl with us, and Jeremiah. Jeremiah Cotton looked like an Irish demon. Jeremiah was a large fat white boy whose gut was adorned with strange tattoos. Long streaming red hair accented the tattoos of flames and daggers which ran down his neck and became naked women at the top of his chest. \n\nHis mouth formed a gaping grin above the little wheat fields of orange stubble that pecked out of the ground of his face. His beady blue eyes twinkled with some unnatural laughter, the only smooth thing about his countenance. \n\nWhen Pat and Jeremiah left, they encountered some trouble. We didn’t hear about it until the next day, and we got it secondhand. Jeremiah and Pat got jumped by seven black men with baseball bats – though they might have just as easily been boys are age – it's easy to exaggerate with out-of-towners. It’s easy to say a lot of things when no one sees what went down. \n\nI can see the whole thing unfold in my mind’s eye. The car pulling up to the curb. That defiant gleam glazing over Pat’s eyes like he had that day in the kitchen. Jeremiah’s face all splotchy and flushed with blood. The bloodlust of a boy who really does like to be hit. The first kid to attack with his bat after all the shouting, as he goes for Pat. \n\nPat levelling him with a swift kick into the soft tissue behind the ribs like he had done to me after school. The ruthless look in his muddy eyes as he kicks the kid on the ground repeatedly, the eyes becoming glassy as Pat’s work boots dig into the ribs and guts of the man again and again. The other boy’s body softening with the blows, elbows going limp. His head, solid. Like kicking the gymnasium wall. The hardness and solidness of the skull bones stubbing and jamming his toes in the steel-tipped work boots.\n\nBy the time Pat had dealt with the first of them, Jeremiah showing the rest what he is capable of. Jeremiah getting hit in the head by one of the baseball bats, which makes a sound like a hatchet against firewood. The bat cracking into two pieces on that bowling ball of a head. Jeremiah laughing dismissively, his eyes gleaming with a strange sadistic mirth, as he grabs the kid by the throat with his bear paw of a hand. \n\nAs Jeremiah tosses the first kid to the ground, he violently swings his big pork-chop arm into the nose of one of the other boys. The kid’s nose exploding in a splatter of red which looks milky against his dark skin. Screams muffled by the blood in his mouth. And finally car tires squealing in the night.\n\nJeremiah had done hard time, and he was blessed with the ability to return a threat without regard for himself. We’d seen it in that fight in the woods out behind the gymnasium when he slammed Dave Parsons's head into a big, knotted Oak tree until blood coated the tree and he’d then brought him out to the chicken wire fence and tied him up out there, arm’s to the sides, like a crucified scarecrow.\n\nJeremiah’d left him out there and no one had the stones to cut Dave loose until after Jeremiah was gone.\n\nThe story was that Pat and Jeremiah beat up the entire gang before the cops got there. I’d bet even money the whole thing could have been avoided. \n\n* * *\n\nWhen Luke and I heard about the incident, we knew there would be problems. The gang had left word with their friends at our school and Pat got a note in his locker that they wanted to finish this on Saturday. They gave Pat the name of a field to meet them at in Tabernacle. \n\nPat had been our friend once, and we hadn’t entirely disassociated ourselves from him. He asked for our help.\n\n“Luke, we aren’t going down there.”\n\n“Pat needs our help. Right or wrong. We’ve got to be there. That’s the way it goes. We don’t have to fight. But we have to be there in case something goes wrong.”\n\nI knew this line of logic. I knew Luke just wanted to fight, to test himself in battle, to say he’d been brave enough to show up. God damn it! Was he really willing to get us killed for bragging rights that he sacked up against some Willingboro gang? \n\n“Luke, this is dumb. It’s suicide. These kids—men—are from the city. They will probably have guns,” I said.\n\n“Guns? Give me a break,” Luke said. \n\n“All your fancy footwork won’t stop bullets. We can die.” Even as I said the words, I also believed I was invincible.\n\n“We are going.”\n\nI was only a sophomore in high school. These were my friends. I couldn’t get around the fact that I had only one choice; I could be there, or I could not be there.\n\nIf I went, I could get hurt or die. \n\nIf I didn’t go my friends might get hurt or die, and I would be powerless to do anything about it.\n\nAnd I’d never live it down.\n\n“John, I am going, with or without you. If you don’t come through, I would understand,” Luke says.\n\n* * *\n\nThat Saturday, Luke and I drove down the familiar streets of our town with a strange feeling in our stomachs. We drove down Main Street. Passed the convenience store. Out onto the back roads out to the country. The sky was clear blue, and the sun shone like a golden emblem. Here we were driving into the heart of battle. The world never seemed so clear or beautiful as it did with the expectant question in the back of my mind.\n\nWe arrived at the field. Pat was dressed in camo military fatigues, and he was swinging his fists in the air with brass knuckles. He was also swinging around a black-coat Louisville Slugger training bat—the thing was big enough to cave in a man’s jaw. \n\nA large mongloid-looking tree of a man, Stevo, walked over to the bicycle rack and pulled a metal bar out of it. He grunted and beat his chest. He proceeded to swing the metal bar against the bike rack again and again. The sound was like a guard in a prison drumming a baton against the metal bars of a prisoner’s cell. \n\nOthers mulled around looking vaguely threatening.\n\nLuke and I had agreed to stay in the car until we saw what happened. We watched our friends, our team, our gang, our mob, our boys. They were like animals. \n\nIt was four o’clock. Luke and I looked at each other.\n\n“We aren’t going out there if there are guns.”\n\n“John, you can do what you want.”\n\n“Luke, this is ridiculous, you can’t dodge bullets.”\n\n“Dude, they attacked our boys, John. If somebody draws a gun we are driving right at them – even up the score. I’ll fucking run down every one of them if there’s any foul play.”\n\n“When they get here, I’m going to talk this out. This isn’t baby playground shit anymore. The lot of you are psychopaths.”\n\n“Chicken shits. They should be here already.”\n\nOur boys mulled around and after a time they started talking.\n\n“Pat, they ain’t comin’ man, they all a bunch of pussies, moth-a-fuckin pussies,” Stevo said\n\n“Aww, damn, and I wanted to thrash 'em again,” Jeremiah said.\n\n“Nothin’ to see here then. Damn pussies,” Pat said.\n\nLuke and I sat and watched. We talked for a while. We admitted our fear to each other like young children parlaying secrets about our friends that we weren’t supposed to tell. \n\n“Yeah man. I’m actually glad they didn’t show.”\n\n“Yeah?”\n\n“Sure. This is crazy shit, man. Who needs this.”\n\n“What are we doing here?”\n\n“I don’t know. No more. We watch out for ourselves from here on out.”\n\n“Luke, I know this is gonna sound weird, but in the middle of all this shit . . . dude, we could be dead right now . . . look, man. It's 4:30 and we’re alive.” As I said this, “Only the Good Die Young,” by Billy Joel blared out of the speakers of Luke’s old beat-up green Grand Prix. \n\nI looked out at the field behind the old school. Our friends looked like a group of fighter ants against the golden sun, standing at arms, in organized rows, muted bodies meant for combat.\n\nThey had no great cause to sacrifice themselves for. \n\n* * *\n\nThe next day at the lunch table in the cafeteria we were all sitting around talking about the previous day's events. Pat was up in line getting his food. \n\nA red-headed little jabber mouth named Sam who was friends with Pat said, “Hey did you guys hear about Pat’s father.”\n\n“No, what about him?” I asked.\n\n“He’s in the hospital, yeah. Got messed up bad in some bar fight.”\n\n“A bar fight?” I asked. It was hard to imagine anyone who could actually hurt Pat’s father.\n\n“Shit, from what I hear he got his whole damn jaw caved in. Pat said the bastard took down six of ‘them’ before they cornered him with a baseall bat.”\n\n“Six of ‘them,’ huh” I said.\n\nPat came walking over to the table with his classic hello. “Hey-ho, how you all doin.” He had a little bit of hair coming in. \n\n“Hey Pat, did your dad get in a bar fight last night,” I asked.\n\n“Somebody finally beat the shit out of that big fucking, red-eyed bastard. ‘Bout time.”\n\nAfter a little painful silence, I said, “Hey, are you letting your hair grow in?”\n\n“It’s too much of a pain in the ass to cut it every day,” Pat said.\n\n“I see.”\n\nAs Pat shoveled spoonful after spoonful of the cafeteria entre of the day “Beeferoni surprise” down his gullet, he flicked the little plastic spork up to his mouth exposing a fist full of bare white knuckles." } ]

[ { "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 Silent Whisper\n\nGenre: coming-of-age\n\nWord Count: 1877\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about someone who breaks an unwritten social rule and the consequences they face as a result." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Social norms were demonstrated at an early age. If I had to classify myself, I would identify as Black/Jewish & German. My birth mother, Marie Delanie from the Delanie’s of Ireland was a Caucasian/German woman, my father, an African American man who was absent without participation, therefore, I grasp to the Caucasian linguistics. I settled in a sophisticated predominantly white community in Newark, New Jersey – Vailsburg section between So. 18th and So. 19th Street in 1932. A picture-perfect neighborhood, a white picket fence with a gorgeous flowerbed gently lying on the front lawn. The Germans owned many of the movie theaters including the “Ormont” which was an exceptional establishment for the elite. My mother, who was an alcoholic, placed me on the doorsteps of an interracial family at the tender age of two and disappeared into the night. My life was altered from that point, traveling from place to place without the understanding of where I belong.\n\nMonica, foster mother #1 was awakened by the silence of the night. She heard a disturbance coming from the other side of the door, she slowly opened, lowering her head to witness my cries, smiled while extending her arms to comfort me as only a mother could. She married a successful Caucasian man who at some point embraced me as well. Shortly after my arrival, he died of a sudden illness. She remarried a man who undoubtedly loved her. Initially the treatments were delightful until the commands settled in her mind. It wasn't until I was years older when I was guided to my sleeping quarters located in a “coal” bin where coals were kept near the furnace assembly. The bin was dark, scary with one small window where the chute was positioned. I labeled my bin “my secret place,” the very first time I learned how to pray and connect with God. When I was afraid, I would gaze out the window, praying to a God I couldn’t see or feel, staring into the night sky to always be free.\n\nHer punishments were severe, in fact, I was confined in darkness with a dim light she controlled. I turned around to see Monica standing at the top of the steps as I slowly entered the darkness, she quickly closed the door behind her. I was left alone for what seemed like hours until she quickly opened the door without a sound. I approached at a rapid speed to escape the dark, dampness of the unknown. I positioned myself at the dinner table where talking was not permitted. The more she left me alone the more I became secluded, a recluse for lack of a better word. Afterwards, the conditioning was to serve the elite, prepping for a life of acceptance under shields I could not see. The preparation was initiated by hours of listening to Hitler’s speeches on the radio. I was asked at an early age to communicate the knowledge I retained to ensure the task would be sustainable. Punishments were enhanced with decreased consumption of nutrition when incorrect answers were presented. Consequently, I began stealing food, my hunger increased to a degree of starvation. Noticeably, my body caused a reduction thereby alluding me into a facility called “The Boyland Street School” for undernourished children.\n\n“Sally”, foster mother #2 wasn't as pleasing, the treatments were strategic, she was the total opposite of what others perceived her to be. She hid behind several masks, speaking ever so softly with a beautiful smile that lit up any room with the personality of a saint. She was so wicked; she fell down a flight of steps and severely fractured her neck. Although she was still breathing with only the movement of her eyes intact, she had limited use of control. She was crushed between the narrow steps. Apparently, someone heard her scream as she quickly fell to her knees. The police discovered her body at the bottom of the steps where the paramedics transported her upstairs to the adjacent bedroom. I’d awaken the next morning to witness Sally lying on her death bed frightened, panic in fact. She was paralyzed from the neck down with no commands over nonentity, her house or anything. She survived for a week, then vanished from my life forever. I wasn’t too heartbroken because the fear of her returning was a mere panic I could not fathom.\n\nI ran away at the age of thirteen, I was placed in a third foster home in Silver Lakes not too far from Belleville, New Jersey. I ventured into a nearby restaurant to nourish myself. I was a runaway, a judge who was the head of New Jersey was sitting on the other side of the restaurant witnessed me sitting at the edge of the counter. He walked over, and asked me if I were catholic?” I replied, yes. He said, “I’m taking you to a girl’s shelter.\" I told him who I was and briefed him on my life struggles. He lowered his head and said, “you’ve suffered enough.\" Abruptly, he changed course and said, “I’m taking you to my home.\" Judge Sagatino, foster father #3 invited me to his beautiful home where he persuaded me to spy on his daughter because she was socializing with unfamiliar territory. The reward was a weekly compensation of five dollars to become his personal informant. He was a tall handsome Italian man who married a beautiful Italian woman, Betty, who I identified as very meek and quiet. I had food privileges, the freedom to journey without restrictions. I had to abide by the rules, of course, but the treatment was fantastic. They were quite wealthy with a telephone in the home, two cars and all the splendors one could imagine. I was made to feel the comforts of a family from the very beginning.\n\nBetty had a weakness for helping Caucasians in the neighborhood. She showed me how to become docile and to always put their needs ahead of mine. Unfortunately, the conditioning was so concentrated the desire to serve inadvertently became my normal. There, I was instructed and forbidden from playing with the nonentities on the block because I was told they were poor, and they did not look like me. The analogy was taught at an early age, in fact, it was a rule. There were two African American families approximately seven doors away. One family, Ms. Smith who lived with her daughter and son and Ms. Washington who worked for a Chinese laundry company within walking distance from her home. My mother was subservient to this one particular prominent Caucasian mother who accused me of stealing her diamond ring. The accusations were rapidly communicated because my interaction with her children was not well received. I was punished for false accusations on a regular basis. I knew I wasn’t white, but I craved to be in their presence to explore their customs and develop an accepted because I thought I was well received and privileged.\n\nCHEATING DEATH\n\nONCE… When I was nine, I had an operation on my throat, my mother Sally had given me “Sloans Liniment”, causing a fiery burning sensation almost immediately. She opened my mouth, poured it directly down the center of my throat. The doctors removed my tonsils but failed to remove the roots of the tonsils which caused severe bleeding. It was so sever; the priest was informed to grant me my last living rites. I died and went to an ambiguous location. When I died, God said, “you have a job to do.\" I knew I had an outer body experience where I mysteriously traveled through a pathway and halted at a moment’s time. A being appeared and touched me on my right shoulder and told me we are not ready for you yet and to go back down because I have a job for you to do. I was revived and went home the next day. \n\nTWICE… In the 1950’s I was in a terrible accident; I was thrown across McCarter Highway about ninety feet, landed on a mattress outside a fire station in it's resting place. I stood up and ran about a half a block away where I collapsed which landed me in St. James hospital in Newark, NJ. The lord showed me when your mother and father forsake you, I will take you up. He placed a hedge around me where nobody could ever do anything else to me no matter what I did. I walk a solitary life, me, and the Lord. Subsequently, I left the hospital and proceeded to a friend's house where remained isolated for five years until I left in 1959. I began walking down High Street, a car came soaring around the corner. I saw him approaching, as I called on the Lord, I froze, hitting the fire hydrant not too far from where I was standing. The wheels were spinning at a rapid rate.\n\nTHIRD TIME… A frightening breast cancer diagnosis in 1992, the doctors implied there was nothing more they could do for me, I was dying. One-by-one, the doctors and nurses approached my bedside and said, “the bottom line is you’re dying,\" I said, tonight? Not tonight, I turned my head to the left and told to the Lord about it and went home the following day. The diagnosis did not define me, what the Lord told me that night defined whether I lived or died. At a moment’s time I promised God I would always cling to him. My survival is intentional and unexplainable, I'm living my best life at ninety-three years young.\n\nMy foster families were afraid of me because I had for a lack of a better word, telepathic abilities. It’s a gift I could not control. I heard God tell me to leave my job and go find another one. I remember working at a facility in Central Jersey when the Lord spoke to me in a soft whisper, \"remove yourself and never look back.\" I couldn't quite understand the command until he instructed me to go to \"Middlesex General Hospital\" now \"Robert Wood Johnson Hospital\" to gain employment. I immediately completed the application because the Lord told me it was mine. The interviewer instructed me they were not hiring today, I replied, “you will hire me today.\" She desired to know where I came from and why I was there. I briefly explained. She replied, “who told you to come here?\" I replied, \"God told me to come here.\" She repeated, “we are not hiring today,\" “I replied you will hire me today!\" We talked for an extended period followed by a statement she replied firmly, “I don’t know why I’m hiring you, but you’re hired.\" Immediately, I was told where to go to collect my uniform. I’ve always traveled alone, a wonderer in the wilderness of strangers, in unfamiliar territories with God’s watchful eyes still upon me. My life's story is not coincidental. The belief in something definite, the faith in something you can't see of feel and the promises of God upon my life is the ultimate survival story. The consequence of my journey were to survive what seemed impossible because of God's Silent Whisper, I listened, obeyed, and I kept the faith." } ]

[ { "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: Bubba's Lung\n\nGenre: contemporary\n\nWord Count: 1627\n\nPrompt:\n\nSet your story in a bar that doesn’t serve alcohol." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Contains physical violence. A neon glare above the plate glass window lit up the joint's name—Danny’s. In the town’s glory days, it was called Bubba’s Lung, but now only the distant whiff of spilled beer and foggy memories of bare-knuckle fights remain. Bubba’s Lung started out as Bubba’s Lounge, but a faded 'o' and the missing ‘e’ gave the place a more interesting name. Until Danny took it over. He turned the establishment into a meat-and-three.\nThe door swung open, and two dark figures strolled in. Decked out in sunglasses and black jackets, they were straight out of a Blues Brothers movie. Together, they spelled trouble with a capital 'T'.\n“What’ll ya have”, said Danny, a damp rag slung over his shoulder.\nBoth men took a seat at the counter. One man answered, “Don’t know.” He turned to his associate, “What do you want to eat, Ace?”\nAce gave the question a little thought, “Be damned if I know.”\n“Gimme a menu,” the first man ordered.\nThe streetlights in front of the building flickered on and cast a yellow light across the food counter. Raindrops specked the window. At the far end sat Joe Ryan watching the two men.\n“I’ll have the Polish sausage with sauteed onions and peppers,” said the first man.\nDanny cleared his throat, “Not ready.”\n“What do you mean, it’s here on the menu.”\n“Not six o’clock yet. That’s when Sam, in the kitchen, will have it ready.”\nThe men looked at the clock. “It is 5:20,” they both said.\n“Have him cook the sausage now,” Ace growled.\n“Sorry, not ready.”\nBoth men shook their heads. The first man said, “What do you have to drink?”\nDanny, pointing at the sign above the counter, said, “Coca-Cola products, iced tea, coffee or I can make ya a milkshake.”\nThe men huffed, “We want whiskey! Ain’t this a bar?”\n“No, it’s a diner. We serve lunch and dinner.”\n“I think this dump used to be a tavern,” Ace said to the first man.\nDanny nodded. “Bubba’s Lung closed five years ago.”\nThe first man shifted on his stool. “Well, Danny Diner, what the hell do you have to eat?”\nDanny laid open the menu and ran his finger down one of the columns. “I have these sandwiches, plus soup, and hamburgers.”\nAce grabbed the menu. “I want a steak, a T-bone.”\nThe first man leaned over the counter, breathing in Danny’s face, “Make that two, with a baked potato and a salad.”\n“And bring a pot of coffee,” Ace said. “The whole pot.”\nDanny took a breath and shook his head. He glanced down at Joe Ryan sitting at the end of the counter.\n “Who’s that?” Ace said.\nJoe Ryan stood and raised a hand at Danny, “I got this Danny. I’m Joe Ryan, a regular customer.”\nThe first man scowled, “Well, Mister reglar customer Joe Ryan, this dive of yours sucks.”\nDanny cleared his throat, sheepishly this time he said, “So, can I get you something...gentlemen?”\n“Now that’s what I’m talking about,” Ace yelled. “Surely, Danny Diner, you’ve figured out that we ain’t gentlemen. Are you stupid?”\nThe first man came around the counter and stood next to Danny. “Get the cook out here.”\n“He’s prepping for dinner.”\n“Get him out here, now.”\nDanny pushed the kitchen door, “Sam, can you come out here a minute?”\nThe first man raised one eyebrow when Sam stepped through the door. “You’re a Negro,” he said.\n“And a damn good cook,” Joe Ryan said.\n“Sam, are you a damn good cook like Joe Ryan says?” the first man asked.\n“Sir, some say I am.”\n“Good, well get your ass in there and fix two T-bones, baked potatoes, and what else,” he turned to Ace.\n“House salad and coffee.”\n“Yeah, that’s right,” the first man said, thumping his knuckle on Sam’s forehead, so hard it made a thwack sound.\n“Mister, I’m sorry but I can’t serve dinner till six o’clock.”\nThe first man leaned against Sam, “We want our dinners now, not in an hour. You got that?”\nSam’s big dark eyes cast down at his shoes, then he took a quick look at Danny, his face pleading, what should I do?\nJoe Ryan clapped his hands loudly before Danny could respond. Ace and the first man both jerked their heads in his direction. “Why are you boys so damn obstreperous, there’s no call for it.”\n“No call for what?”\n“Obstreperous behavior. You and Ace are obstreperous.”\nThe first man scowled at Joe Ryan, then he pulled a revolver out of his coat. A Smith and Wesson 32 caliber short barrel. He pointed it at Joe Ryan’s head. “What are you talking about, bud?”\n“You both are loud, obnoxious, and pains in the ass. That’s what I’m talking about.”\nAce moved down the counter to a stool closer to Joe Ryan. “You see that big gun pointed at the little spot between your eyeballs?”\n“Of course, I do. I just don’t know why.”\nAce coughed. “I’ll tell you why. Because you’re an asshole and this place is a dump.” Then he looked at Sam, “And what are you looking at? You’re spoz to be in the kitchen cooking our steaks.”\nDanny nodded, and Sam slipped into the kitchen.\n“Tell you what,” Joe Ryan said, the muscles in his jaw twitching, “I’ll stop being an asshole if you’ll tell me what you and your friend are doing in town.”\nAce leaned both elbows on the counter, “Alright, I’ll tell…”\nThe first man interrupted Ace before he could finish the sentence. “Keep your mouth shut; you talk too much.”\n“Let me finish.” Ace insisted. “I won’t do no harm.” He continued, “Me and him, we’re here to take care of somebody’s unfinished business. Unlike Danny Diner here, we care about our customers.”\nThe first man huffed and stuck the gun back in his coat. “That’s enough, Ace. Shut your trap.”\nAce got up and walked around the tables and chairs, belly-laughing like a hyena.\nJoe Ryan folded his arms, “I have an idea, why don’t you both get out of here. Try the little pub down the block.”\n“I don’t think so, we’re waiting for our steaks,” said the first man. “Besides, we’re expecting company.”\nAce stopped pacing, “Joe Ryan, you’re mighty lucky or just plain dumb. What do you do for a livin'?” He belly-laughed again.\nJoe Ryan’s face softened momentarily, “I run the town library.”\nBoth men broke into laughter. The first man yelled, “Damnation, Ace, I didn’t know real men even went to the library, let alone work in one. Joe Ryan must be some kind of sissy boy.”\nAce hissed, “I ain't never set foot in one.”\nJoe Ryan’s face became etched like it was carved from stone. “It’s obvious you boys are ignorant and, worse yet, just looking for trouble.”\nAs the tension thickened, the front door opened, and an Asian man walked in, shaking off the drizzle. The air was heavy with uncertainty. “It’s wet out there,” he said in broken English.\nAce and the first man quickly came close together at the counter.\nDanny started to welcome the Asian man, but Ace shot him a stern look.\nThe first man slowly slid the gun from his pocket and looked at Ace.\nAce nodded, “It’s him.”\nThe Asian man came up to the counter, between Joe Ryan and the two men, and took a seat. All eyes were trained on him.\n“Afternoon,” Danny said quietly while keeping his eyes on Ace.\n“Coffee and a bowl of soup, if you please.”\n“Tomato bisque today,” Danny muttered. “Is that good?”\nHe tipped his head.\nQuietly, unbeknownst to the Asian man, the first man rested his elbows on the counter and, using both hands, aimed the Smith and Wesson. Then he coughed, getting the Asian’s attention.\nThe Asian man turned and took a short breath. “I wondered when it would happen. I guess today.”\nAce got off the stool, “You’re coming with us.”\nThe Asian man got off his stool and nodded his head in the formal way Asian people do.\nAce walked up beside him, and the first man came to his back. “Let’s go,” he said.\nThey walked toward the door. When they passed Joe Ryan, Ace gave a wicked grin.\nIn that instant, Joe Ryan, librarian, kicked the feet out from under the first man, he stumbled but did not fall.\nJoe Ryan leaped off his stool and grabbed the first man from behind. In the blink of an eye, Joe Ryan took hold of the man's head, placing one hand on his jaw and the other beside his ear then giving it a powerful twist. The snaping of the spinal cord made an audible pop as the first man's knees buckled, dropping him to the floor. The gun lying beside him.\nIn almost the same instant, the Asian man planted a sharp elbow in the solar plexus of Ace, who gasped and fell to his knees, next to the gun.\nAce picked up the gun and aimed at the Asian man’s abdomen. He pulled the trigger. Joe Ryan swung around and kicked the gun out of his hand, but the damage was done.\nDanny ran into the kitchen, \"I'm dialing 911,\" he screamed.\nAce, now prone on the floor, so Joe Ryan used his own body to pin him down. Ace looked into Joe Ryan’s face, “Who are you?”\n“I told you. I’m Joe Ryan, the librarian. I’m also a former Marine with combat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.”\nAce laid his head on the floor and grinned. “I’ll be damned,” he said.\n“I protect people, it’s what Marines do.”\nAce chuckled. “But Joe Ryan, librarian, we're both going to prison or worse.”" } ]

[ { "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.C.B.\n\nGenre: contemporary\n\nWord Count: 1825\n\nPrompt:\n\nSet your story in a bar that doesn’t serve alcohol." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Marissa scanned the street, her eyes landing on a flashing neon sign - I.C.B. The flat roof and scuffed red door had all the trappings of a dive bar. \n“Perfect,” she muttered against her scarf. She readjusted her stocking cap as the cold Minneapolis wind blew. She was glad she had kept her cold weather accessories when she moved to southern California. For trips back home like this. Unplanned, last minute, life-altering trips back home. \nShe waited on the corner, willing the crosswalk signal to change so she could get out of the bitter cold. I.C.B. I Crave Beer? She thought. That she did. IPA Centered Bar? So many options on what it could stand for, she mused. She just needed to sit, drink, and get her mind off this terrible day. Terrible week. Terrible life.\nThe crosswalk signal changed and she crossed the street quickly, the thought of heat, a cold beer, and comfy bar stool propelling her along.\nShe shoved open the heavy door, stepping into the brightly lit space. Weird vibe for a dive bar, she thought, but she wasn’t going to be fussy. Anything was better than sitting around the kitchen table with her family in awkward, pained silence. \nShe hoisted herself up on a stool at the end of the scarred wooden bar. She began the process of disrobing - fleece-lined mittens first, then stocking cap, finally unwinding her plaid scarf from her neck. She made no move to take off her jacket; her internal temperature still needed a bit of warming.\nThe bartender made her way down to Marissa, setting down a napkin and a spoon in front of her. “What’ll it be, hon?” she asked.\n“Oh, do you have a tap list?” Marissa asked.\n“Of sorts,” she replied. “Vanilla, chocolate, strawberry.”\nMarissa’s eyes narrowed in confusion. The bartender’s lips curved upward into a small smile. She shifted and pointed at the sign on the far wall. \nIce Cream Bar. \nI.C.B. \nMarissa sighed deeply, her eyes closing for a brief second. “Chocolate,” she whispered. Tears clogged her throat and threatened to form at the corner of her eyes. \nThe bartender gave her a long look. “You got it,” she replied quietly. \nAs the bartender retreated, Marissa took a couple of deep breaths, shoving the emotion down. An ice cream bar, she thought, bewildered. She had never heard of such a thing. Was this a trick? Of all places for her to stop in to, on this day. She refused to think of it as a sign. A message. A divine intervention. \nIntervention. She pressed her fingers to her eyes, physically stopping the tears from falling. She’d had enough tears. \n“If you really want a beer, I can go grab one from the actual bar down the street and smuggle it in. No need to cry about it,” a voice joked to her right. \nMarissa turned her head and her eyes landed on a man in his early 30s; he shifted on his stool so that he was facing her, halfway down the bar. His red stocking cap perched atop his head, not covering his ears. What was the point then? Marissa wondered. \nRegistering the actual emotion on Marissa’s face, he quickly backtracked.\n“Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I was just making a joke, I - I - oh god, I’m sorry.” \nHe swiveled back to face the bar, picking up his spoon and staring into his large bowl of vanilla ice cream. \nMarissa stared at him. Vanilla, she thought dully. The only other person she knew that would willingly eat a whole bowl of vanilla ice cream is her sister. Was her sister, she corrected. Her sister whose funeral she attended yesterday. The reason for this unplanned, last minute, life altering trip home.\n“I was supposed to meet someone for a date here, but I got stood up,” the man said, staring into his bowl. \n“I’m sorry,” Marissa replied softly. How many times had she heard that in the past few days? I’m sorry. I’m sorry for your loss. I’m sorry you’re going through this. I’m sorry it ended like this; we all thought she was doing better. I’m sorry she couldn’t beat it. \nIt felt good to say “I'm sorry” to someone else. To deflect. To spread the sorry around. She’d had enough of it.\n“It’s okay,” he replied, shifting his eyes towards her. “It was a first date, so sometimes that happens. I was really looking forward to it though.”\nShe nodded, unsure of what to say next. She hadn’t been on a date in years and even when she was dating, she couldn’t ever remember being excited for a first date. Nervous, terrified, unsure - yes. Looking forward to a first date? Couldn't be her. \nThe bartender returned with her chocolate ice cream, a dollop of whipped cream on top. “I thought you could use some sprinkles,” the bartender said, as she dumped what seemed like a full cup of multi-colored sprinkles on top. \nMarissa met the bartender’s eyes and smiled. “I love sprinkles. Thank you.”\nThat was a lie. Her sister, Phoebe, was the sprinkle lover. Vanilla with sprinkles was her go-to order at any ice cream or frozen yogurt place. She had dubbed herself a “sprinkle purist” and would forcefully proclaim that if you really wanted to savor the sprinkles it had to be on vanilla only. Marissa hoped Phoebe would let her slide today, with her chocolate and sprinkles. \n“She must like you,” the man said as the bartender moved on to other customers. “I did not get any free sprinkles.” \nMarissa shifted and met his eyes; he smiled at her, his spoon suspended in midair halfway between his bowl and his mouth. He was clearly trying to improve her mood or hit on her. Probably a bit of both, she thought.\n“It’s melting,” she said, gesturing at his ice cream dripping onto the bar. \nHe reacted quickly, his spoon clattering back into his bowl. His face flushed a bit, embarrassed at her flat reaction to his attempt to keep the conversation going. Marissa considered him as she took a scoop of her ice cream; maybe a bit of distraction would do her good. \n“Why were you looking forward to this first date?” Marissa asked. “Aren’t first dates supposed to be awkward and nerve wracking?” \n “Oh, yeah, most first dates are pretty nerve wracking,” he replied, surprised that she was continuing the conversation. “This girl just seemed really funny and genuine. We texted for a few weeks before I finally convinced her to meet me in person.” He paused. “Guess I must have weirded her out with my persistence.”\n“I’m sure she just had a last minute thing pop up,” Marissa said. “Hopefully you’ll hear from her.”\nHe took out his phone from his pocket, opening it to a text thread. Marissa was too far away to see the actual words, but could tell that he had sent several texts, all which had gone unanswered for the last few days. He met her eyes and raised his eyebrows. “Yeah, hopefully.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Or she got hit by a bus and died,” he sighed.\nMarissa reared back as if she had been slapped. \n“Oh my god, bad joke, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that,” the man said. “Jesus, I’m sorry,” he said again, blowing out a breath. “I’m an idiot.” He shoveled a bit of ice cream into his mouth with unnecessary force.\nMarissa stared at her chocolate ice cream. More I’m sorry’s directed her way, she thought. “It’s okay,” said in a voice that masked her despair. “It just caught me off guard.” She lifted her head to meet his eyes again. \nHe looked at her carefully, deciding if he should reply.\n“I’m in town for a funeral,” she said evenly. \n“I’m - “\n“Don’t say you’re sorry,” she said, just as he was about to. He stopped, giving her a curt nod. “It’s just,” she sighed, “I’ve heard a lot of that lately.”\nHe nodded again. They both shifted back to eating their ice cream, a comfortable silence stretching between them. \nMarissa wondered if Phoebe had ever been here. It wasn’t very close to Phoebe’s apartment and since Phoebe’s license had been suspended, Marissa wasn’t sure how much effort Phoebe would put into trekking across town on public transportation. I thought she was doing better, Marissa thought. She really thought the intervention they had last year had turned things around. That’s what she wanted you to think. \n“This girl was really beautiful.” The man was talking again. “That’s why I swiped right on her profile. But then when we got to talking she was super funny.” \nMarissa turned her attention back to him, grateful to be shaken out of her thoughts. \n“She had this way of asking silly questions to keep the conversation going,” he went on. “I know we were just texting for a few weeks, but it was so easy to open up to her.”\n“That must have been nice.”\n“It really was. She seemed a bit guarded, which now I’m realizing was a sign that she just wasn't interested,” he said with a wry smile. “Which was why I was hoping to meet her and, you know, have her feel more comfortable around me.”\n“I’m sure she would have been,” Marissa said. “I’m pretty comfortable with you and we just met.” He nodded and shrugged his shoulders, his gaze back on his ice cream. “And that’s even after you made a joke about dying to someone in town for a funeral.”\nHe let out a bark of a laugh, his head tipping back to the ceiling. Marissa’s mouth flirted with a smile. It felt so nice to make someone laugh. So nice to illicit a response from someone other than I’m sorry.\n“Yeah, I’m hoping she would have liked me. I thought we were really vibing.” He picked up his spoon and began to drag it through his bowl, which now resembled more of a vanilla soup. “She was even supportive when I suggested we meet here, instead of a normal bar for a drink.” He paused. “I’m 38 days sober.”\n“That’s…,” Marissa whispered, “really great.” She had lost track of how many times Phoebe had been 38 days sober. Sometimes it got up to as high as 227, sometimes it was only 3. But she was always trying. “Congratulations.” \n“It’s been hard to know when to bring that up when you’re interested in someone and dating and all that, but she was super chill about it.” He shrugged. “Well, who knows, maybe her phone ran out of battery and I’ll hear from her later.”\n“That’s the spirit,” Marissa said, trying to force an upbeat tone. “Maybe she just got cold feet because she was so into you.”\n“Oh yeah, I bet that’s it,” he replied with a smile.\n“What’s her name?” she asked.\n“Phoebe.”" } ]

[ { "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: Among the Stars\n\nGenre: coming-of-age\n\nWord Count: 2975\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about someone who is shackled by fears of failure, until they break free." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Elise only ever wanted one thing in life; to take to the stars and soar. While other kids decorated their rooms with posters of pop stars and footballers, she collected models of the ships of the System Defence Squadron. When her classmates were busy partying or studying, Elise dragged her parents to conventions filled with starships, shuttles, and spacesuits. It was on one of those trips that she first laid eyes on the Low Orbit Combat Simulation Instrument—LOCSI, for short. The machine that would change her life.\nIt was love at first sight—no, scratch that—it was love before first sight. The moment Elise heard about that machine, she knew it was her destiny. The young pilot with the highest score at the end of the convention would get free entry into the National Academy of Space Exploration. Her dream.\nIn the weeks building up to the event, it was all she would talk about. ‘When I get the high-score I get to move into the academy as soon as I graduate! No entrance exam, no tuition fees, nothing! Isn’t that great!?’\n‘Settle down,’ her father had said. ‘I’m sure there are lots of other children with the same plan. Try not to get your hopes up too much, just in case.’\nElise only laughed. Sure, other kids probably wanted to win the prize, but she was different. She needed it. \nOn the day the convention opened, she leapt out of the car and sprinted towards the LOCSI, only vaguely aware of her father calling her name. It was happening. It was finally happening. All that time spent watching sci-fi dramas and movies, all those hours playing video games and reading books on the history of space travel, it was all leading up to this moment.\nElise sprinted along the corridors of the convention faster than the speed of sound, barging over cardboard cutouts of astronauts, knocking ice creams from the hands of preschoolers, and leaving her dad to clear up the wreckage she left in her wake. Oh, she’d get the mother of all telling-offs later, and likely be grounded until she left for the academy, but Elise didn’t care. Every second she spent apart from the LOCSI, was a second spent not living her life the way it was meant to be lived. \nIgnoring the shouts of angry adults, and the cries of now ice-creamless children, Elise darted between a corn dog stand and a display on the Mariner 2 space probe and into the simulator room. \nThere it was. The LOCSI. It didn’t look like much—a simple white cuboid made of advanced plastoids and suspended on a bed of tubes, gyros, and cables—but to Elise, it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. \nShe took her place in line, never taking her eyes off the contraption in front of her. Some part of her mind became vaguely aware of her father stepping up beside her, but her focus remained solely on the LOCSI. She’d been waiting for this moment for so long and now it was finally here.\nOne by one, the people in front of her took their turns. Elise watched their attempts on a large screen at the other end of the room. The LOCSI simulated a battle against the Beasts from Beyond—a mysterious race of giant extraterrestrial creatures who came from outside the solar system with the goal of destroying and consuming all life. With their leathery skin, masses of tentacles, and countless dagger-like teeth, they looked horrific—like something out of her father’s HP Lovecraft books. Elise wasn’t afraid, though. In her starfighter she could take them all on. \nThat being said, she was glad that most of the people before her in line weren’t responsible for the defence of Earth. Some of them did okay, but most were absolutely hopeless. One spotty-faced boy wearing a football jersey didn’t even manage to blast a single Beast. Elise would put them all to shame. Her score would be in an entirely different stratosphere to theirs.\n‘Next,’ the attendant running the simulator said. \nAt last, it was her turn. Elise shot forwards and dashed up the steps leading to the entrance. She poked a head through the doorway and—\nShe froze. The inside looked… different to how she’d been expecting. Spaceships on TV seemed so sleek and open. This… didn’t. The simulator consisted of a single padded chair crammed in front of a control panel, and there was barely enough room inside for even those. \n‘Awesome, isn’t it?’ the attendant said. ‘It was designed to mimic the interior of a Helios Mark V Starfighter.’\n‘This is what the cockpit of a Helios 5 looks like?’ Those were the main ship flown by the SDS. When Elise went to the academy, it’s the ship she’d train with, and would most likely be what she’d fly as a pilot. Elise had known that. She just hadn’t expected the interior to be so… small. \nThe attendant nodded. ‘Yeah, get in. Try it out. You’ll feel like a real SDS pilot.’\n‘I… I don’t know,’ Elise said. She’d been waiting for this day for ages, but now, some part of her brain was telling her she shouldn’t go. Staring into that tiny, cramped space, she felt… nauseous, and hot, and cold, and sweaty, and dry, and—\nThe attendant nudged her back. ‘It’ll be fine. Go on.’\nStill, Elise hesitated.\n‘Look, kid. There’s a line. Either get in and get on with it, or get lost. Everyone wants a go on this thing. I don’t have space in the schedule for time wasters.’\nElise’s body trembled. Her heartbeat rose and rose and rose.\nThumpthumpthumpthumpthump.\n‘Last chance. Get in the simulator, or get out of line.’\nDespite every ounce of her being telling her to do otherwise, Elise climbed into the LOCSI and slipped into the chair. \n‘Great. Sit tight, go through the interactive tutorial, and give it your best. The controls are pretty intuitive, and a lot like some of those video games all you kids are playing.’\n‘Wait, I—’\nBut the attendant was already gone, and the hatch was closing. \n‘Wait!’\nClunk. \nThe hatch shut, leaving Elise alone in the darkness.\nOkay, it wasn’t actually dark. It was actually pretty bright, lit by a few strips of fluorescent lighting that changed colour depending on the status of the ship. Elise would have found that really cool if it wasn’t for the growing black spots in her vision, and the way her chest felt like it was being crushed by the steel gauntlet of a mech suit. \nWhat was wrong with her? Elise didn’t understand. She wanted to cry, scream, and throw up all at once.\nAre the walls getting closer? They are. They’re shrinking!\nThe attendant’s voice crackled out of a speaker. ‘What’s wrong, kid? The tutorial’s started.’\nElise hadn’t noticed, hadn’t even looked at the controls. There was a tingling in her bladder telling her she needed to use the loo, even though she’d gone right before leaving home. There was a tightness in her chest telling her she couldn’t breathe, even though she could feel air being pumped in through vents.\nAll the while, the black spots in her vision grew larger and larger, darker and darker, until—\nHer body trembling, Elise passed out. \nShe found out later that she’d wet herself in the LOCSI, meaning the simulator had to be shut down for the rest of the day to get professionally cleaned. It was embarrassing. Humiliating, even. But that wasn’t even the worst of it. Not by a long shot. \nHer father took her to a doctor, who diagnosed her with something called claustrophobia. He said that she could live a perfectly normal life, but that it’s possible she’d always have to avoid tight and confined spaces. That included starfighter cockpits. To Elise, that meant she couldn’t live a perfectly normal life at all. Her dream lay in tatters.\n\n***\n\nElise jolted awake as a fist hammered on the door to her room. \n‘Elise, get up. The Saturn Patrol just got back and there’s a ship on platform three with a burnt-out plasma connector. Oh, and take a wet repairs kit. The pilot’s waste disposal pipe malfunctioned.’\nMike Thomas, Head Ground Technician at the North Montana SDS Airbase, never was one to mince words. Still, it was Elise’s duty shift, so up she got and slipped on her overalls. \nIt had taken her a long time to come to terms with the idea that she’d never be a pilot. She spent many nights crying into her pillow, and many more with stomach cramps from the numerous experimental medications she tried. After she blew her life savings on a third attempt at hypnotherapy, her family and friends held an intervention. They drilled it into her that she had to accept she might never be a pilot and had to stop wasting her life chasing a dream that would probably never come true. First, Elise swore at them and accused them of hating her. Then she cried. And cried. And cried. Finally, when every drop of moisture had left her body, she made a plan. If she couldn’t be a pilot, she’d have to find another way to be around starfighters.\nShe went to college and studied aerospace engineering, throwing herself into the work with a rabid enthusiasm. It might not be the same as flying the ships herself, but at least she’d get to touch them. To do her part. After years of rigorous exams, extensive coursework, and a growing mountain of student debt, Elise got a job as a ground technician at the SDS base in her home state. It wasn’t her dream, but it was a good second choice. \nAt least, she thought it was.\nAs Elise headed for platform three, she passed a trio of laughing pilots. ‘Watch out Techie,’ one of them said. ‘O’Brien had bean paste in his rations, so you’re walking into a real biohazard.’\nTechie. Techie!? She’d worked on this base for three years and that was still all she was to them. A faceless pair of overalls and a spanner. \nShe could name them all. There was David Jackson, who had been the captain of his highschool football team and whose home town virtually threw a parade every time he visited; Ranjit Agrawal, whose Hinduism never seemed to stop him from enjoying a grass-fed steak; and Jacob O’Brien, who pretended to be a massive Black Sabbath fan, but who Elise had caught listening to One Direction more than once. Elise knew everything about them, down to the tiniest details of how they liked their ships calibrated, but to them, she would always just be a techie.\nOnce she got to platform three, Elise knew the repair it was an easy enough fix. She clambered aboard the ship and got to work under the floodlights. All she had to do was replace the old plasma connector and run a few simple diagnostics. It wouldn’t take long. As for the ‘wet repairs’, they were disgusting but all part of the job. Aside from the pilots themselves, only qualified technicians were allowed near the starfighters, so it fell to them to handle all aspects of the ships’ maintenance. \nLess than half an hour later, Elise was just finishing up and glad of it. She still wasn’t entirely comfortable in the tiny cockpits, but as long as she kept the hatch open, it was usually okay. The problem was, she hadn’t slept well the last couple of nights, and growing exhaustion wasn’t exactly great for keeping the irrational part of her mind at bay. \nAs she ran her final diagnostic, Elise noticed a figure looming over her. An all too familiar figure. \n‘What do you want, Brad?’ she said.\nBrad Thorn, a fellow ground technician, grinned at her. ‘Just to see how you were getting on. I know interior repairs can get a little… difficult for you.’\nOf course he did. A short while after she’d started working at the base, Elise had had an… incident. She’d been trapped inside a broom closet and panicked. By the time someone found her, she’d fainted twice and was drenched in sweat. A few of her colleagues treated her with sympathy, but many laughed. And who was the one who laughed the most? Bradley. Fucking. Thorn.\n‘Well I’m fine, so get lost.’\nOf course, he didn’t move. ‘Say, all those overcomplicated games you play, you must know how to fly one of these, right?’\n‘In theory.’ \n‘It must kill you that you’re stuck down here doing repairs instead, huh?’\n‘Not really.’ It did, of course, but she’d sooner take a one-way trip into a black hole than confess her innermost feelings to Brad Thorn. \n‘If you say so.’\nElise didn’t see it until it was too late. His hand. He’d been distracting her so she wouldn’t notice it drifting towards the mechanism that would close the hatch. \n‘Don’t you dare!’\nHe dared. The hatch slammed shut, and Elise was right back in the box she’d been in all those years ago. Immediately, the walls began closing in. Just as before, her chest tightened and her vision became patchy and distorted. \nOutside the cockpit, Brad laughed, but Elise barely noticed. She took a series of gasping breaths. She could feel the air going in, but it was like it had no effect. Slowly but surely, her consciousness faded. \nHer hands dove to the control panel, but with her vision spotty, she couldn’t find the hatch release. \nThe walls got closer and closer. Her chest tighter and tighter.\nJust before she passed out, Elise’s fingers found the right button and the hatch burst open again.\nOne deep breath. Then two. Then three. As soon as she regained her balance, Elise got up, climbed out of the cockpit, and punched Brad in his laughing face.\nHe dabbed at his lip. ‘Jesus. What the hell, you psycho! It was just a joke.’\n‘It wasn’t funny.’\nElise wheeled around and made to go back inside. Why did people think it was okay to treat her like that? Just because they didn’t experience things the way she did, they thought it was funny. They were pricks. All of them. \nThe doors to the base slid open and the three pilots from earlier came sprinting towards her. Behind them, a blaring alarm echoed out.\n‘Is the ship ready to go?’ O’Brien asked.\n‘Yeah. What’s happening?’\n‘Beast sighting. A big one. Huge. Bigger than anyone’s ever seen before.’\nElise wanted to ask more, but O’Brien was already gone, following his comrades to their ships. She turned around. Watching the ships take off was always the hardest part of working here. \nBut rather than the roaring of engines, it was the thump of flesh striking the ground and the scream of a man in agony that reached her ears. \nHer head whipped around. O’Brien lay on the ground next to a slick patch of oil, clutching his wrist. Ranjit and David stood over him, the latter swearing profusely. \n‘Shit. Shit shit shit. We can’t fly a man down. Not against a monster this size. We need to call up a reserve.’\n‘We don’t have any reserves,’ Ranjit said. \n‘Shit.’ David glanced at Brad, who stood gaping like a horny teenager seeing his first pair of breasts. ‘What about you? Can you fly?’\n‘No.’ And then realisation lit in his eyes. He thrust a finger at her. ‘But Elise can.’\nHe whirled on her. ‘You can?’\n‘Y-yes. But not—’\n‘What is it, yes or no?’\n‘I know how to, but I’ve never actually done it.’\n‘It’s easy. Just like in the simulations.’\n‘But—’\nDavid frowned. ‘What the hell is wrong with you? Why are you blabbering like a lost toddler?’\n‘She’s got claustrophobia,’ Brad said. ‘She can’t handle being in the cockpits. They’re too small.’\nInstantly, David’s expression softened. He approached Elise and laid a hand on her shoulder. ‘Hey. If you really can fly, we need you. I’m going to teach you a little trick I learned to deal with anxiety.’\n‘You don’t think I’ve already tried that sort of thing?’ She’d tried all the techniques. Everything. It wouldn’t work. It had never worked. \n‘This is different. This one only works in times of extreme need.’\n‘I—’\n‘Remember who you’re doing it for. You have family?’\nShe nodded. There were her parents, her sister, and her little nieces and nephews. \n‘Right now, Elise, they need you. Everyone on Earth needs you. When you feel the pressure rising, just remember that.’\nElise didn’t know. So much could go wrong. She wrung her hands, a trickle of sweat carving a path down her cheek. \nDavid gazed into her eyes. ‘I swear to you, if you do this, I won’t rest until we get these ships redesigned to not trigger your claustrophobia. I know what I’m asking is hard. I know it isn’t fair. But if there is the tiniest chance you can fly that ship, I need you to try. Please, just get into the cockpit.’\nElise had never really believed in God. if she had, she’d probably have spent most of her life cursing his name. But at that moment, she felt something. A force that seemed to say, This is your moment. Seize it.\nElise nodded. She would try. \nThis time, when the walls began closing in, she pictured her father, her mother, her sister. She pictured the little ones. She pictured her friends. Everyone who loved her. Everyone who needed her. \nAlone, she wasn’t strong enough to fight the fear. But she wasn’t alone. Not then. Not ever. They were with her. All of them. Elise wouldn’t let them down.\nThe walls stopped moving. \n‘Elise, you with me?’ came David’s voice through the comm link.\n‘I’m with you. Let’s fly.’" } ]

[ { "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: Nadir\n\nGenre: contemporary\n\nWord Count: 1844\n\nPrompt:\n\nYour character, having abstained from their worst vice (big or small), finds new clarity." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The bar closes.\nThe crest of a bone-shaped moon lay cocked in the sky. The city holds monochrome boxes spackled in a sea of sleek gray windows.\nJennifer sees a stock of streetlights and park signs pasted on the courthouse's perimeter. The horizon beyond is a frosted, barren, and pestilential locust wood. \nShe lunges to regain balance in a pair of Jimmy Choo flats.\nTrashed papers and newsprints are buried in drifts like varied birds, ill-shaped and restless in the wind. \nJennifer nods in passive agreement to a gawking bushel of law school first-year students.\nAs the alcohol warms her belly, she sees an enormous shape laboring over a high-rise. The red-eye jetliner cuts through the sky like a laboring god.\nJennifer pulls a crumpled pack from a crisp leather Christian Loubitin clutch.\nA soft amber light folds and swells beyond.\nShe pulls at her knee-length pencil skirt. \nHer cigarette dangles from a chapped pair of lips.\nShe stuffs her panties in the bottom of her clutch. \nShe staggers in the moonlight and smirks as she thinks of the word… vulva…\nInhale.\nExhale.\n\"Vulva!\" she says again.\nShe laughs before growing solemn.\nHow? she thinks. How did it all get so complicated?\nJakob’s truck sputters and leaks.\nIn the back, smooth angles shadow an infant car seat.\nJennifer trips to the backside window and views a snapshot in her mind. \nIt's dark and empty.\nA hollow void.\nIt does not look like her child but something she continually snatches randomly from a Walmart parking lot.\nJennifer gets in the passenger seat.\nShe does not say a word as they approach the hotel.\nShe slams the car door and stumbles toward the lobby. She continues smoking and leaves Jakob to collect the infant.\nJakob walks through a pair of French doors and into the living room. \nHe winks at Jennifer.\nHe delicately makes a bed for the boy on the couch and tucks the blanket around him. \n\"Do you want a drink?\" \n\"No,\" he says.\nJakob steps towards her and lays a hand on her shoulder. She stops breathing for a moment as she cradles hand his.\nShe holds him tightly.\nHe feels so thin, but his arms seem to nearly crush her.\n\"Goddamn,\" he says, softly kissing her cheek. \n\"God.\"\nHe lowers his mouth to hers, and she draws him tighter and opens her mouth under his. \nJennifer washes her face in the bathroom, but she can't look at herself in the mirror. She cannot be seen by anyone.\n\"You've been out drinking all night again.\"\n\"But I've never had a Louis Jadot Grand Bergund. Doubtful that a half glass will play a part in making matters worse.\"\nJennifer chuckles and drops the face towel to the floor. She takes another sip. \nShe concurs.\nShe embraces the aromas of red berries and plums mingled with the sweet spice of orange zest and rose petal.\nJennifer returns to his embrace. \n\"It's my time to indulge.\"\n\"You just indulge yourself,\" Jacob says. \n\"Indulge. Quite a word.\" \n\"Oh, my love…What is worth living for if we cannot indulge?\"\nJakob's grip releases and his tan flesh mingles with the taupe-down comforter until he disappears altogether beneath the covers.\nHe stares at her.\n\"An angel,\" he says. \"Pure as milk, or at least, for right now…\"\nJakob turns the nighstand's lamp off.\nJennifer advances towards him, delicately moves to the bed, and takes her place beside him.\nJakob makes no move toward her. He does not even look at her. \nHe lies. \nHe stares at the ceiling.\n\"What are we going to do?\" He asks.\n\"I don't know,\" she says, sipping her wine. \nJakob smokes in the dark, and Jennifer sees the orange pulse of his cigarette. \nHe draws it in.\n\"What we ought to do is just flee,\" Jakob says. \"Just get the hell out of Dodge.\"\n\"Like last time?\"\n\"I should have left the whiskey alone that night.\"\nNow, the wine is strawberry red. Hot green leaves, berries, warmth, and sun are in it. \nJennifer sips.\nShe thinks about how little time it took to change things and arrive here. \nNow. \nShe'll never get back the mental picture she has had of herself all these years. \nShe wonders how much of Jakob is real and how much she cobbled him up out of lines from songs, words from books, wisdom fallen between the pond stones and dust of abandoned buildings, and the dry tongues of dead martyrs, the whispers of weary philosophers. \nShe ponders that Jakob is the only one she does not have to hide her drinking from.\n\"I've got to go,\" Jennifer says.\nShe stands naked and sets the wine glass on the nightstand after guzzling the remainder. \nShe begins to search for her clothes. They are everywhere. \nShe dresses.\n\"What are we going to do?\" Jacob asks.\n\"I don't know! We'll sort it out over time, I guess, but… We can't do this now!\"\nJakob smokes.\nJennifer buttons her blouse. \n\"You can't put a lien on my life! You can't just place some attachment on me…on, on…. on my child! On my son, dammit! You hear me, Jakob, that's what's real to me! I need what is real!\"\nJakob's neck beads sweat.\nHis lips tense.\n\"Don't start drinking heavy on that,\" he says. \"Just don't you start... Not if you're taking off with him in one of your tyrades!\"\nJennifer sees in his wild eyes that he had started earlier.\nShe doesn't think he uses drugs anymore, but she doesn't really care either. She knows he has his stash.\nShe interrupts.\n\"I need some blow.\"\nJakob ignores her.\n\"I have an important deposition tomorrow. I can’t afford a hangover. Jakob, please! Just a gram to get me through the day…\"\nJennifer also knows he keeps an unopened fifth of Johnny Walker's black label sitting on the table where he can see it. A fixture. Where he can access the mere idea of it. \n\"I'll do whatever you want! Jacob, I'll blow you! Even…. Even… as long as you want. You can cum in my mouth, and I'll swallow it! I need this!\"\nJakob inhales, and the amber dot refracts and dilates rays of orange light that savagely cut through hollow and stagnant shadows.\nJakob inhales and blows smoke casually toward the cheap ceiling spackle.\n\"…any crutch you can hobble through the goddamn day on! When you get old enough, you look forward to dying! That's the drug you reach for when the other crap doesn't work anymore….\"\nJacob transfixes on a morphed patch of spackle.\nJennifer holds her son.\n\"Jakob, I gotta go. The blow, now…? Now?\n\"I heard you the first time,' he says.\nShe starts to leave. Her son, bundled in a mix of clothing and hotel blankets.\n\"You can't leave like this… you can't keep doing this!\"\n\"I'll leave however I want to leave!\"\nJakob flicks an expelled cigarette into a nearby basin.\n\"I'm not doing it! Standing out there! Looking at you! That goddam yard! That…. Grass… that patch of wretched disease! Not doing it again! Jennifer! Not…. Again…. And…. do you ever think of your son?\" \nWhen Jakob watches her, he can't think straight. Something about her impetuous need to constantly move against the grain of life. The way her delicate mannerisms always unhinge into something peculiar and unpredictable. \nJennifer knows the power she has over him. The way it happens is never intentional.\nIt just is.\nJakob reaches for the keys.\n\"Dry out, Jennifer! Get some goddamn help!\"\nAs he turns around, an overarching strike lands at the bridge of Jakob's nose. The force of the blunt object folds his nose and clefts in.\nShe is unable to stop.\nEven as blood sprays over her son's bundled body.\nJakob's world fades through a storm of blood and gore. He squints and snorts before his cortex detaches, and his body curls and seizes.\nTremoring.\nShaking.\nConvulsing.\nJennifer laughs.\nJennifer wipes the blood from her face.\nShe licks her lips.\nPainted in crimson, she exhales and cries after swallowing the moist copper discharge.\n\"I'm so sorry, my love. I messed up. I'm so sorry…\"\n—-\n\"Dammit, Jenn! The phone! Get the goddamn phone!\"\nShe answers it, leaning against the counter. She turns on the tap and fills a glass with cold water. It's someone from the sheriff's department.\nShe doesn't get the name.\nSomeone wants to know her name.\nShe tells them there seems to be too much noise. Water is running in the bathroom.\nWater is running in the sink. \nMario and Luigi are bouncing around the living room.\n\"Do you know a man named Jakob Clyde?\" \nPause.\nDead silence except for the running water.\n\"Uhm, Yes,\" Jennifer says, clearing her throat.\n\"Why is there no soap in here?\" Steven yells from the bathroom. \"Jennifer! Hell! How about bringing me a bar of soap?! For Christ's sake, woman!\"\nJennifer leans her head against the wall and covers the opposite ear to gather the influx of muffled voice and panic.\n\"A hotel attendant found him. Quite the mess. Supposing it could be a drug-related homicide….\"\nThe officer clears his voice, \"Or, an accident, but it's under investigation. The thing about it is there was a sealed letter with your name on it in his pocket. I don't have to have your permission considering the awful circumstances, but I thought as a courtesy….\"\nAn awful shriek of tinnitus begins squealing in her ear.\nCold water runs in the glass.\nThird day sober.\nWater runs out of the glass.\n\"No!\" Jennifer says viciously into the phone. \n\"If it's sealed and it has my name on it… it's mine! It's mine, you hear, and you leave it alone!\"\nJennifer slams the phone down. \nSteven comes into the room and stares at her.\nHe seems to rise into the air, floating, growing as tall as she is, and she feels the cold linoleum against her calves, her legs….\nEverything becomes cold.\nThe cabinet door handle juts against her back, and she realizes she is sitting on the floor. \nAgain.\nThe phone rings. \n\"Are you getting the goddamn soap or not!?\"\nSteven comes into the room.\nJennifer looks up.\nApathetic.\nNumb.\nJennifer sees Steven is getting fat. \n\"Jenn! I leave for a week, and this place just…..\" \nSteven's face alters between anger and rage.\nHer son drops the azure blue crayon and looks towards his mama. His face shifts to uncertainty, confusion, and, finally, to consternation.\nJennifer lunges with desperation and folds her child into her arms so hard he cries out and tries to twist away. \nHe can not. \nJennifer squeezes and she thrusts her face against the hollow of his throat. She can smell and feel his hair.\nShe caresses the soft texture of his skin. \n\"Damn you to hell, Steven! Soap? Soap?! I'm getting your goddamn soap.\"\nShe cries against the coarse fabric of her son's sweater. \n\"I'm looking for it!\"\nShe can't breathe.\nPanic.\n\"I'm looking for it!\" She manages to mutter. \n\"I'm looking for it… I'll find your goddam soap...\"" } ]

[ { "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: Your Own Personal Panopticon\n\nGenre: coming-of-age\n\nWord Count: 1012\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story that includes the line “I think someone’s listening/watching.”" }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Knowing the future is underrated.\nYou probably already know your future, and you’re not even aware of it. \nWhen you were born, likely kicking and screaming, with barely a shred of consciousness in your mind, your parents/guardians had a plan for you. \nTheir plan could have been pretty typical and unspoken, like “I want my child to do well for themselves in this chaotic world.”\nOr the plan can be detailed and specific, with 613 rules and restrictions which this child is expected to observe from “adulthood” (12 for a girl, 13 for a boy) onward.\nIf you were born in the latter group, the years before adulthood are generally seen as a tutorial, where you learn the rules without your transgressions being counted on your ledger of life.\nBut from a young age, you are taught that you are always being watched, and by One that you can’t see, speak with, or hear from. \nNow, of course, you can pray and talk TO your prison guard, but you can’t talk WITH Him. There is no response, you can’t see or hear him\nHowever, you are taught that He is always listening, always watching, omnipresent, and omnipotent.\n—\nBeing watched, in many ways, made me feel a sense of peace and safety. \nAfter all, “I’ll watch you, don’t worry!” is a phrase that is regularly said by parents to reassure their kids when they are fearful. \nI know I’m not alone in having felt that safety in my prison cell. After the atrocities committed in World War 2, we all needed a little bit of safety. \n—\nI believe with complete faith that the Creator, blessed be His name, knows all the deeds and thoughts of human beings, as it is said, \"It is He who fashions the hearts of them all, He who perceives all their actions.\" - Maimonides (1556) (Jewish Daily Prayers)\n— \nWhen you say something over and over and over and over again, your mind learns it by rote and learns to internalize it as fact. \n“I think someone is watching”, said enough times, becomes “I BELIEVE someone is watching.”\nAnd believing someone is watching, while extremely restrictive, is still somehow safe. \nConsider the panopticon, a prison designed where there is always a guard watching from a central tower, who can see every prisoner, but the prisoners can’t see them. \nIn this hypothetical panopticon for the sake of this metaphor, there is a gap in the floor before you can get to the stairs on the way down, and there are no walls or gates facing the inside of the prison. If you ignore your known limits, and if you walk one step too far past the actual true limit, you can fall to your death. \nThe prisoner sits there, afraid to move as they don’t know where the limit of their cell is. All they know is that there’s a guard in the center who is meant to watch them and keep them safe. But the guard doesn’t speak to them. All they can hope is that the guard will make sure that they don’t fall.\nBut then one prisoner gathers up their wits and starts trying to find a way out of their cell. All of the other prisoners hear them trying to leave, and they warn them “It’s safer to be watched,” they shout from their own prison cells, “you’ll surely fall if you step too far.”\nBut the prisoner wants a way out. There’s a whole world outside that they know exists. These walls weren’t meant to hold them forever. So they tiptoe and push the line, finding their way outside.\nOnly once they get outside, there’s no one watching. No three walls around them and no ceiling above to keep them safe. \nBut they’re free. \n—\n“Frei” is a term I heard a lot as a kid, meaning “free”. If someone leaves the religious life, they are called “free”.\nGrowing up, I always wondered why.\nWhy do we choose to portray those who have “lost their way” as also being “free”?\nSupposedly because they were “free from inhibition and goodness”.\nBut I understand now. \nNow that I’ve stepped out and am walking out of my panopticon prison, I am free, and it is absolutely terrifying. I don’t see my way. I don’t see my future. \nEverything is open and chaotic.\nI was supposed to stay in my prison cell and be who they wanted me to be. Adhere to the 613, be a “good” person in their eyes.\nI would get married, have a gaggle of kids, raise them into the covenant of the 613, and be happy.\nBut in all but a few minutes, everything changed. \nI sat down and discovered that I did not believe that there was a guard in the center keeping me safe. I did not believe that, even if He was there, He was looking out for my best interests.\nSo I’ve taken the leap of non-faith and stepped out of my cell.\n—\nIt’s frightening to realize that the guard is either uncaring or not present. \nAnd after years of being trapped in your cell, most likely since birth, the outside world is overwhelming and terrifying too. \nWho can you trust, if even the great panopticon guard didn’t keep you safe in your cell? \nWhen you kept to all of the rules, all of the restrictions, kept everyone happy, and you still know that there is danger and hurt that can slip into your cell and harm you.\n—\nKnowing the future is underrated.\nI knew my future. I knew where I was headed. I was going to decorate my cell in beautiful fabric and furniture, I was going to invite people into my cell (or cells of their own, actually), and I was going to be happy with the beauty within my cell. \nBut I was not meant for a prison with three walls, I was not meant for a panopticon guard to silently judge me. \nI was meant to be free. To be frei." } ]

[ { "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: Day One\n\nGenre: contemporary\n\nWord Count: 2999\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about a character participating in Dry January." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Day 1\nMy sisters and I are doing Dry January this year.\nThis was not my idea. In fact, full disclosure, Day 1 is already a bust. I was doing shots after midnight, and then when I woke up I finished the beer on my bedtime table. But that was before I even realized what day it was.\nIt was my younger sister Genevieve’s idea to do this, and she got Lill and Jane on board, a few days before New Year’s Eve. We were all at Mom’s house, celebrating her birthday (December 27) - usually for Mom’s birthday we congregate at home with her for dinner and cake, and then go out to the pub all together. After dinner, I was making coffee, and they came running over to me, all excited. It was hard for me to say no to them, when they were all on the same page like that.\nIt’s not really a big deal, especially now that the holidays are over. Just a little time to detox and feel healthy moving into 2024. But I don’t know if I would have agreed to it except for Lill. It was Genevieve’s idea, but Lill - I’ve hardly been able to look her in the eye since her birthday. I just nod and say yes to anything she says lately, so I can stop remembering what happened. So when she came up to me at Mom’s birthday and asked me to do it with her - she said she’s been trying to lose 15 pounds and she feels like this will help - I just said yes quickly and went to watch TV with Jane.\nDay 2\nI wasn’t intending to document the month like this. Genevieve and Lill and Jane aren’t doing anything like this, I’m sure. But I’ve always journaled. I write every day, unless I’m not feeling well, so it feels natural to kind of keep track of the month this way.\nLast night and this morning, I had texts from my sisters asking about the challenge (“Noreen! How’s it going so far?”), but I’m sure they’ll run out of steam in a few days. It’ll be Genevieve’s 21st birthday in two weeks, after all, on January 17. This will be the first year we can all go out together. Well, with no one using a fake ID. I can’t imagine Genevieve wanting to miss that.\nDay 3\nI was going to see Roger tonight, and break up with him. I’m only 27, and Roger has become a drag. I was nervous about it - we’ve dated on and off for years, and he’s like family. I was about to break my dry challenge promise and do a shot - liquid courage, to get up the nerve to tell him - when he texted me, ending it. In a freaking text.\nI had this weird feeling - I was worried that Genevieve would be crushed. He’s been a part of her life ever since she was 14 years old, which was when we started dating. It was also the year Dad died, suddenly, of a massive heart attack.\nGenevieve and Roger were talking a lot on Mom’s birthday. Mom got a puzzle for her birthday and the three of them were sitting around the table doing it, but I could tell Roger and Genevieve were having a separate conversation the whole time.\nDay 5\nI ended up drinking the night Roger ended it. I didn’t call him after getting his text - I called Genevieve, and the weird thing was that she didn’t sound surprised.\nWhatever. I’ll get back to the whole dry January thing. I didn’t drink today, so it’s not like it’s that hard.\nDay 6\nMy sisters are driving me crazy. Genevieve especially.\nWe are extremely close. I think they owe that to me. How many older sisters want their little sisters clustered around them all the time? My high school boyfriend, Dave, and I used to bring all three of them to the movies for dates. Dave was so sweet about it. Later on he told me he was gay, so I guessed that made him welcome the distraction - like, it’s not like he wanted us to be making out or anything. We’re still good friends. His little brother Andrew has had a crush on Lill for a while, which is so cute because they’re both really shy. Like Lill needs three shots just to say hi to a stranger at the bar, and Andrew is the same.\nGenevieve is being sort of intense about this dry thing. She’s been texting us all about it every day, to see how we’re doing. It feels weird. Like, I’m used to fibbing about drinking - the doctor always gets an adjusted report when she asks me, “How many alcoholic beverages do you usually consume per week?” - but now I feel like I’m straight lying sometimes.\nDay 12\nI’ve been talking with Jane about the plans for Genevieve’s birthday, and they suck. Like it’s fine, but not the way the McAllisters usually celebrate another year around the sun.\nLike Lill’s 23rd birthday was LIT. We started at Dave and Andrew’s house - they have a rented house, them and two other guys who are super-fun - and their parties are awesome. They don’t usually do parties with like a guest of honor like this, but you know, Andrew is so sweet about Lill, and Dave and I are still good friends. I actually thought Lill and Andrew might hook up on her birthday, but I don’t think it happened.\nDave and Andrew are so sweet. They even invited Mom and Uncle Patrick for the first part of the evening, and Lill loved that. She and Mom are really close. Uncle Patrick is Mom’s brother, and they are best friends. I don’t know if they were always good friends, because I don’t remember him around that much before Dad died. But for the past seven years, he has been there for her, always and in all the ways.\nBut as much as Lill loved it, it was weird having Mom there. She got intense before she left, like held my face in her hands and told me to take it easy and to watch out for my sisters. I’d already had a few shots by then, and I saw Uncle Patrick looking at me from over Mom’s shoulder, and it all just rubbed me the wrong way.\nI can’t even write about the rest of the party. I mean, it was so much fun, but the way it ended was just mortifying. I felt like I ruined it for Lill, like I ruined her birthday.\nProbably because I did.\nDay 14\nI’ve been thinking about Roger and getting so angry about how he broke up with me. I know I wanted to end it, but I was planning to actually talk to him face to face. I was getting so bored with him - he was so career-focused, and he always wanted to stay home and watch movies and talk about the future. But he was still family. He was so there for me when Dad died.\nUgh. Can’t think about Dad today.\nDay 16\nI was just looking back and realized I never really wrote about Genevieve’s birthday plans.\nSo get this - she wants to go see a musical, The Lion King, just the four of us sisters and Mom, and then Uncle Patrick is going to pick us up in the city and take us out for ice cream, and drive us all home. They all think it’s hilarious because Uncle Patrick is a limo driver, like for a living, so he’ll be picking us up in his limo.\nI called Jane about it today, and was like, seriously, is this what Gen wants to do for her birthday? I know she wanted to do the musical but I just figured we’d end up at Lucky’s (our favorite pub) afterward. Which, we probably will, but that’s why I called Jane.\n“No,” she said to me, and her voice sounded weird. “I mean, we’re doing the Dry January thing anyway, right? Like, you’re still doing it, Noreen, right?”\nNow, right now Jane is the only sister I really feel comfortable talking to, and I did not want to mess that up, so I knew what I had to say. “Yeah.”\nDay 17\nThe party for Genevieve is tonight, and my stomach has been twisted in knots all day. It is pretty clear that all three of my sisters have been doing the dry January thing, which I honestly thought it was a joke after the first few days. It didn't really occur to me that I was failing at anything, and yet I obviously am.\nI don't even care about not drinking, but shouldn't I be able to do it?\nI'm not going to drink while I’m with them celebrating. It would be too intense. Especially since Lill’s birthday.\nI am drinking right now - just a glass of red. It’s warming me up inside, calming me down, too. After this, no more - I don’t need the grief. Well, like maybe a tiny bit more, like a half-glass if I’m still feeling jittery. But that’s it. And I won’t have anything at the show, or anything afterward. I mean, I guess I won’t be able to if we’re all together and everyone is being kind of weird.\nThe thing is, this all feels weird. I’m the oldest. The other girls are stair steps - Lill is 23, Jane is 22, and Genevieve, as of today, is 21 - and they have always looked up to me, and - well, I feel like if what happened at Lill’s party hadn’t happened, it wouldn’t be like this.\nUgh. It wasn’t even anything major. I just got sick. Like, so sick, all over Dave’s house. I woke up in one of his roommate’s rooms, in their bed, and I’d been sick everywhere.\nUgh, I really can’t even think about it. It makes me feel so terrible. I’ve gotten like that before, maybe once or twice, but only in front of Roger or friends. Not my sisters. And - Lill hasn’t said a word to me about it, but I guess I must have ruined her birthday, because she’s been so quiet around me ever since. The only one who has really been normal is Jane.\nI’m going to stick by Jane tonight. And - yeah. I’ll get some gum or something on the way to the theatre. I’m going to go now. There’s still a half bottle of the red left and I want to leave before I get even more squirrely and end up drinking it.\nDay 18\nWhat a freaking mess.\nIt’s fine. I have plenty of friends who aren’t best friends with their sisters.\nDay 19\nI still can’t even freaking handle what they did.\nI don’t even know how to write about it. And for me, I can’t always talk about it, but I can always write about it.\nBecause that’s how big of a betrayal this is. My three little sisters, who I’ve taken care of my whole goddamn life, have made a fool of me.\nDay 20\nI called in sick today.\nI drank all day Saturday and Sunday. Today, I drank a little when I woke up - like I finished my beer from last night, and then just had a couple of mimosas - but I need to get back on track so I can be at work tomorrow.\nI haven’t even wanted to write about what happened at Genevieve’s birthday celebration, but I think maybe I need to.\nDry January was basically a sham. They were all in on it, and it was all about me.\nWhen I got to the musical, I guess Genevieve could smell the wine on my breath. (Why didn’t I brush my teeth before I left?) She yelled at me, told me she wasn’t drinking on her 21st birthday so that she could support me, and if I was going to show up drunk, I should just go home.\nSo I did.\nMy kid sisters all want me to stop drinking. They think I have a problem.\nIt was all Genevieve’s scheming, and I was right that it all started with Lill’s birthday. I got a little out of control, one time, and they decided to gang up on me and pretend that they all wanted to do a Dry January.\nThey didn’t want to.\nThey just wanted me to stop drinking.\nDay 21\nI went to work today. See? I want to text them all and tell them. I’m fine. I’m functional. I’m doing stuff.\nI’m home now. There’s wine in the fridge, but I might pour it out so I’m not tempted.\nI don’t want to talk to anyone to -\nDay 22\nIt took me a minute to remember why I stopped writing mid-sentence yesterday, but it was because there was a knock at the door, which in this day and age is a really unsettling thing. Like I thought maybe I was going to be murdered, but it turned out it was just my uncle Patrick at the door, which was weird enough anyway.\n“Hi,” he said. “Can we talk?”\nI love Uncle Patrick, but I had no idea why he was there, why he was on my doorstep on a day when everything in my family was so bonkers. I invited him in, because he’s family.\n“You’re probably wondering why I’m here,” he said after he got settled.\nI nodded.\n“I heard what the girls did,” he said, “and I understand you must be furious with them.”\nI could feel my face get hot. “They’re wrong,” I said simply.\n“Noreen,” he said, his voice gentle, “did I ever tell you where I was the day your dad died?”\nI was suddenly about to cry. Talking about Dad could do that to me, out of nowhere. He died of a heart attack a week before my twenty-first birthday, and I really try not to talk about it or think about it if I can help it.\n“I was in jail,” Uncle Patrick continued.\nI let an expletive slip before I could stop myself. He laughed, a big, hearty laugh.\n“Yes,” he said. “I’d gotten drunk, and into a bar fight. It was hours before your mom could even reach me. Once she did, I wished I was the one who’d died. Your dad -” His voice choked up a little. They were best friends, I knew.\n“I made a change that day,” he said. “I made a change, and a promise. Can I tell you more?”\nI told him he could. I didn’t feel I had a choice.\nDay 23\nAfter he left, Uncle Patrick left me with a list. A few names and phone numbers. A few addresses, in-person and Zoom, for meetings.\n“You’ve been holding everything together for a really long time, Noreen,” he said, hugging me, before he left. “I’ve been watching you. You don’t have to do this alone.”\nI was so strung out when he left. I walked out the door to the gas station down the street and bought a six-pack. For the first time in my life, I cracked one open on the way home. It was gone before I hit my front door.\nDay 24\nGenevieve has been calling me non-stop. I’ve ignored every call. I can’t talk to her right now.\nI don’t know how to bounce back from this.\nToday I called in sick to work to drink.\nWhat the hell is happening?\nDay 25\nI haven’t even been looking at my phone, so when there was another knock at the door this morning, I assumed it would be Mom, or maybe Uncle Patrick, sent by Mom to check on me.\nIt wasn’t.\nIt was Lill.\nShe has always been my best friend. Genevieve and Jane would pair up, and then me and Lill.\nLill is four years younger than me, which has always felt like a big gap, less so as we get older.\nBut when Dad died - me 20 years old, Lill only 16 - that gap felt really big. I was an adult. She was a kid.\nI let her in. She didn’t sit at the table like Patrick did. She stood in the doorway of my living room, surveying the mess. I felt hot and suddenly angry.\n“Just leave if you’re here to judge me,” I said to her. I barely recognized my own voice.\n“I didn’t come here to judge,” she said, her voice shaking. “I came here because Uncle Patrick said I should tell you about what happened the night of my birthday.”\n“I got drunk and stupid,” I said. “I’m sorry. Get over it.”\n“You slept with Andrew,” she said simply.\nI froze.\nI do not remember that night at all.\n“I woke up in his roommate’s room,” I whispered.\n“No,” she said. Her voice was calm now, no longer shaking. “It was his room. He remembers. I don’t care about him anymore, Noreen. But you - you’ve spent your whole life taking care of all of us. You can’t do it anymore.”\nShe got up to go.\n“You need to let us take care of you now.”\nDay 26\nI cried all night.\nWhen I woke up, I texted Uncle Patrick. He said he’d come pick me up. I rode to my first AA meeting in a limo, which my sisters will find hilarious whenever I’m able to talk to them again.\nI don’t know how to do things differently. I don’t know how to let people like Uncle Patrick help me. I’m not even sure that I need help.\nI just know that dry January was a bust.\nBut maybe, also, it wasn’t." } ]

[ { "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: Yanking Good Out of the Jaws of Bad\n\nGenre: coming-of-age\n\nWord Count: 1202\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about someone who breaks an unwritten social rule and the consequences they face as a result." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Plagiarism–a word that should strike fear into the conscience of every aspiring author–no matter how young or lacking in experience.\nSociety has many ways of exacting revenge on those who steal the writings of others by trying to make it their own. These penalties can range from putting a serious dent in the offender’s bank account to locking them behind bars for up to a decade. Not to mention putting an end to any ambitions in the realm of publishing.\nTo a high school student with little exposure to the niceties of the adult legal system during the somewhat sheltered world of the late 1950s United States it probably had far less far-reaching consequences. Maybe to save his immediate academic future he chose to ignore them.\nIn Tom Potenski’s very narrow and clouded lens he could only see the end of his academic career closing in on him like the gates of a medieval castle slamming shut on invading armies. He faced the uncertainty of very limited prospects without a clue or a plan.\nThe senior had managed to claw his way to decent grades at St. Anselm’s High School, particularly in English and history, but the idea of standing in front of a classroom trying to jam some knowledge into the brains of ungrateful, pimply-faced teenagers with no ambition had zero appeal.\nStanley “Stash” Bilesky, his English teacher and homeroom moderator, had assigned his class to do reports on books they read outside class.\nOnly Stash didn’t trust the literary chops–or lack thereof–of his students. So he assigned a specific piece of reading material to each of those studying under him.\nNow Tom, not a big fan of the cultural scene, had no taste at all for classical music. His idea of a classic ran to “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” by the Rolling Stones rather than “Beethoven’s Fifth.”\nSo it was the unlucky roll of the dice that left this aficionado plodding through The Autobiography of Leonard Bernstein thanks to Mr. Bilesky.\nPotenski believed he had more important things to do–like shooting one-on-one in the Seventh Ward Playground.\nSo Tom consulted his fellow class literary advisors. Like them, he decided to take the easy way around the book report. He copied the summary of his assigned reading from the book jacket and turned it in as his report.\nIt only took about 20 minutes to complete an assignment he would have slaved over for hours had he done it the way he knew society expected him to. He then turned in his masterpiece and waited anxiously for the “A” in English that he hoped would provide the first step in his journey to the local college.\nSelf-satisfaction transformed into fear when all of Tom’s classmates received their corrected book reports back from Stash but the teacher didn’t return his.\nRather than happily complimenting the budding author on a sterling effort, the instructor summoned him to a meeting in his office after school a week later.\n“Mr. Potenski, we have something serious to discuss,” he said.\nTom recently had given himself a quick course in the penalties for plagiarism, and he wasn’t at all sure that the authorities would be any easier on a poor high school senior with only a part-time job at the local drugstore.\nHad Stash pulled back the curtain on his little scheme? Would this smash the student’s dream of a shot at a somewhat promising career? Would he be wearing a striped prison uniform instead of the latest Ivy League fashions?\nContrary to his worst fears, for the first time in his God-forsaken life it looked like Lady Luck had shined her light on this budding Hemingway.\n“This, like much of your past submissions in my classes,” is an excellent piece of work,” the teacher exclaimed. “It shows much insight into the subject matter and a thorough understanding of this great composer and his brilliant career. I had no idea you had such an appreciation of classical music in addition to a writing talent which should pave a way to a career in journalism or authorship.”\nA lump sprung up in the young man’s throat as he struggled to speak. His sweaty palms shook as he took back his paper and viewed the large “A+” written on the top of the piece. He left in a hurry and returned home with a huge smile spread across his face.\nThe happiness was fleeting as his guilty conscience put a grip on his subconscious and refused to let him get even a moment of sleep.\n“I thought I lucked out,” Tom’s inner voice said to him. “Looks like Stash didn’t have time to pick up the Bernstein book jacket and compare its contents to what I have passed off as my work. This can’t last forever. Sooner or later he will find out. Maybe if I confess he’ll go easy on me.”\nThe next day, just as he prepared himself for the harsh punishment Stash would levy, the English teacher stopped him after the homeroom period.\nStaring down on him was not a congratulatory smile but the stern look of a judge about to sentence a condemned man.\n“I had some interesting reading last evening,” Bilesky said. I took a closer look at The Autobiography of Leonard Bernstein. Turns out your writing talent even rivals that of many professionals in the publishing industry. In fact, you managed to produce a piece of writing identical to the experts who marketed the promotional material for the autobiography. Copying another person’s written work could put a big black mark on your record that would stay with you for the rest of your life. What do you think I should do?”\nTom turned bright red as sweat seemed to pour from every pore in his body.\n“I probably deserve the worst penalty you can think of,” the student said. “But I would appreciate some mercy. I can assure you I have never done anything like this and I never will do it again.”\nJust as he prepared for the guillotine to fall on any hopes he had for the future, a smile replaced the look of anger on his teacher’s face.\n“You will, of course, have to write another report. To make sure it contains your original work, you will have to work on it during several detention sessions after school. I cannot allow the obvious talent you have shown in your other writing to go undeveloped. I will work with you to hone your authorship skills and do my best to guide you into a college journalism program that is worthy of you. In return for this, no mention of your adventure into the seedy side of the written word must ever escape from either of us.”\nTom Potenski went on to Rutgers University, where he graduated with honors in journalism. He also further advanced his appreciation for every facet of culture, especially music, and became a renowned music critic for The New York Times.\nHe never forgot the teacher who showed him that, looking deep within yourself, you can find real potential rather than relying on phony shortcuts to fame often forced upon you by taking the quick way out." } ]

[ { "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 Swear Jar\n\nGenre: contemporary\n\nWord Count: 1298\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story in the form of diary entries, written by someone who has set themselves a month-long challenge." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "1st January\nThe challenge begins. I’ve promised myself and my friends I won’t swear for an entire month. On the 1st of February, I’ll be shouting expletives all over the street, but until then, I have to keep my big mouth shut. ****, this is going to be hard. You don’t realise how much you do something until you make a rule that you can’t. A mate of mine suggested it as a joke. He bet me if I started a swear jar that it’d be overflowing by the end of a week, but I’m determined to prove him wrong. Now that I have to be aware of it, I’m realising I use swear words as punctuation. People always think it’s something bad and rude and filled with rage, but for me, it’s the same as a full stop or an apostrophe. I say them so much it doesn’t even offend anyone anymore, as far as I know. Still, I like a challenge, and I like proving my mates wrong, so here we are. Day one of anything has to be the worst, doesn’t it? It’s bound to get easier from this point onwards.\n2nd January\nDay two and I’m just about surviving. I haven’t sworn out loud yet – just inside my head. I think if no one can hear it, it doesn’t really count. That’s what I’m telling myself anyway. That’s probably what alcoholics tell themselves when they’re drinking behind closed doors. I’m starting to see the addictive nature of swearing. But like any other habit, it’s possible to break it. It just takes strong will and the desire to win the bet. I believe I have both of those things. I’ve quit other things before. Cigarettes are meant to be as hard to quit as heroin, so this should be a piece of pie in comparison.\n3rd January\nI said the f word in private. In my defence, I dropped a book on my toe. It wasn’t one of those flimsy paperbacks either – it was a Bible sized textbook. It hurt like a ****** ****** Thankfully, no one was around to witness it, so I’ll give myself a by-ball. Unless John finds out I keep a diary and takes the time to read it, he’ll never know. I might know, but you have to go easy on yourself. It’s not easy to quit anything cold turkey.\n4th January\nI’m doing pretty well. I’ve started keeping a digital swear jar on my phone, just out of interest. I have to add a pound each time I swear in my head. I’m doing it out of curiosity, just to see how rich I’d be at the end of a normal week, if I were allowed to swear out loud.\n5th January\nThe digital swear jar is getting pretty full. If it was real money, I’d treat myself to a drink tonight. I know I don’t deserve it though. I might have eliminated the majority of the swear words whenever I’m speaking, but inside my head its like a ******* men’s locker room when they’ve just lost a game.\n10th January\nI gave myself a few days off from journaling my every word. It’s tiring and it makes me feel bad. I’m not a journal kind of guy, but I’ve heard that writing things down is the best way to keep track whenever you’re trying to kick a habit. My habit didn’t harm anyone, so I’m not quite sure why I agreed to give it up in the first place. I can’t believe I have three more weeks to go. This is ********\n12th January\nI haven’t fallen off the wagon just yet, at least, publicly. I have only sworn aloud for very good reason, namely, whenever I nearly crashed my car and whenever I burnt myself cooking dinner last night. I don’t believe either of these things would have happened had I been allowed to speak freely. I’m starting to understand what it might be like to be grilled using torture methods. John doesn’t know I swore, so it’s all good.\n15th January\nI went for a pint with John last night. He claimed I said **** but I actually said “shoot.” I know because I nearly went red saying it. I felt like a seven year-old girl. He caught me out, but I denied it so vehemently that he gave up badgering me about it. I bought him a few pints to sweeten him up and he seemed to forget about the whole incident. Thank ****\n20th January\nOk, so I’m not the most loyal notetaker. But who’s going to hold me to account for it? I’m really only writing to myself anyway. I’m starting to seriously doubt the point of this entire exercise. If something is ******* you off and you spend time dwelling on it, isn’t that just going to make you more ****** off?\n22nd January\nI’ve decided not to hang out with John until after the experiment is over. He’s too smug about the whole thing and he keeps accusing me of swearing in passing when I’m sure my language was completely clean. It’s not helpful and I don’t enjoy watching him gloat over pints, so it’ll be goodbye John until the first of February. Yeah, he’s my main drinking buddy, but who can be expected to drink under those conditions? It’s like I’ve practically taken an oath of silence while he gets to say whatever the **** he likes.\n23rd January\nThis whole thing is killing me. I’ve never thought of myself as having filthy language, but holy ****, this is not fun. I have to police my every word. I can’t even relax in my own home, and what for? No one is listening, but I need to win this bet fair and square. I’ve made a couple of exceptions, but overall, I’ve stuck to the ******* rules.\n25th January\nToday was my day off, so I stayed in bed most of the day, chilling out and destressing. I played a few games, got some sleep, ate some junk food. It was a good ******* day. It would have been even better if I’d got to shout **** from the rooftops.\n27th January\nI’m nearing the end, and honestly, I’m proud of myself. It’s been a long month. Inside my brain, swear words are swimming around, like piranhas waiting to be released for their dinner. I can’t ******* wait for the 1st February. I’m going to wait up until midnight just so I can say whatever the **** I like. The neighbours will think I’ve got tourettes, but I don’t give a ****\n29th January\nTwo days to go, and I know they’ll feel like the longest two days of my life, but I’m nearly there. It would be easier if there was a bigger prize waiting for me at the end than fifty quid, but I’m still proud enough to make sure I win. John’s going to have a bad evening that night, between handing over his fifty and having to listen to me letting loose all night. I’ve barely talked to anyone in days. It’s not enjoyable when you can’t relax. My digital swear jar is filled to the brim. If it was real money, coins would be clinking as they fell onto the kitchen counter by now. But the sound of that fifty being folded up and put in my wallet will be so much sweeter.\n31st January\nI’ve almost made it, ****** ******* You won’t want to hear any more from me come tomorrow. I’ll probably never journal again. I didn’t know what a ******* release swearing was until I wasn’t allowed to do it. I’m not addicted to it, but **** it feels good." } ]

[ { "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 Woman's Glory\n\nGenre: coming-of-age\n\nWord Count: 1069\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about someone who is shackled by fears of failure, until they break free." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "My mother’s hair falls down her back, like waves of amber, ebbing and flowing till it reaches her waist. It drinks the warm rays of the sunlight, gently swaying in the breeze. I run up behind her, and press my face into the locks. They brush my cheeks, soft like the tufts of dandelion clutched in my tiny hand. I watch Father tuck a strand behind her ear as their foreheads touch, and I smile. \nMy hair falls around my shoulders, flaxen strands curling this way and that, like a bird’s nest. It is woven with grass, and strands of clover flowers. The wind whips it about my face, stinging my nose and the tender curve of my neck. I lie down on the blanket, resting on Mother’s lap, and feel the gentle tug and pull of her fingers. The tangles and knots are undone at her touch.\nGrandmother’s hair is pulled up tight, carefully wrapped around her head, like a hive. Black pins show their tips against the silver strands that are sprayed into place, smelling of floral solvent. I watch her carefully tease the roots, scraping and scratching with bristly combs, till the fine strands that beg to lay gently against her scalp extend voluminously upward. She removes her housecoat, and carefully slips the dress over her head. The dress reaches down, her hair reaches up.\nMy auntie’s hair hugs her face. It hugs her ears, and the nape of her neck. Tiny strands, like wisps of straw, pale and golden. I can see all of her face. I can see the rings that dangle from her earlobes, and the blush that tints her cheeks with a shade of rose. When her head turns, the rings clink against one another, like the soft bells of a windchime. The other women stare, but Auntie looks right at them, and then they look away.\nCousin’s hair is dark, with tips that curl like fallen leaves, reaching in to themselves. She grips the strands, and drags her brush through, pulling the oil from root to tip till it shines. It’s not as long as Mother’s, even though they are the same age. There is jealousy in her whisper. She scolds as Mother weaves a braid through my unruly tangles. I hear her voice, but the words are not her own. Cousin has simple thoughts, with simple words. These words, I do not understand.\n “Women should dress modestly, not with braided hair…” \nMy sister’s hair is long and straight, the color of acorn and honey. It pours down her arms, pooling at her elbows. It feels smooth, like velvet. No tosses or turns in the night can divert the path of her locks. They resist the curls my own eagerly embrace. Mother gathers the strands around Sister’s ears, and pulls the hair back, restraining it amid metal clasps topped with bows of lace. The white lace floats like a water lily amid the cascades of her hair.\nMiss Lois’s hair is gray and coily. Tight rings press against her head, barely reaching past her ears. She doesn’t use pins, or bristly combs like Grandmother. But her hair also smells of lavender, and feels like wool. I can see all of her face, too. Her skin is brown, and soft, lined with age that shows when she smiles and frowns. She pulls me close, and holds me tight. Sometimes too tight. But there is always love in her voice.\nKenya’s hair is black, and kinky. Sometimes, it is braided, and close to her head, twisting till it gently lays at her shoulders. Sometimes, it is fluffed and round, like a chef’s toque. Sometimes, she gathers it into clusters, knotting each one into a small bun. I don’t know what her hair feels like. But I think it’s beautiful. And I try to tell her as often as I can.\nAvery’s hair is the color of autumn, shades of red and orange and burgundy in the shifting light. It spirals in ringlets around her green eyes, its brilliant tones heightened against her pale skin. Freckles dot the rise of her cheekbones. As I look at her, I feel my first touch of envy. \nMy hair falls down my back, a testimony of thirteen years. It ambles along, almost reaching my waist, heavy with daily washes and nightly brushing. I run my fingers along the strands, voices filling my head. Complex words and complex thoughts that I struggle to understand.\n“But since it is disgraceful for a woman to cut off her hair or shave her head, let her have long hair.”\nMy hair falls down my back, unfurled from an elastic band, as I slide into the stylist's chair. She smiles and asks me what I want. My answer startles her. I gasp as she makes the first cut, and she hesitates. But I do not move. I listen to the sound of her scissors, opening and closing on the long, tangling strands, bringing the nesting curls closer and closer to my chin.\nMy hair falls to the floor.\nI can see all of my face. \nThe other women stare, but I look right at them, and they frown. Their scowl makes me wonder, how you look at me now. Did something change between us? Was our tether so fragile it was cut that day I sat in the chair? My family scolds, confusion in their whispers.\n“But if a woman has long hair, it is a glory to her, for her hair is given to her for a covering.”\nTheir fear makes me wonder, how you speak of me now. Their faith in me is so fleeting, it shakes from the force of strands hitting the bleached tiles of the salon. I do not seek glory. I do not desire loud praise. No. I long for a whisper that will affirm in my mind what my soul already knows. \nMy hair grows. Sometimes I cut it. Sometimes I do not. Sometimes, I braid it. Sometimes, I let the wind take hold, and toss it to and fro. Sometimes it is sandy, like the line of coast that receives the ocean, wave after wave. Sometimes, it’s red, like the autumn I longed for, colors changing with the season, both without and within. \nAnd I rest in the confidence of your promise.\n“Man looks at the outward appearance, but I look at the heart.”" } ]

[ { "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: Zone Defense\n\nGenre: contemporary\n\nWord Count: 2704\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about a character participating in Dry January." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The boos cascaded like rushing rapids onto the blond hardwood.\n They splashed back up, wave-like into Jimmy’s mouth and nostrils, damn near wetting his hair already coated with sweat.\n The boos were for him.\n All him.\n Damn, I love this game, he thought.\n A lesser coach, a poor man’s version of himself, one who merely hoped to win, or one who even planned to win but failed at least half of the time, would have folded in that moment of duress and provocation.\n They would have sat down and cowered, maybe mumbled something under their breath to their assistant or shook their head as to rid themselves of a persistent headache or a gnat in the ear.\n But he was Jimmy Trost. He did none of those things.\n He guaranteed victory. And usually, he was prescient. Three trips to state in five years. No titles, but that was coming.\n “Coach, do you really want a technical foul?”\n The corpulent referee, a big, fat zebra with a bald head and salt-and-pepper moustache, had come running up as if to launch himself in a tackle. But at the last moment he stopped and stood in front of the scorer’s table and Jimmy noticed his right leg was quivering ever so slightly.\n That was Jimmy’s reputation. Volatile misconduct.\n Even the zebras feared him.\n What happened next was a shit idea, but often when provoked, one revels in antisocial tendencies.\n “Go right ahead,” Jimmy replied, and he removed his ginger-tweed sport coat and handed it to someone behind him, he didn’t see. Probably one of his players or Kelso, that dipshit of a team manager whose only contribution to the Barton School men’s basketball team—and they were men, at least when Jimmy got done with them—was handing out towels and green cups of water with the orange Gatorade logo.\n Fatso didn’t crease his face.\n Clearly, he was nonplussed.\n He formed a T with the palms and erect fingers of his hands.\n Technical foul.\n Two shots for the home team, which wasn’t the Barton School.\n Jimmy’s five starters stood at half court, wiping the bottoms of their sneakers with their own palms. One of them was wiping the sweat off of his lips with the collar of his jersey. Each seemingly stared off in a different direction, as if to survey the crowd and its intentions.\n They stared as if they had seen it all before.\n There was pinprick of silence generated by the collective inhaling of hundreds of opposing fans, and then a cacophony of cheers sprinkled with, “Siddown asshole!” and “F you, Trost! You suck!”\n Jimmy grinned.\n This was his moment.\n He found them almost arousing, sexual in nature, and he’d prefer to climb inside the sheets and let whatever happen, happen. A time when the clock stopped, or rather disappeared.\n His lips moved.\n “Hit me again, baby!”\n Another collective inhalation, but this time, the cheers and jeers were delayed like a land mine in the middle of the rice paddies in Vietnam that Jimmy had read about, when he actually read.\n Fatso’s knee wasn’t quivering anymore.\n He reprised the T with his hands and yelled at the mortified folks at the scorer’s table.\n “We’ve got a double technical. Barton coach is ejected.”\n Now Jimmy guffawed, making daggered eye contact with Fatso.\n He sensed movement in his left peripheral vision.\n “Come on, coach, you gotta go.”\n That was the skinny ref, some guy about Jimmy’s age with an indigo flattop, probably wondering if Jimmy wasn’t beyond taking a poke at him. Or maybe he was wondering whether the $65 he earned for reffing this game was worth it. \n Jimmy turned on his left heel and strode with purpose past his seated scrubs, toward Kelso, who held out the sport coat. He grabbed it, turned back on his right heel, and made a show of putting the jacket back on in front of the opposing fans behind his team’s bench.\n He was still grinning.\n “Get out!” they chanted. \n “Get out! Get out!”\n “You get off on that, don’t you?”\n Kay-Kay successfully spun a basketball on the tip of her right index finger, and it stayed put like a globe until she pulled her finger away and the ball nestled into her hands. One of her players materialized and she executed a garden-variety bounce pass. The girl ran off dribbling, the sound of ball hitting floor echoing in the near-empty Barton School gym.\n “So what if I do?” Jimmy replied, picking up another basketball and spinning it on his right index finger before lofting it in the air toward another of Kay-Kay’s players who stood nearby with an apparent question. She must have changed her mind because she, too, turned and dribbled away.\n “That’s your fourth technical this season. We’re only in January.”\n “At least let me have this. I don’t drink, don’t smoke the ganja. I’m a fine church-going lad.”\n That wasn’t true. He hadn’t been to church since Pops passed, that self-proclaimed, sanctimonious fundamentalist. As for drinking, he enjoyed a mojito every now and again. Ganja he left behind in college.\n Kay-Kay merely shook her head, as if she was attempting to release his evil spirits that had taken up residence in her mind.\n Jimmy Trost tended to keep others at an arm’s length, because he’d had enough of the sky-blue pink that came with people that said one thing and then darkened as they did something else. People who asked for advice, for example, and didn’t take his. Or someone who spoke enthusiastically to his face and then talked shit behind his back. Club coaches could be like that. So could entitled parents who’d spent thousands on club basketball, only to realize their kid barely made the team, much less start.\n Jimmy wasn’t that far gone to believe everyone was a snake, waiting to bite. To outsiders, it only seemed that way.\n Kay-Kay was his rare exception. \n She of the coffee skin and perpetual black hair band, with the belief that man-to-man defense always trumped zone—Jimmy didn’t agree, but they laughed about it—had been hired as the Barton School’s women’s basketball coach the same school year as he had, five seasons ago now. They were unlikely confidants. She told him things. He told her a few things, more than other people. Mostly they talked basketball: The proper way to break a press, for example, or the finer points of teaching the game to kids that had grown up in club ball and considered themselves hot shit by the time they got to high school.\n Or technical fouls.\n Kay-Kay had gotten one—one!—technical in her entire coaching tenure. But it was justified, she had said.\n As for Jimmy, he had lost count.\n He was a dragon on the court, with the refs, opposing coaches, hell, even his own players from time to time.\n But he won. The three times he had taken his team downstate, the media coverage had been so substantial that the Barton School’s marketing department leveraged it to the hilt. The equation went like this:\n Get to state = media coverage = Barton School prestige = increased enrollment = dollars.\n That was the quotient. Always the dollars.\n The school’s regents by and large overlooked his behavior for that reason.\n “You better be careful.”\n Jimmy looked up and Kay-Kay’s eyes bored into his own with an anvil presence, as if he had been caught stealing in the local 7-Eleven.\n “What are they going to do, fire me?”\n “You ever thought about what would happen if they did?”\n Nope. \n “Why do you hassle the referees so much? You know you’re only going to get kicked out.”\n “To relax,” Jimmy deadpanned. \n “You’re not funny,” Kay-Kay said, before blowing her whistle, the screech still filling the gym as she yelled to her kids, “All right, fifty free throws. Get to it.”\n “Besides,” Jimmy said, “if that’s my only vice, then I’m doing pretty good in life.”\n “Yes, but what about your players? What are you teaching them?”\n “That you have to stick up for yourself sometimes, otherwise people will bulldoze you.”\n “No,” Kay-Kay said, “you’re teaching them that it’s okay to react without contemplation. That it’s actually a virtue.”\n When Jimmy heard this, he was tempted, oh, ever so tempted, to remind Kay-Kay that she had never taken a team to state, though she had gotten close twice. As of January 6, 2022, her team was undefeated, so maybe this would be the year.\n But she hadn’t done it yet.\n Saying so would be an asshole move, though, and while Jimmy didn’t care much for most people, he did value Kay-Kay’s insights about basketball, and sometimes, about life.\n “Let’s see, reacting without contemplation,” Jimmy replied. “What do you think Bobby Knight would say about that?”\n The former Indiana coach had won three NCAA national championships with the Hoosiers and nearly two more. He was bombastic, confrontational and controversial, once throwing a chair across the Assembly Hall floor after (in his estimation) a bad call. His anger and sarcasm knew little boundary, especially when he knew he was right.\n Bob Knight was Jimmy’s hero. While he doubted he’d ever toss a chair, the thought had danced in the back of his mind more than a few times. Wouldn’t that be a hoot?\n Maybe. But Jimmy sensed the media-savvy marketing department, and the regents, wouldn’t appreciate the bad publicity. That could impact enrollment.\n Always the dollars.\n “It’s January,” Kay-Kay said. “Maybe it’s time to turn over a new leaf.”\n “I like my leaves the way they are.”\n “You ever heard of Dry January?”\n “What’s that?\n Kay-Kay shook her head to indicate her continued amazement that Jimmy simply ignored what wasn’t within the tunnel-vision confines of basketball.\n “It’s where you take the month off from drinking.”\n “I don’t drink.” Again, not exactly true.\n “But it can be for any vice,” she said, intently observing her players’ free throws, and not speaking directly to Jimmy. “You have the ability to affect change in your life, and by extension, the lives of others.”\n “Now, wait a minute,” he replied. “Are you saying I’m, what, flawed?”\n Then Kay-Kay turned to him. \n “We’re all flawed,” she said. “I’m only saying, eventually one of your tirades is going to get you in a helluva lot of trouble, something you might not be able to get out of. That’s what eventually happened to Knight, if you recall.”\n She was right, of course. That’s how Bobby ended up at Texas Tech at the end of his career.\n “I’ll just go somewhere else,” he said, with a flippancy that touched a nerve with Kay-Kay, because she took a baby step toward him and jutted out her right index finger. The carefully shaped nail was painted a fluorescent pink.\n “Just think to yourself the next time some ref tempts you to go off,” she said., “am I being myself? Or am I outside my body, being someone else? Being someone better than me?”\n “So the idea with Dry January is self-improvement?”\n “No, it has little to do with you. It’s about empowerment.”\n She turned back to her free-throw-shooting players.\n “Of others.”\n The ball sailed out of bounds into the faceless crowd of bobbing, screaming heads, and was caught in the second row by a dad of one of the kids on the opposing team. The man stood, and at approximately 6-foot-4 with muscles bulging through his gray t-shirt, he looked to be spry enough to take the floor. For a moment, Jimmy pondered how he would neutralize him if he actually entered the game. Probably a double-team to force him to kick it outside. Then you had to hope the shooter wasn’t deadly from three-point range.\n Jimmy flushed that nonsense from his mind when the referee—Fatso from the other night—signaled the ball had been last touched by one of Barton School’s red-jerseyed players, a stiff named Cowley. Fatso held up his left hand, fingers erect, and slid the palm of his other hand across the fingertips, then spun and pointed in the opposite direction, away from the Barton School bench, where Jimmy had been standing with his arms flared out like a set of shipyard cranes.\n Last touched by Barton.\n Opponent’s ball.\n “What?” Jimmy caterwauled. “You gotta be kidding me!”\n Fatso didn’t even turn around. He just ran down the floor.\n “Sir, the ball was last touched by fourteen!” Jimmy howled, speaking of a kid that, Jimmy came to think of it, might have been the son of the dad who caught the ball.\n There was the sudden sensation of something ricocheting off his left leg. It stung for a mere moment, almost bullet-like in its surprise.\n Jimmy turned.\n The dad had lofted the ball, not to Fatso, but toward Jimmy. When the ball hit him, the man remained standing and raised both of his arms in the air. Jimmy made eye contact with him and the dad mouthed, “Screw you.” \n Always wanting to get in on the action, because he wasn’t good enough to make the team, Kelso had grabbed the ball, ran it over to Jimmy, and handed it to him.\n Fatso arrived a moment later.\n “What, you’re going to let that go?” Jimmy hollered. “That guy ought to get kicked out of here. That’s may very well have been assault.”\n “We’re going to deal with him, coach,” Fatso replied, raising his voice over the crowd that had been simmering, but was now flailing with glee.\n “You better.”\n The referee stared Jimmy down with black eyes.\n “Come on, coach, don’t make me T you up again. Remember the other night.”\n Jimmy was then outside of his body, not in empowerment, but rage, the waves returning and splashing against his shirt, soaking his underarms, steam escaping through his shirt collar, forming beads of sweat on his forehead and cheeks.\n He stamped his right foot on the floor, leaving a black mark from the heel of his loafers in front of his chair. Oh, it was tempting.\n Jimmy thought of Bob Knight. \n He thought about picking up the chair and lofting it in the direction of the dad.\n The moment was scintillating. \n Would the regents have cared? They lived in a bubble of bean-counting that came from effective marketing and PR. That made Jimmy a tool, a means to an end. A way to increase enrollment.\n He won basketball games. Parents wanted their kids to play for a winner.\n Check that. His players won games. They executed strategy.\n Objective. Strategy. Tactics. The components of effective marketing and PR.\n The objective was to win. Everything else, from zone defense to three-point shooting, rolled up to that.\n Jimmy was still outside of his body, but the tide had receded. The steam had dissipated. The beads of sweat were drying ever so slowly.\n I’m someone else, he said to himself. I’m someone else.\n I don’t know if I’m better, but I’m someone else.\n I don’t know. Am I better? \n Was I sick? Am I sick?\n There was movement in his left peripheral vision. The dad was elbowing his way past other fans in the bleachers. A man in a blue windbreaker that said Security on the back in bold white letters pointed toward the exit, and the man complied, but not before delivering a middle-finger salute to Jimmy. The fans around him cackled.\n Fatso took two large Simon Says steps toward Jimmy and held up his hands in a near-wrestling pose, anticipating the worst.\n Jimmy was now truly outside his body, in a parallel universe of his own creation.\n Kay-Kay wasn’t there, but her ghostly image stood beside him, complete with her black headband and a Property of The Barton School hoodie. She didn’t speak. She was just…there.\n “Okay, coach. Just relax, we took care of him. He’s gone.”\n Jimmy turned to Fatso and eyed him up. He was tempted to remove his sport coat, but he decided it was now a bit chilly in the gym. Then he sat down, crossing his hands on his lap.\n His players on the court had stopped wiping the bottoms of their sneakers and stood at attention, awaiting his call for the next play. \n Man defense or zone?\n “Let’s play ball,” Jimmy said. “Let’s just play ball.”" } ]

[ { "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: Damn the Lizard Patriarchy\n\nGenre: coming-of-age\n\nWord Count: 1723\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about someone who is shackled by fears of failure, until they break free." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "CW: Off-page mentions of suicide and sexual assault.\n\nWhen I was young, I fell in love with a girl. Her heavy black Doc Marten boots, climbing out of her boyfriend's shitty old sedan, caught my eye as I stumbled off the school bus, my friend slamming into me from behind. I watched her smile and laugh, dumbstruck, before I was shouldered out of the way by other students, anxious to flee the tall yellow monstrosity behind me, but I couldn't stop staring. \nShe wore a crushed velvet blue mini dress, a thick black choker necklace, and fishnet tights that made her pale legs glow. She had the prettiest smile, big brown eyes, auburn red hair, and a light dusting of freckles that somehow pulled the look together, and I hated her boyfriend instantly for the way she looked up at him. She was my friend's older sister, but my friend ceased to exist when her sister invited me into her bedroom to listen to Nine Inch Nails and hang out on her giant, messy bed. We stared at the dark purple ceiling and twinkling Christmas lights and talked about how cool Trent Reznor was. I doubt she knew the depth of my crush, but she let me call her a friend, and at the time, that was enough.\nEventually, she let me kiss her, but by then, I had given up on waiting for her to notice me and had fallen in love with others. A boy, who became a high school football star. But it was the late nineties, and after an injury on the field, he became addicted to opioids and eventually overdosed and died. In art class, I fell for an upperclassman who had a shy laugh, smoked a lot of weed, and had a penchant for imitating Beavis and Butthead. It was always funny, even when it was stupid. The day before school let out for the year, he hung himself in his bedroom closet. \nWhen I was young, an ignorant acne-ridden clown of a boy who liked to talk about the cost of gas prices and how many guns his dad owned made jokes to all our classmates that if you were bisexual, you were selfish and that it was okay for girls to kiss other girls if you were in porn or having a threesome, reserved for the viewing pleasure of a man only. I remember everyone laughing; it echoed through the halls and followed me around between classes because I was young and confused, and suddenly I felt shackled by heteronormative expectations, afraid to speak up for myself because no one else seemed to like both boys and girls, but again, it was the nineties, and no one really talked about it, either. So, instead, I kept quiet and never came out publicly. \nWhen I was young, being a feminist meant a lot of things, all of which ascribed you graciously to a set of tangentially defined rules. A feminist hated men and fought the lizard patriarchy; she was definitely a bitch and thrived on the fringes of subculture, which was okay because it blunted the sharp edges of living in a society that normalized bad behavior.\nWhen I was young, my art teacher fell in love with me. He was old and balding and sweaty, and I can't remember if that's actually what he looked like or if it's the villainous image my memory recreates. He'd follow me into the darkroom because I was the only student interested in pin-hole photography, and he'd rest his hand on my thirteen-year-old hip and give it a squeeze. My friends and I would make fun of him and call him a pervert because I didn't know how to be afraid of him. I figured he loved to fall in love, like I did. He taught me to batik and how to use gouache and oil paints. He taught me screen printing and pottery and how to make clay molds. He was the track coach after school and told the other girls to stretch their legs, their boyfriends would appreciate it when they got older. He told me I was beautiful and liked to touch my hair. When the school year ended, he wrote me a love letter and left it tucked inside a box of a finished piece of art. When I found it, I balled it up, threw it in a trash can, and never saw him again. \nWhen I was young, my English teacher wanted to spend more time with me, so he invited me onto his boat at his lake house after school. Another time, he bought me a T-shirt and asked me to come out to the parking lot before school ended so he could give it to me because he left it in his trunk. I said no, but not the firm kind of no, the definitive, what you're asking of your student is wrong, kind of no. I said no, like he was just another boy asking me out. Nah, I'm all set. He didn't seem offended, though he no longer engaged in heated discussions regarding satirical literature with me during study hall. He stopped sharing his favorite books with me, too. I saw him years later at a bar when I was old enough to drink, and he didn't recognize me, or if he did, he was no longer interested.\nWhen I was less young, I left high school and fell in love with another girl. Like the first, she transcended all those who preceded her. Her laugh was so big and obnoxious it was embarrassing, but when she left the room, you missed her with all your heart, like she snatched up all your joy and stuck it in her pocket for safekeeping; to be near her was to live in technicolor. Time passed, and life pulled us in different directions. One day she sent me an email with a picture of her penis; she had a pair of scissors and a seam tattooed along the length of it. When I saw her next, her breasts had grown larger through hormone replacements, and she never looked happier or more beautiful. I still picture her in that baby blue lacy top, accentuating her new curves, her long neck leading up to the brightest smile. If you met her, you'd never guess she was sexually assaulted by five men in a parking lot one night when she was barely more than seventeen.\nWhen I was less young, I learned men liked you better if you smiled. Older men, younger men, teachers, store clerks. 'Why don't you smile, sweetheart?' Estimating the number of times a man's asked me that question would be impossible. I'm sure my scowl always deepened further, but it was clear you weren't allowed to make whatever expression you felt like making if you were a woman, and definitely not if you were a girl. No one ever yelled at boys to smile more, and I wasn't about to because I didn't care if they smiled or not. Why did they care if I did?\nWhen I was older, I fell in love with a man. Tortured by memories of abuse, he wasn't as easy to love as the others, and I'm never quite sure if it was to my benefit that I can now clearly define toxic love or if I'd have been lucky to avoid it altogether. He had muddled black prison tattoos covering the length of his arms, sold coke and heroin, played the drums, and was so punk rock I could sense his brooding for miles. He was half-Mexican and the most intelligent person I had ever met, and he spoke with such eloquence and tumultuous sophistication I knew wholeheartedly that I was inadequately prepared to love him. Eventually, I left him when he couldn't keep himself out of jail, and eventually, he overdosed and died.\nWhen I was older, I watched the world disintegrate. Men got into trouble for asking girls to smile more; the same men who were incapable of understanding the similitude of controlling a girl's natural ability to communicate because it pleased their eyes and conditional intimidation. The same men who were casually held accountable for retaliating against women for their rejections, however slight, though their punishment most often came in the court of public opinion, and to some, maybe that was worse. \nWhen I was older, an entire nation of women repudiated and bucked against a cast of puppets who assisted in reverting women's rights back to a time before the 70s. We watched our liberties slip between our fingers, and I knew without a doubt it was the same men who never comprehended the expression, men are afraid women will laugh at them, women are afraid men will rape them, thinking it nothing more than hyperbole (at best) who were responsible; the same men incapable of reconciling their reluctant assumption that equality existed the moment we declared it and reality.\nIt was the same men who didn't understand how making jokes about girls kissing girls reserved solely for their visual pleasure and porn makes a girl stay quiet.\nWhen I was older, I understood the extent of the patriarchal tendrils that festered and infected our world. And when I was older, I sat around a fireplace in an expensive hotel room with my straight, cis-gen partner, playing Scrabble, and realized in one strange lighting strike moment that labels didn't matter so much and that the ability to quantify your identity is impossible; language is stolen and reshaped by each new generation and that's okay because you get older and you realize you needed the identity as a young person because it helped you understand the world a little better.\nWhen I was older, I learned I didn't need to smile, even if a man asked me to and even if it hurt his feelings, because I don't exist for his pleasure. When I was older, I learned how to say no, even if it felt a little too late a lesson. And when I was older, I took comfort in knowing that the world would burn no matter what; there was a kind of freedom in acknowledging that all of us humans just needed to learn to survive each 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: My Oasis\n\nGenre: contemporary\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: Shimmering Sawdust\n\nGenre: coming-of-age\n\nWord Count: 1465\n\nPrompt:\n\nBegin a scene with a non-visual sense. Describe a specific sound, smell, taste, etc to capture your setting, then expand the story out from there." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "It started with a spot on his chest. A patch of dry skin, the scratch of grating sandpaper against fresh-cut cedar in the garage on Saturday mornings.\n“It strips away the flaws,” his father used to say. Aromatic, and naturally rot-resistant, it was his favorite wood to work with. Known for its beauty and durability, he was drawn to white cedar. Paler in color, and weathered to a silvery gray.\nHe picked at the little patch of skin on his chest constantly—tightness in his eyes—as he highlighted a passage in his textbook. The jangle of ice cubes against glass clanged from the desk beside him. The smell was slightly crisp and earthy, akin to frozen water when they used to go ice fishing in Hamlin Lake, where he would scrape his snow boots against the glacial surface while the clink and clank of tools smashed the truck.\nHis father gripped his wrist as he leaped over the exposed roots of elden oak trees, then pointed at the raised columns in the distance. “That’s where Charles Mears built a wooden dam and sawmill. Your old man used to go fishing with grandpa here.” Almost haunting, like the vestiges of an icy prison.\nEventually, those same callused fingers would scrape deeper.\nIt was either a sunset or sunrise—he could not remember anymore. The sun filled the clouds with magenta and purple, and its orange-gold rays blended with his skin to form a shimmering, flaky matrix. Not quite like the half-eaten croissant on his desk, dusted with powdered sugar, but close. Intricate and unique.\nHe pressed against the spot and felt new, pink skin. Smooth as wood after 60-grit sandpaper, rubbed with the grain until the pencil line was gone.\nAnother blemish appeared on his neck as winter settled in. Of course, the day he decided not to wear a scarf to the grocery store. It started the same—an almost invisible, rough patch. It reminded him of those childhood days when he would peer into the thick layer of ice and barely glimpse a rainbow trout. His dad’s favorite, with tasty, pink flesh.\nHe tried not to pick at it, but when the automatic doors opened, the air conditioner struck him at just the right angle. A phantom pain that traveled down his spine. Subtle enough to go about his day as if everything was fine, but strong enough to remind him of its presence when he tried to ignore it.\nHe scratched.\nThe flake fell to the ground beside him. He touched it—curiously and cautiously—and then felt his neck, where the skin was raw and new, as if he had smoothed the surface with 80-grit sandpaper.\nEach day, more marks appeared. There was one on his cheek on Thursday. By Saturday, a cascade of flakes fell from his face. Not snow, but more like sawdust. He worried his classmates would say something. Whether it would be a distraction during finals week, where any small noise competed with the ticking and tocking of the wall clock above the chalkboard. But none of them mentioned the spots all over his body. It was as if they could not see them.\n“Everything alright?” Brenda asked. She was his lab partner, and the only reason he was passing chemistry. He would sweep over her notes, using a green highlighter for concepts he understood, yellow for things he was still figuring out, and red for whatever made little sense.\nHe jerked, mesmerized by the streaks on his page, lines like the giant sequoia in Manistee, and blinked. “Yeah. Why?”\n“I’ve just noticed you’re always scratching.”\nDuring his morning jog on Sunday, the snow fell and fell in his path, dancing and curling like sparkling spindrifts, white and fresh against the brown and gray of the world. He stopped by a lake and sat on a bench to rest, struck with awe as the unmistakable smell of frozen water filled his nose, transporting him back to those days with his father. Ice fishing. The bitterness returned to his mouth, yellowish and green, reminding him of golden trout.\n“How come we don’t fish in regular water?”\nHis father’s gaze would flick upward, eyes fixated in a pinched expression. “Lots of reasons.”\n“Like what?”\n“Certain kinds of fish don’t come up to the surface until the water’s frozen.”\nHe would simply nod. It was usually best to agree. Avoid attention.\n“Oh, okay.”\nHis father pulled out a giant drill bit. He was hypnotized by the spiral-shaped blades as they penetrated the ice, slowly at first, and then increasing in intensity until the surface moaned when the hole was open. It was a sound he loved, once, until he didn’t anymore.\n“There’s beauty underneath.” His father’s gaze turned firm. Intense, as he leaned forward with lips slightly parted. “Come here, let me show you.”\nHe gasped, escaping from the memory as the taste of bluegill, firm and flaky, lingered on his tongue. As his heart rate slowed, the realization struck him. It was the anniversary of his escape. He had almost forgotten. No, not forgotten, but almost let it pass unmarked by an appointment with his therapist. Or refilling his prescription at the pharmacy too early.\nHe leaned back and gazed at the lake. Dazzling ice reflected the morning light, like shimmering sawdust after a third pass, softening the jagged edges with 120-grit sandpaper. Every day, the water sparkled like this. Pristine, and untouched.\nHe looked at his arms and examined the raw, red spots where there had once been flakes, now swept away into the surrounding air. It reminded him of spiral grain on wooden planks, their fibers like fingertips that bruised his skin.\nHe ran his hands over his legs and felt the new skin tingle, smooth like wood after a final finish with 180-grit sandpaper. Every kiss, every caress, they all left scars. The bruises had left marks, faded to red. The apologies and empty promises cut deeper, but they were invisible, beneath the surface.\nHe pressed his thumb in the space between his neck and shoulder, where the winter wind kissed him on mornings when he ran. His father had marked him there, too. On nights when his mother had to work late, and the smell of frozen pizza mixed with a hint of bourbon on dry lips that lingered for too long.\nSitting alone by the lake, he felt the sharp twist of the giant drill bit again, penetrating the frozen layer of ice, exposing what hid underneath. The nagging belief this was all his fault. How each pass over his skin was a loving gesture, meant to iron out the rough patches. Rubbed and rubbed, until he was raw.\nHe touched the rim of his lower lip, his father’s favorite spot. A flake fell away, leaving the blotch cold and exposed. He licked it, expecting to taste blood, like he did on those days he didn’t behave. Because big boys weren’t supposed to cry. But there was no metallic tang. No beard bristles clawing at him like a belt sander against an unwanted finish. No, the sharp sensation tickled his tongue. The sweet, refreshing scent of pine kissed with winter’s snow.\nThe sun warmed his exposed arms and legs. Little patches of new skin glinted in the daybreak. Flake after flake, they swept away to reveal something fresh underneath. The sawdust fell in big, fat clumps, gathering along every nook and bump of the surrounding trees.\nHe reached under his shirt and pulled a fistful of flakes away from the space above his heart. He held it close to his chest like something precious, then relaxed his grip. The sawdust swirled like snow, flitting around him in one last embrace, then soared toward the sky, dancing lightly above the water and floating out of sight.\nWith the arrival of spring, he allowed himself a moment to take in the colors, gleaming with dew under the sun. The sky shifted to periwinkle, and the clouds filled with pink light. New warmth lined everything with gold, as if the world had been reborn.\nHe stepped away from the wooden bench and looked at his reflection in the water’s surface. To his surprise, there was not a single mark on his skin. He moved his hands along his legs, then patted his shorts like he was looking for keys. But nothing was missing. No scars. No rough patches. He had been entirely made new.\nHis body was a body untouched.\nWith a lightness to his step, he walked back home. He’d learn new skills, on his own terms. It was still too early for him to try woodworking or ice fishing again. Maybe he would eventually, after the dust settled. Regardless, his father was right about one thing, even now.\nThere’s beauty underneath." } ]

[ { "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: Green Curtains\n\nGenre: contemporary\n\nWord Count: 1139\n\nPrompt:\n\nSet your story during polar night." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Adelyn Pepper didn’t open her curtains anymore. It was a cautious step, and one she had thought about carefully. Her ultimate goal in life, as in all our lives, was pure and total happiness. Things just kept getting in the way. \nShe had left Vancouver because it was too wet. No one can be happy when the sky is grey. Salt Lake City was too busy. Santa Monica was too hot. She moved to Svalbard in the summer and the sun didn’t set for 99 days. It was perfectly dry and peaceful. Happiness was close, but the work was not done yet. \nShe just needed a few adjustments. She bought a new kettle and warm clothes. She needed new curtains (the current, green, were faded to olive). And she would need them before the winter, when the sun would set and not rise again for 84 days.\nThere was no trick to it, one just had to keep working at it. Happiness isn’t easy to come by but Adelyn was sure her hard work and sacrifice were the key.\nShe was not satisfied with any curtains she could buy, so she ordered several bolts of heavy emerald velvet, strong thread, and sewing needles. It was hard work and she made several mistakes, always throwing out the whole project and beginning anew. She would never be happy with something close to perfect, after all. She worked through the scarce daylight hours and found the sun reflected off the snow provided excellent light to create perfect things. \nBut, the days were growing shorter and she hated to see the dark. So, she pulled her curtains tight each and every night before the sun had set. \nThen Nic moved in next door. \nHe came over the day he arrived, before his boxes were even unpacked. There was still light yet, and Adelyn watched him approach through a narrow gap made by flipping up the edge of her old olive curtains.\nIt was close to dark, and still he knocked. When she answered, he came in without asking and closed the door behind him. \n“Hullo!” he said. Shouted, really. “I wanted to introduce myself before it was too late. You must be cold here and I have a great heater if you’re ever looking for a warm spot and a chat” His manners were rough and his sense for the interest of others, even worse. \nAdelyn grimaced as he rambled about his move, his love of the polar nights in Svalbard (he was a researcher of some kind, she gathered), his penchant for hot toddies, and… well, she stopped listening right about then. Her mind went back to her curtain design as he spilled his stories, noticing with very little interest when he began walking around the room picking up her belongings with delight while he spoke.\nIt was only when he grasped the curtains that her focus shifted. \n“Leave them!” she cried. She might not have her perfect happiness yet but she would not backslide by letting the dark into her home now. He looked skeptical, but dropped the handful of fabric and launched back into his explanation of solar wind, as if she’d never spoken. \nNic would come over every evening that first week. At first, she was annoyed by the disruption. But, as the days passed she found the routine soothing. As the sun approached the horizon, she set the water to boil and pulled out her sewing. His constant presence and familiar voice kept her hands steady enough to work by lamplight, and the extra hours of stitching got her closer and closer to her perfect every day. \nNic would arrive with the whiskey and get to pouring while he told her of his day and waxed poetic about the sights he had seen. She would listen with one part of herself and let the other focus on her stitches and the happiness she would finally achieve. \n“I couldn’t be happier” Nic said one day, as if reading her mind. He had been talking about magnetic fields, hadn’t he? What about magnetic fields made him so happy? She knew better.\n“You could be,” she said. He stopped mid-breath, about to launch back into talk of his research before she had spoken up. Adelyn usually didn’t contribute much to their conversations and definitely didn’t contradict. Contradiction was conflict and happiness was not conflict. Yet, he only smiled.\n“Alright then, Addie, how could I be happier?” \n“You could be warmer, for one”\n“I prefer the cold. It gives me license to warm up with sweet drinks and sweeter company”\n“It could be quieter”\n“But, there’s so much to hear”\n“You could be somewhere with longer days and sunshine”\n“The nights are my favourite time. But, you’re right - I do love the light” he smiled at her and looked wistfully at the curtained windows. He clearly recognized the poor state of her curtains.\nSatisfied, Adelyn nodded to signal she was done. Nic knew her well by now and understood he should go back to speaking about his research. When their drinks were done, he let himself out. \nWhen Nic came to the door the next evening, he found it locked. She hoped he would understand.\nShe covered her ears as he called her name. She didn’t answer. He wouldn’t return for many days. Though, days were hard to measure as the long night had come and sun no longer shone in Svalbard. In the face of the constant darkness, Adelyn had resolved to keep her curtains and doors closed for the 84 days it would take for the sun to rise again.\nSometimes she thought she heard him outside her window or at her door, and she wished he would go away. Other times, the house was so quiet she wished she could open the door wide and call for him. But, letting him back in meant letting the dark in too. \nAfter 12 days of night, a knock came at the door once again.\n“Addie?” she recognized his voice. “It’s a clear sky, won't you open up for just a moment?” When no answer came, she heard the crunch of his footsteps receding. She stared at the door frame, and almost missed it. \nA fluttering against the curtains. Undulating and colourful. Light.\nShe pulled the curtain away to find Nic, standing outside her window. He was adjusting a large set of solar panels, he had told her about them once. And bouncing off the panels came the light, shimmering violet, gold, and so much green. It was bright and filled her with wonder. It was coming from the night sky, and made that much more beautiful for the darkness it suffused.\nDropping the curtain, Adelyn bundled herself in her warmest clothing and opened her door to let it all 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: What makes love last?\n\nGenre: contemporary\n\nWord Count: 1637\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about someone who has been tasked to keep a flame burning, surrounded by total darkness." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Iteration 7996.\n\nWe sit across the mud-stained table from one another. Our legal cavalry sit either side, worn by a battle they intentionally made worse to benefit their own pockets. The table is so god damn wide, wide enough to fit all the worldly possessions we built together, ready for them to be un-ceremonially separated.\n\nI’m not sad; that's a lie I’m distraught, but not that we’re getting divorced, it’s happened so many times before nothing surprises me any more. What I can’t fathom, as I hear her discuss how we’ll sell the summer house we so lovingly restored five years ago, is why this time it didn’t work. Why after 7996 times I couldn’t keep it alive?\n\nI put my head in my hands. I did everything right, I followed the rules, I played my part. I got that finance job so I could give her everything; maybe it meant I wasn’t around as much but it was all for her she knew that right? I knew her well enough by now though, I knew she needed to fly on her own. All the other times she’d been able to fly with me by her side just not this time. It had happened before but not like this, not out of nowhere.\n\nI hear her voice slow and I look over at her across the table through no-mans land. Her eyes rise to mine ever so slightly beneath wet eyelashes, diamonds of pain just hanging there with no one to wipe them away, a jewelry box of the weeks and months of hurt this so obviously caused her. My body screams. It was my job to protect her, to find her in this darkness not bring her bloody destruction. My hand moves towards her automatically, hers slips under the table.\n\nIn a weird way I question whether she knows what I know, that this isn’t the end for us, it’s just another iteration of us finding each other in the abyss. It was my job to make sure our souls found each other, like some kids magnetic science experiment across whatever warped time continuum was thrown at us. She curls her bottom lip, like the way a mouth would if it had shoulders, almost as if to say better luck next time punk.\n\nBetween us lay a gaping void, not just in space but in time. The wooden table seemed to expand a little, the universe acknowledging I’d fully lost her in this moment and order needed to be restored. Well the universe could go fuck itself because I knew my job and I was god damn good at it. I would have better luck next time.\n\nIteration 7997.\n\nWe sit across the train carriage table from one another. It is the perfect meet-cute, I imagine us telling our kids how perfect it was. We met on a train as it rattled through the countryside and it was love at first sight and we lived happily ever after the end. \n\nShe has a set of headphones in so I need to get her attention in a non-creepy fashion. This isn’t exactly a problem I know how she thinks, but I have to do it in a way so she doesn’t cotton on to the fact I know her to her core. I never know the situational stuff like where she grew up, that changes every iteration, but stuff like I know she hates cucumber because it tastes too bland. I know if you asked her for her favourite flower she’d say anything that came from a bulb, but leave it in the ground pretty please. I know her favourite painting is Whistlejacket in the National Gallery, but I wonder if even she knows that yet?\n\nEither way, you get the concept, I’m her and she’s me, the universe is willing this to happen, this time it has to be it. When she sat down she’d smiled, keeping her warm eyes on me for a second longer than she should, her yellow hair tumbling round her because she’d obviously run to make the train, standard Karis. My body is hot imagining how quickly this might happen, how we might be in the train toilet banging it out before we even arrive at our destination. Even after 7997 attempts I can’t get over how much I need her, how much I yearn to find her body in the darkness.\n\nI put my hand into my bag, her eyes follow me. I pull out a worn copy of A Picture of Dorian Grey, her eyes widen slightly at the cover, I know her brain will want to ask, you’re a lucky guy if this is your first time reading that, and she would be right, in every iteration in all the time continuums in all the world I am one hell of a lucky guy.\n\nHer face softens with the book reveal but no words come. She lifts her hands to the table and starts texting on her phone, a shining wedding band appears on her slender left hand, not showing the wear and tear of age.\n\nFor fucks sake. This was karma for making her so upset in the last iteration, fuck fuck fuck.\n\nIteration 7998.\n\nWe sit across the canteen table from each other. In front of me is a blue tray with an unusual array of chocolate pudding, cheese and a portion of tomato soup, Heinz to be specific. She looks at me with a proud sense of satisfaction, on account of her managing to squirrel together all of these strange items from the hospital kitchen unobstructed.\n\nIn front of her is a flask of coffee, she sips it gently whilst asking me how I’m feeling, if I wanted anything else, if I was feeling positive post this current round of chemotherapy. I smile at her.\n\nTo be clear I’m not feeling good and I’m not feeling positive. She knows what I know, she is my doctor for heavens sake, she knows I don’t have long left but does everything she can to make hospital trips slightly more palatable.\n\nWhen she accidently bumped me in the hospital car park I was so relieved, ready to start my courting routine at any time, any place. When I quickly realised she was my consultant that caused a bit of a spanner in the works. Even when I asked her out she flat refused due to breech of contract, saying I had to be discharged as a patient for her to date me. It was fucking typical that since then I'd never really been discharged.\n\nThankfully, she was keeping alive whatever this weird doctor / patient flame was even when I had no strength to. I loved her even more for that if that was even possible.\n\nAt the table her delicate hands cling onto the flask, as if they want to ask a question that her mouth won’t let her. We’d met too late. I was too late. I’d soon leave her, another iteration down the trash because of my inability to say no to a cigarette.\n\nHer hand creeps to mine. I look at her. Her eyes are wet. I need to kiss her and can’t believe I’ll have to wait until the next iteration, whenever the hell that would be, whether I'll even meet her in time. This was becoming a fucking disaster.\n\nIteration 7999.\n\nI sit at the kitchen table, Sunday newspaper open to the back pages, to the obituaries.\n\nI’d gone through most of this life not being able to find her and then today of all random days she crops up.\n\nKaris Dean, loving mother and wife to Harris Dean, passed away peacefully in her South London home after 10 years of marriage. Mrs Dean taught English Literature at Pimlico Girls School and was a lifelong lover of classical music, playing both the piano and clarinet.\n\nWorst of all I knew Harris, a long time ago, we’d been at university together. He followed the path I bloody should have, lucky sod.\n\nI wish I was back in iteration 6985. The one where we dated in university and she just drifted away. She was happy, I’d made her happy even for a tiny snapshot and she had a wonderful life.\n\nMaybe that was all I could give her, maybe that was all I could do for our flame, just keep it from being extinguished all together. A bright blot in the sky that eventually fizzles out.\n\nI deserved to stay in darkness for the fucking mess I’d made.\n\nIteration 8000.\n\nWe sit across the office table from each other, me holding her script in my hand.\n\nWe’re going through her screenplay at the start of a new film production. I found acting when I was older, mainly on account of me having all my hair, and she had come into her own through writing after a successful stint as an actress herself. I’d always watched her from afar, scared at what I might bring if I forced my way into her life.\n\nI needed her to be happy, so much so I’d just stayed away, she deserved everything this world could give that I seemingly couldn’t provide.\n\nWe open the first page, her hands are even more delicate in her older years, beautiful and balletic like her fingers are permanently choreographed. I take a breath at the thought of her hand alone touching mine after all these iterations, all these echoes and ripples in time and space, to this moment where we finally sit across from each other after building our lives apart.\n\nHer eyes meet mine, blue and deep. Orange embers flicker in them, like a flame has awoken, like something is only just beginning.\n\n“Our souls already know each other, don't they?”" } ]

[ { "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: Sometimes We Get What We Need\n\nGenre: coming-of-age\n\nWord Count: 1003\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite about someone who is shackled by fears of failure, until they break free." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I finally got to the Redding bus depot. After ten hours in a droning Greyhound, I was beaten and wanted nothing more than to stand up, stretch my body, get on solid ground, and try to relieve my mind about an upcoming do-or-die job interview. The meeting with three interviewers would include questions about my general knowledge of the position I’d applied for as well as my demeanor. A degree in Forestry from Oregon State was a huge plus but the job required the facility to deal affably with the general public as well as all the people I’d be working with and working for - things that can’t be taught in a classroom.\nI needed sleep, but I had to stay awake in the depot’s empty passenger waiting area. It was critical to ensure I’d be on board my 5:15 A.M. connection to Sacramento. Besides that, sleeping in a bus depot is like wearing a sign that says Come steal my luggage. With my interview just hours away I couldn’t risk any bad timing, bad men, bad luck, or bad dreams. \nI got coffee from a vending machine and took a seat on one of the long wooden benches. Setting my backpack next to me as an elbow rest, I opened my study manual for some last-minute cramming to help prepare for the interview. I was about to read from a dog-eared page when a willowy woman about my mom’s age appeared from nowhere. She looked around the large, empty waiting area, then focusing on the only occupied bench she took a seat near me.\nShe wore a plain, loose-fitting dress and shawl. Jangly bracelets dangled from her thin wrists. Her hair was parted in the middle, pulled back in a bun, and held in place by black netting. She smiled in a friendly way and said, “My name is Pesha. You must be exhausted after such a long bus ride, and quite worried and anxious about your job interview in Sacramento.”\nI couldn’t hide my startled expression. She said, “Oh, please. Don’t be alarmed. I knew about your journey by reading the claim tag on your backpack. Departure-Corvallis: Destination- Redding/Sacramento.”\n “How could you have known about the job interview? I haven’t told anyone.”\n“I observed your reading material and put it together with the Sacramento destination. No college-age person reads the California State Fish and Wildlife Manual just to pass the time.\n“The interview will not go well, by the way. The dream job will not be offered to you.”\n“Why would you say that?”\n“Your slumped shoulders and irresolute frown tells me you lack confidence, self-belief, and ambition. You’re inclined to avoid risk. You always imagine the worst. You worry about losing control or making wrong decisions. It’s written in your expression and demeanor. You need the caffeine because you’re afraid to sleep - worried about missing your connection or something even worse. Studying the manual is an endless exercise, not for a lack of comprehension, but a lack of self-assurance. Constant uneasiness about disapproval and failure has robbed you of the power to control your destiny many times in the past, and it will continue to plague you in the future. People become wary when they sense anxiety rather than confidence.”\n I was stunned! “How could you be so rude to someone you don’t even know?”\n“I’m a fortuneteller. The truth can hurt.”\n“Oh, so you think that gives you the right to just walk up and be insulting and nasty to total strangers?”\n“Yes. But I have good news, for you. I can alter your destiny.”\nAha. She had plans for me. I was a target. That’s when I figured Pesha for just some fast-talking, petty, swindler,\nShe leaned toward me knitting her bushy eyebrows and gesturing with her index finger pointing toward her right temple. “If you permit me to merge my mind with your mind, allowing me to make a few minor adjustments, I’ll give you what you need to help you to make a good impression tomorrow, and in the future in all your dealings with people.”\nI didn’t trust her for a minute. It was so obvious that she was out to take my money, although she had not yet mentioned the price. I challenged her, “Okay, so this is where you tell me how much it costs - right?”\nThe flat fee for changing one's destiny was ten dollars. “Quite reasonable,” she said.\nMaybe I should have been, but I wasn’t fuming, at Pesha. She had me chuckling inside about her sheer audacity. I figured what the hell; her time was worth something just for keeping me awake. I took two fives out of my wallet and handed them over. She closed her eyes and rolled the bills between her palms, making them into a small ball. I heard her bracelets rattling as I closed my eyes. When she told me I could open them I said, “So which lotto am I about to win?”\n“I promised I would change your destiny – not your luck. You’ll see,”\nThen Pesha smiled, gathered up her handbag, and said good night with wiggly fingers. I watched her edge her way to the aisle, and disappear through a side door to the street. \nMy coffee had gone cold, and I was alone again in the chilly, cavernous waiting area - and out ten bucks.\nBut, I still had more than three hours before my connection to Sacramento; plenty of time for some solid shut-eye. If I missed the 5:15, I could always catch the 6:20, no problem. I threw my boots up on the long wooden bench and put my head on the soft part of my backpack. I had this wonderful awareness and belief in myself, knowing I was absolutely guaranteed to ace my job interview. I wasn’t worried about that or any other damned thing as I floated off into a welcoming dream that had me as a California State Park Ranger. \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 Half-Life of Susan Marie Rabbitt\n\nGenre: coming-of-age\n\nWord Count: 2815\n\nPrompt:\n\nBegin a scene with a non-visual sense. Describe a specific sound, smell, taste, etc to capture your setting, then expand the story out from there." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Frozen sand crunched under my yellow rain boots, gnawing like teeth on stale bread. The neon rubber bickered with snow slumbering in heaps, heavy on my eyes, aching. The sky burned in my lungs, crisp winter afternoon mingling with pine. It blinded me as it blended into the lake. Geese bent into letters across the coastline, mournful honks rippling. Stragglers.\nToday is the same as every Alice and Whitt Birthday.\nAlice stomped, splintering the frozen reservoirs pinned into pockets of sand. Snap, SNAP, snapped bones. I shuddered at the reverb, pressed open palms to my ears, tendons like untuned piano strings. Thrumming.\nAlice shouted something I could not hear, beckoning me to race her, Whitt beside her, calling my name. Souris. Souris. He vibrated with giggles and grins, joking with Alice as she sauntered farther away from me.\nFarther, farther, farther. Where only the sun can reach.\nI stayed put, tracing Alice’s path, another dark goose in the gray light. I am always the watcher. The stationary center of a watch, dizzy as the hands revolve around me. Alice was the second hand, catapulting through living. Whitt was the hour hand. The minute hand was mine but I could not muster the courage to grasp it, firmly shake its fingers, a disorienting revolving door. What time did we read? We were never complete.\nAlice trilled with the thrill of speed like a warbler’s call, bare feet marking the sand like slipstick-stained kisses, arms fluttering. Butterfly wings. Cold air chafed her skin goosebumps, aching for the coast she abandoned in the pickup. Her pale purple feet, dusty like eyeshadow, craved her shoes and her peeled-off socks. Her leather sketchbook convulsed with her footfalls in her overall pocket. An essential.\nToday is the same as every Alice and Whitt Birthday. I was half their life behind them and they did not recall being eight.\nTheir sounds finally pealed distantly, citrus rind peeled away, pulp wedged under my fingernails. I uncovered my ears. Wind. Heart pounding. Honk, honkhonkhonkhonk.\nIce exhaling.\nI returned to collecting stones, my raincoat pockets soaked with them, sieving through the sand like a sandpiper, sauntering with wild hands. Resting on a flaking log, I lined them up in front of me, divided by shape. Smooth to irregular. Horizontally, smallest to largest. Vertically, light to dark. I chewed on my sleeve, salty ribbed fabric darkening with my saliva, as I grazed the array of stones, fingertips tingling. Over and over. \nAgain, again. Today is the same as every Alice and Whitt Birthday.\nThe dappled reflection of the sun on the ice ricocheted onto my collection, molten sunflower petals. The stones spoke differently now than the ones I pilfered in July, hollower when they chimed together in my pocket, paler, the film of gray crowding the sky descended onto the beach. In summer, the stones were iridescent, the plumage of a Grackle. I crashed with them into the clear tide, my own moon, courting the shallow end, lacking buoyancy. But it is December now, and Whitt cautioned me of the water’s edge. Ice and gravity and the cold schemed, unforgiving siblings.\nStill, they allured me.\nToday is the same as every Alice and Whitt Birthday. Their cake boasted sixteen candles, our mother’s eldest and my father’s dismay, my lovely curiosities. Soon they would leave me and molt into tangible creatures.\nWhitt and Alice raced, starting at a boulder. I was their finish line. Whitt’s long muscular legs panted, his auburn waves burning against the soot sky. He cackled with triumph as he barreled past me first. \nBut you did not win, I wanted to contradict.\n“That’s not fair!” Alice whined. “I should have had a head start. You’ve had so much more practice than me.”\nBut neither of you won. You would have to pass through me. Cleave me in half.\nWhitt shrugged, swaggering backward to face her. “Join track with me if you want practice.” A smug smile curled on his lips.\n“You know I don’t have time! I…”\nFading. Their conversation drowned in the frozen lake. Thin threads of light flouted the gray clouds, reflecting in the mirrored surface of the ice. The sun, the sun, the sun. I stroked a stone in my palm, two-toned, red and black.\n“Hey.” I jolted. Alice had perched beside me without my noticing. “I think I should use that canvas you gave me to paint the beach.” She nudged me with her elbow. “It’s even prettier than last year!” I smiled, eyes squinting, when she tapped my nose, the same way as always, in place of my name. Sou-ris. Sou-ris. Her finger danced from my face to vigorously flipping the pages of her sketchbook to a blank one, defacing it with charcoal scribbles, wringing out a scene. Rough, angular. Then flawless.\nToday is the same as every Alice and Whitt Birthday. The beach breathed, more alive than me, serene and callous and beautiful. I gifted Alice a canvas taller than me. She would paint it with this afternoon scene, my acrylic figure inconsequent in the corner.\nI became bored of watching her sketch, watchingwatchingwatching. I raced to the fringes of the ice, crouched down, and crumbled the coast like broken glass with my fingertips. Lacerating. I had no gloves.\nWhitt photographed me when he thought I was not looking. The click captured my attention. Later he would have the film developed and leave the photograph in an envelope between pages of my bird-watching guide. Watchingwatchingwatching. I was camouflaged in the portrait, feathery blonde hair lost in the snow. A transparent girl in a neon coat.\nHe pivoted to photograph Alice sketching, absorbed in her charcoal-darkened fingers, a streak on her cheek stark against the monotone. She shivered, a child December who felt a kinship with August, reveling in her heat and vibrancy. Her exposed skin quivered in the daggered embrace of winter, arms lined with shrapnel-like ice.\n“Come on,” Whitt huffed, replacing his camera in his backpack, and pulling her by the hand. “Be reasonable.”\nShe rolled her eyes. “It’s not that cold.” Crossed her arms, adding, quietly, “Chris is probably home.” Bit her lip.\nThey glanced at each other. At me. My father. He scribbled his face all over mine, my crooked lips and clear eyes. I stared at myself in the rubber of my boots, my defaced face dissected between the two feet. Searching for all my organs that could be sorted.\nI studied Whitt’s lips. Fuller than mine. He wet them nervously, tongue flitting like a lost feather. “Well, he’ll be angrier if we miss dinner.” He exhaled, turning to me. “Why don’t you come with us, Souris?” I shook my head, facing the ice again. “Fine,” he huffed. “I’ll be back for you in a minute.”\nThey climbed up the pined slope to the pickup and out of view.\nToday is the same as every Alice and Whitt Birthday. I studied my reflection on the ice, my cheek leaking with melted snow. Snowflakes encased my fingers, lace patterned gloves. I studied them as they dissolved, numbing droplets racing down my arm. Which will win? There seemed to be no clear victory.\nI removed my treasured rain jacket and the boots that hung loosely on my feet, shed my socks, and folded them neatly. My bare feet burned like cold skin submerged in a hot bath, feverish and frozen. Warmth’s wrath, existing precariously as Alice did.\nSkirting the edge of the lake, I entertained venturing further. Forbidden territory. I skated out a little, ice creaking like floorboards in the night, a lonely sound whose only companion was the wind. And the sounds of me, my breaths, squeaking muscles, and feet skidding feet. Singular in this expanse of emptiness. Void. Extraordinary. The ice cradled me the way waves refuse to.\nI was a May baby but Winter loved me.\nI pirouetted, toes screaming, ice breathing with me as the vast emptiness funneled in on me. Like dancing in my socks in the living room. Whitt always snapped photos of my routines, concealing them for me sealed in envelopes, protecting me with his spit, a painless blood oath. He and Alice were only half mine, fathered by a shadow. Did Whitt bask in that cool silhouette each time he braided my hair? Entwining my youth into his.\nMy attention sharpened as a buzzing crescendoed above me. An airplane. I bounced with excitement, my toothy grin infecting my body, a seagull swooping for crumbs. I darted after the morsels of sound, soaring on the ice. Slipping into levitation, the same state of matter as a wandering umbrella and a dandelion seed. The ruddy face of the plane’s wings peeked through the cloud curtain.\nThe ice ruptured. Tore like stitches, jagged, submerging me to my waist. \nSEETHING. Seething seeds, sprouts that broke my skin like the earth. \nI gasped, paralyzed. My nails pet the ice, chipping away like rotten teeth. The lake floor squelched under my feet, my jeans slurping the lake. Heart oscillating. Do seagulls crash and drown? Do they freeze and forget their buoyancy? \nI finally took hold of a sturdy patch of ice and scrambled out of the water, crawling backward away from the glacial canyon. I peeled off my jeans, my thighs and calves blushing at the betrayal like blood and the rust on the pickup. My toenails blued the way the sky should have been, no sensation in my feet. \nI collapsed, a deflated birthday balloon, breaths labored. Stationary in time like the lake that solidified on the shore. Infinite like Alice’s footprints fearless with no waves. I close my eyes to the gray sky. The wind screams and I become the water, geese screaming above me. Blurred away. It is just the same as flying in my dreams. \nArms gathered me like dried weeds, a wild flower’s corpse. \nToday is the same as every Alice and Whitt birthday. My limbs tangled into the December bouquet I always accumulated at the end of our escapades.\nWhitt heaved me onto the beach, driftwood. I blinked, disoriented. His face pounded, taut. “Susan Marie, what the hell?!” No half-anger for his half-wet half-sister. No half-concern. Everything bulged full, vaster than the number of grains of sand on the beach. “Are you okay?” he panted.\nI nodded. He rubbed my legs dry with my coat, sand encrusting my skin like lichens grasping onto tree limbs. Invading sandpaper on wooden planks. Crunchcrunchcrunching. I squirmed away, wincing as I pulled my legs to my chest. “What’s wrong?” \nA gash smarted on the back of my left knee. Skin mangled by ice, sand mingled with blood. I maneuvered my leg to show him the wound, which he delicately traced fingers returning red. He wiped my blood on his corduroy pants. Even my blood does not understand vividness. Cardinal feathers plucked into veins of brown. He tied one of my socks around my knee. “We’ll clean you up when we get home.”\nMy teeth chattered, accelerating into nervous laughter, unbridled as the cracked ice. He groaned, “Oh my god,” throwing up his hands, surrendering to my vexing nature. Weeds are notorious for their persistence. “I’m never taking you to the beach again.” \nHe haphazardly stuffed my things into his elderly backpack, threadbare and graying, without offering my boots back, aware that I would refuse, sand burrowed between my toes. He paused, glancing over me, then approaching and gently clasping a chunk of my hair in his fist. One of my braids had frayed like a raw hem without my notice, missing elastic loose stitches. He rummaged through his backpack, muttering, “I should have another…” before his arm returned from the void of his bag, an extra elastic clenched in his palm. His fingers sang through my locks, unraveling my chest, a hot bath, heavy and enveloping. I stroked the silky bumps, mismatched from the other braid, plain instead of Dutch. Half. Half. “I’ll do it properly when we get home,” he promised, standing and extending a hand to me. “Here, I’ll help you up.”\nI hobbled to my feet, wincing at my stinging leg, steadying on his forearm. “Now, come on,” he sighed, crouching down and waving me close. “I’ll give you a piggyback to the pickup.” I mounted, sucking on the end of the old braid like the spiral lollipop I begged for at the fair every fall.\nToday is the same as every Alice and Whitt Birthday. I rode on Whitt’s back, a horse trotting through the wildness, pines painting my nostrils with their sweetness.\nThis year I was his rounded wound, the world Atlas bore. Silence governed us, his hand shaking as he pushed his bangs away from his golden eyes, a buzzing cicada wing. I gripped him tighter than muscle leeching onto bone. It did not occur to me that fear smothered the words from him. \nWe arrived at the truck, Alice still barefoot and coatless. I smelled her joint before I saw her, musky smoke curling from her lips. I breathed into my sleeve. She smoked at the picnic table near where Whitt parked, glaring at the bright and absent sun, grinning broadly when I waved to her. I want to be her. She reveled untamed and lost. She is whole. Whole to a brother and mother, no fragments sunk in blood.\n“Alice, put that out,” Whitt grunted as I slid off his back. She flicked it on the ground scowling and bent to pour sand over it. Buried. She then skipped into the truck, passenger side, scooting over to make room for me. I hobbled in behind her.\nHer eyebrows furrowed when she noticed the bloody sock. “What happened? Are you okay?” She smoothed my hair. \nI did not respond, gazing out the frosted window, fingering the glass. I want to go back. To the place that sees me whole. The way the stars watch us above, silently. \nWhitt banged the driver-side door behind him, punctuating his sentence. “Idiot.” Idiot idiot idiot. “Fucking swam in the lake.” The ignition lit.\nAlice chortled, leaning around me to press my nose, weed enveloping me. Sou-ris. “Sounds exciting,” she chuckled. I smiled with my teeth over my bottom lip.\nWhitt backed the truck out onto the road, silently fuming. “Lighten up, Whittier.” She leaned into him and tousled his hair. “Just a bit of water.” Just a bit of water. Just a bit.\nHe slammed the brakes. “It’s not funny!” he shouted. Loud, ears ringing. Not funny, not funny.\nI turned my eyes to the corroding metal bed of the truck. It heard the pound of my heartbeat through my bare feet. Buzzing. Buzzing. It listened to the storm in our bodies.\nWhitt seethed. “You can’t be careless.” Idiot, idiot, idiot. My throat swelled with shame. “You prance around coatless, she’s going to copy you.” He is not speaking to me. His eyes melted down his face, cheeks chapped red. “She could have drowned.”\nMy voice quavered, barely audible. “Sorry.” He shook his head. Did not accept it. The word meaningless from the wrong mouth.\nWe suspended in silence, Whitt’s breaths the loudest. Inhale, exhale, INHALE, EXHALE. Finally, “No, I’m sorry.” He wiped his face with his shirt, a reset record.\nPlay it again. From the beginning. Maybe the story will speak differently. Maybe his sorrow will not sound the same.\nToday is the same as every Alice and Whitt Birthday. Except it was not. Whitt drove legally for the first time, the road whirring past us, droning. For once he did not play the radio. For once Alice fidgeted without words.\nI rested my head in Alice’s lap, sucking on the end of my braid, drifting into dreams, waking in a field of amber grass. Golden sun, speckled lake in the summer. My reflection was not my own, my hair dark and my eyes warm. Alice’s face. I blinked and the water froze, fading me back into myself. The grass animated, worms carving cursive patterns into the snow. They all spelled out half. Half. Half. HALF. \nI cupped my hand around one, allowed it to taste my flesh, a preview of my death, and demanded to know how many curies of radioactivity were calcified in my bones. What is my half-life? How long would I live inside you?\nWould you pick me clean or leave me to rot? Decay is the worm’s love language after all.\nAlice called out to me in the distance before I got an answer. Souris. We hit a bump and my eyes jolted open. Half-awake.\n“Souris, wake up. We’re almost home.”\nToday is the same as every Alice and Whitt Birthday. I rode Alice’s back into our home and I found a new photograph taped to my bedroom door. In it, I am at the playground, oozing up an oak like sap. In motion, a blur. Half in the frame. Half out." } ]

[ { "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 Northern Lights\n\nGenre: contemporary\n\nWord Count: 1609\n\nPrompt:\n\nSet your story during polar night." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Cecilia sits at a desk most days, surrounded by a forest of reference books. We ran out of shelf space for her library some time ago, but instead of extending her domain, allowed the books to become the room. Low piles of them function as tables, vertiginous stacks decorate the walls and a couple of her horticultural catalogues double-up as door stops and window props, but only in the summer. During the endless winter months, when it’s minus twenty outside, we lock all our windows, turn up the heating and convert our home into an arboreal retreat.\n* * *\nWe might have been adjusting to life in London if it wasn’t for Cecilia’s Svalbard seed vault job. She had a great job offer from Kew Botanic Gardens; a handsome salary, flexible working hours and private health benefits. \n “What do you, reckon?” she said, frowning after the interview.\n “Kew’s perfect, love,” I said, excited for her. “Go for it.”\n “What about Tiger?” \n “We can get a litter tray.”\nWe discussed it and she dithered. \n “He’s a country cat, you know?”\n “I love Tiger too, but come on, honestly?”\n “I’m worried he won’t cope with all the traffic.”\nIt’s funny how life works out, isn’t it? She’d searched for an ideal job and then two materialised. They employed the other candidate for Kew, but the Svalbard job sounded promising. However, I wish we’d read the small print. \n Before I knew it, we were on our way to a treeless island where domestic cats aren’t welcome; something to do with endangered bird-life. Apparently, the authorities banned them years ago, and we had to leave Tiger in quarantine. \n In retrospect, I’m sure our sorrowful moggy would’ve relished life as a pampered house cat in London. I often imagine him feasting on select morsels and scratching the bark from all those exotic trees in the Kew Botanic Gardens.\n* * *\nSo, we ended up moving to Longyearbyen; the world’s northernmost settlement. It’s a featureless township whose transient population of 1000 is outnumbered by polar bears, 3 to 1. The Statsbygg agent who interviewed Cecilia in Oslo said the position was a rare opportunity. \n “The Svalbard seed vault has an international reputation,” he said. “You’ll be considered an expert in your field for years to come.”\nHe listed all the benefits of living here, including a company car, a furnished property with proximity to the Svalbard seed vault, and a generous salary paid in Norwegian Kroner. \n “What more could you ask for?” he said, purring like a blue Persian feline.\nOf course, he neglected to mention there are only 40 miles of navigable roads on Svalbard and no connections between different settlements. \nBut I’m being picky. Now we fetch our groceries from Barentsburg on a snowmobile. That’s great fun on the weekend, right?\n Cecilia was well aware of the short winter days, but the agent dodged the details yet again and waxed lyrical about the northern lights. His description of the shimmering green veil that dances over the sky was most beguiling. He told her the aurora reflects off the snow and ice and we’d soon forget about the endless nights. \n “Tourists pay a fortune to watch that light show.”\n “Well, I suppose that’s true and---”\n “And you’ll witness it from your new home.”\nHe bamboozled Cecilia with his talk about the myths and sagas surrounding the months of darkness and how the Sami Nomads thought the northern lights were the dance of the dead. “Until recent times,” he whispered. “They told their children to come inside out of fear the aurora’d take them.”\n “That’s just superstition, right?”\n “I guess that’s not a problem for you,” he said, sliding the contract toward her. \n “I’ll have to ask my husband and---”\n “Honest,” he smiled, offering his pen. “You’re going to love it.”\n As a childless couple, we took it for granted there’d be a way to establish a family. We assumed there’d be childcare facilities and a junior school for youngsters. The agent never mentioned the subject of family life at the interview and after six months in Svalbard, we realised our mistake.\n* * *\nWe arrived at the end of May last year and ventured out into the community, chatted to our immediate neighbours and discovered all the delights that Longyearbyen offered. There are a few professional couples here, but most of the residents are coal miners. They’re pleasant enough, however, they all work long hours and enjoy chaotic social lives. \n We met no one who was born in Svalbard or owns their own house. There’s no option to buy a property here because the government owns all the buildings. Unemployment is unheard of in Longyearbyen, but that’s because nobody can live here without a demonstratable income. People come here to work hard, make money and leave. Workers and mining employees arrive and depart like migrating wildfowl. The population drifts in and slips away unseen like waves lapping on a beach at midnight.\n* * *\nTime stops still in Longyearbyen between November and February; endless summer days transform into an interminable night. The polar sun remains below the distant horizon line for the entire winter. If it wasn’t for a couple of twilight hours at midday, you’d think it had died; extinguished forever, having forsaken life on earth and condemned it to eternal night.\n Of course, the northern lights are visible and illuminate the landscape, reflecting off the snow and ice. The eerie glow more than compensates for the lack of daylight. In fact, basking in the flickering aurora was our favourite way to drift off at night. It was the highlight of our time in Longyearbyen in many respects. We felt part of something much greater than we could comprehend; a connection to the infinite.\n I recall Cecilia whispering in my ear one night as my eyelids closed. She asked me about the aurora myth and the Sami children stolen in the middle of the night. \n I remember chuckling and mumbled, “It’s nonsense, love.” \n She didn’t respond, and I forgot all about it. \n* * *\nLate in December, Cecilia wasn’t sure when, the little kicks in her stomach stopped. She got up at two o'clock to walk around in the turquoise half-light of the apartment, having heard a dripping sound. It turned out to be the icicles melting outside the window. It might have been the next morning, when the green veil reappeared and came out burning hard. She said it may have been the day after that or even the day before. But Cecilia knew she couldn’t feel the gentle movements that had accompanied her every waking moment.\nShe knew for certain that something was missing. \nA fist had tightened inside her stomach. \n “Lay your hand on me,” she said, guiding my wrist.\n “What’s up, love?” I asked, half awake.\n “Sssh,” she whispered, turning to face me. “Be gentle.”\n “There’s nothing there.” I said, stroking her belly.\n “Please don’t say that.”\n “I’m so sorry.”\n* * *\nNot much grows here; no plants, no kids and no families. Our local hospital doesn’t have a delivery ward because no one gives birth here; it’s not legal to be born in Svalbard. Expectant mothers are required to register their pregnancy and relocate to the mainland for their third trimester.\n Sure, there’s a medical centre here, but for anything serious, we need to travel to the mainland for treatment. We’d been trying for a family for a year now and never considered the possibility we couldn’t have children. It was there in the small print. We completed everything in a rush. You know how it is, right? \n* * *\nThey didn’t tell us about the awful smell of polar bear faeces. It looks like a cross between a crusted cow-pat and an acrid fox stool and boy, it honks. The first time I stepped in it and brought it into our home was horrific. Cecilia had a heightened sense of smell and it caught the back of her throat. She dashed to the downstairs bathroom, with her eyes-watering, clutching her stomach and hurled up her lunch. She wouldn’t come out until I’d incinerated the doormat, disinfected both boots and the entire hallway. We laughed about it later, but at the time I had to hold a cloth over my mouth. I admit I almost wretched too. \n Afterwards, our neighbours said, “You only do it once.” And they were right.\n* * *\nCecilia didn’t hear me when I returned from the grocery mission. I could see her ensconced in her arboretum. She was shredding a letter into a thousand fragments until it resembled a ragged jumble of Lilliputian Scrabble tiles. \n I kicked off my frost-laden footwear as she scooped up the white scraps in her hand. Cecilia was unaware of my presence as she let the debris tumble like snowflakes into her empty teacup. She repeated this as I approached her in my stocking feet, filling it to the brim with fractured words and broken phrases. \n In a silent trance, she struck a match and lit the scraps; mesmerised by the lapping orange flame as it flared, flickered, and faded. She was still peering at the wisp of black smoke, spiralling up from the sooty remains as I whispered in her ear.\n “Hey, what’s burning?”\n “Oh, you know,” she sighed. “It’s not your problem.”\n “That’s a relief,” I said, shedding my down jacket. “I thought it was dinner.”\n “Don’t you think about anything else but your stomach?”\n “Hey,” I said, resting my hand on her shoulder. “We’re done here.”\n “I know, I know.” She sighed. \n “Let’s rescue Tiger.”\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 Tigers That Came For Tea\n\nGenre: contemporary\n\nWord Count: 2880\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about someone looking for a sign in a dark sky." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "[Contains mystery meat, groping, and violence.]\n\nI often think of the beasts that came to our window.\nThe day I saw the first beast, I had had been standing at the sink washing dishes. My mind wandered, as was often the case. My main illumination was the bulb over our kitchen window. It flickered with each gust of wind that rattled the glass.\nI’d lost count of the days since I last saw the sun—flecked with spots, like roasted chestnuts, sinking behind the mountains. The darkness had settled heavy as damp wool across the valley.\nBack then, we still had rolling blackouts. We could charge our phones to play music. We could even listen to news programs from the East Coast. Such a luxury!\nThe water ran hot over my cold-reddened hands. An astronaut was on NPR describing the veil covering the earth. Half listening, I thought absently of Mai, recalling the scent of her lemon shampoo and the dimple that formed in her cheek when she laughed.\nMai ran off, chasing some foolhardy dream of owning a yogurt shop in Anchorage. She never once looked back, but still lingers like a ghost.\nDrying my hands, I glanced at the sky through the window, an expanse of bruised plum merging with the jagged tree line. A flash in the corner of my eye pulled my gaze left—a fleeting movement, there and gone, playing at the edges of visibility like a ghost glimpsed from the corner of my vision. I pressed my palm to the glass and stared hard into the inky darkness. Was it just a trick of the light? Could it be a commotion in the forest by my farm, or the return of astronauts to Earth?\nThe grandfather clock in the hall struck midnight, or noon, I wasn’t sure. Its heavy bongs echoed through the hollow chambers of the old farmhouse. Since I couldn’t sleep, I put on my boots and jacket and went out into the night.\nI took the short path towards the woods, twirling my axe to keep my hands active. The air was so frigid it gripped my lungs, each breath merging with the frigid air in bursts of fog. The snow-crusted road wound behind the house. I followed its bend toward the hill’s crest. There were plenty of felled trees at the top.\nThe wind bit through gaps in my jacket, needling my skin with frozen pins. I trudged on, the beam of my flashlight cutting a thin swath through the murk—a lone firefly against the void. I had to stop to catch my breath, leaning on a gnarled birch tree. The tree’s bone-white limbs gleamed, coated with ice that glimmered like diamond crust. I slid low into its chilled trunk, curling my arms around legs, inhaling the crisp scent of snow and spruce resin.\nIn the stillness from the forest’s depths, I heard beasts. Their yipping laughter unfurled, wending through the naked birches like wisps of smoke. A chill moved up my arms to the short hairs on my neck and sent a shiver through my bones that had nothing to do with the cold.\nThe sound came again, closer, and carried on it, something else, a word, a voice, my name, more laughing. I stood, axe ready.\nLong ago, Mai had told me of the boudas—hyenas posing as men. They hunt and talk to each other, laughing in the forests near her parents’ village.\nIt was a cold and endless night in Charm, as it was in Mai’s home in Ras Dashen, as it was in London, as it was in Osaka.\nI crunched through the tall drifts toward the trees, guided by the strange cackles. The ash drifted like moths casting shifting shadows in my light. Pushing into the branches, heavy with dark snow, I heard the crunch of paws on the hard pack. I stood still, back against a yew, its needles brown and dead.\nA dark shape emerged, lean and glistening. We stared at each other for a long while, its lantern eyes reflecting my dull yellow light, and mine no doubt mirrored the inky void. A breath plumed from its muscular feline jaws, dissipating between us. Then, with a snuffling huff, it turned and loped soundlessly back into the forest depths.\nI crouched, frozen in place for several minutes.\nDeep in the marrow of my bones, I felt a perceptible shift taking place, a seed of change planted in the ever-winter.\nIn the sky, as bright as my memories of stars, something new caught my eye—a stretched light on the horizon, peeking above the mountains. A cracked-smile moon had risen to light my way after so long in darkness. I let out a long breath and watched it frost and dissolve.\nMy hands ached. I let them relax around the handle and spun the blade again as I stood.\nThe blanket of ash soon put the moon’s rich light back to bed. I took the first steps down the hill with a renewed sense of urgency. No wood today. Let the creature hunt in silence.\n*\nI stand at the window, peering into the gloom that has gripped the world for half a year. The sun is now a welcome, reddish glow on most days.\nThe roof’s groaning woke me; dust has built up again. If it were to rain, or, more likely, the snow melts, it would add another layer of rock. We lost the barn roof to the same hidden danger. It had been damaged, so it served as a useful warning.\n…So many tasks to attend.\nMy thoughts drift as easily as the swirling motes dancing in the lamplight.\nI think of Mai’s eyes, black, but hazel-flecked, and how in kinder times they shone in sunlight.\nHow we miss the sun.\nMai sits by the stove, her skin stretched tight as canvas over her weary bones. I step forward to kiss her cheek three times and say “dinanesh.”\nA pot of oatmeal bubbles thick and gray.\n“Dinner’s ready,” Mai calls, but her voice sounds far away—through the muffling ash and snow, far beyond the closed door.\nI blink and she is gone, yet still the oats steam on.\nElise shuffles in, her form passing through where her mother had been. “You dream again, eh?” she scolds, with painted lips curled into an innocent smile. Her cheekbones cut sharper each morning as our meals become lean.\n“Don’t smoke in the house,” I say.\nElise turns for the door.\n“Don’t go outside, the boudas.”\n“Eh? Inside, outside?”\n“I said, don’t go outside.”\nShe shrugs and walks to the door, puts on her jacket, then stops.\n“Just put your head out the window.”\n“Eh? It’s too cold.” She slips on my boots. “Yours are warm.”\nThe tapping returns, claws scratching fine splinters from our thinning door.\nShe looks through the keyhole. “They’re hungry and stubborn, huh?”\nI clutch my rifle numbly and see her smile. She pulls the boot straps tight around her legs. Loose amber curls twist with her energetic movements; the fire lighting her dark features. So much like Mai. Energetic, I can’t hold her tight. Even before her teens, it was impossible to slow her down; she does as she wants.\nElise looks again into the depths. She whispers poetry in a language long forgotten, the words a gift from her mother. Then she cracks open the door, stretching the chain, and puffs out a long breath.\nThe cigarette filters the dust from Crazy Peak, Granite Peak, Hollowtop, and what was once Bozeman.\n“You’re too young to smoke.”\n*\nI’d lost count of the buckets of ash I’d hauled. Time was adrift in the repetition of work.\nMy mind rolls through sunny days and luscious warmth. Someday, long ago, I was warm, likely when I was talking a vacation. Warmth has become a foreign thing, like reading about saunas in Scandinavia.\nOnly books could tether my mind from wandering too far adrift. Though they provided no answers to the questions mulled in the lacunae between sentences—so I read the same paragraphs in tightening circles, grasping for phantoms in the periphery of thought. \nI look at the glow of dawn, just beyond the mountains, and wonder about when the mountains were lifted into the air. What a wonderful sight that must have been.\nBoulders the size of Volkswagens landed as far away as Lincoln. The news from west of us stopped soon after. I felt a slight tremor about six minutes after the eruption. Sometime later, a gale rattled the windows and toppled a tree onto the barn.\nThe tree had grown, spread its seed, then frailty took over. Then, all it took was a super volcano near Yellowstone and poof—dead tree.\nHunters materialize from the orange-tinged murk, their voices muted. They sound eager, two new guys and the old fella who ran the gas station some years back. He was pulling a sled.\nHe only shows up when he has excess game to trade. Three snowstorms had passed since the last visit.\nThe older man coughs from the cement in his lungs.\nWe’ll all be the same soon, I think.\n“Got enough left to fill your bellies,” croaks the leader, baring his broken teeth. He barely stifles another coughing fit. The two new guys drop a fresh kill, something large as a wolf, lean, white bellied. The leader flourishes his arms like a magician at the child’s sled he’s pulling, covered in satchels.\nWe exchange a few initial words, voices muted under the weight of the soupy ether hanging over us.\nInside, they crowd greedily around the meager fire, hands extend to the flames as if attempting to grasp some hidden warmth from the logs.\nThey pull mysterious bundles from their satchels, each swaddled in cloth. All stained the rusty hue of dried blood, reeking of iron tang and secrets best kept unknown. Cuts of flesh, some furred, others disturbingly hairless and pink.\nThe leader’s eyes glint, mouth a tight grin. Small, ashen puddles have formed around their boots. “Meat’s still scarce,” the old leader says. “We could trade these cuts for fresher stock if you have any animals left in your barn.”\nSomething in his hoarse timbre hints at hungers beyond butcher’s needs as the bartering starts.\n“No livestock,” I say. “We have oats, some corn feed for my long-gone guineafowl.” I point to a bag of feed by the door. “The last can of peaches had gone a week ago now; our supplies went quick.”\nElise packs two shopping bags with the pink meat. Her hands tremble enough to make the plastic crinkle.\nI notice the leader scratch his head and look towards our kitchen. It hits me—I didn’t mention the peaches on his earlier visits.\n“Two packs and three cigs,” the hollow-eyed one says. He was new to the hunt. Also, he’s been leering at Elise the whole time. She took a step back from the hunters.\n“Three packs, and any tinned fruit ya’ got,” says the leader.\nElise’s voice shook almost as much as her hands. “That’s too much, huh? I have a spare phone cable and a charged power bank?” She puts the meat on the floor, ready to get the cable and charger.\nThe lead hunter grunts.\nShe just confirmed we still had canned fruit, probably didn’t realize.\nIf stripped down to basic survival, what really matters—loved ones, acts of kindness, living each day to the fullest? And in this case, cigarettes as currency. What mattered before no longer does.\nI look past the hunters to the ruddy sky, hoping the leader would stick to a simple barter. Sweat runs down my jaw.\nAs we carry on, and age like that fallen tree, the mind wanders down long avenues. It gets harder to sort reality from dreams. All that remains is praying the morning light might lift this veil and lead one home.\nThe ash had been dark as tar. It took a week to spin its dark band around the northern hemisphere. I remember waiting for it. I had sat drowsing over a children’s book, scarcely able to focus. Outside, tendrils curled against the glass, fogging the landscape beyond. The sky went pink, then red, then the new dark rolled in. The only dark for months.\nWe knew to expect it. Shops were emptied, people trampled. The government leaders disappeared into some mountain bolt hole with their families.\nThat was long ago. Time had no grip here. Days bled seamlessly, each hour melting into the next.\nThe older man scratches his crotch, then sniffs his finger. “Cigarettes or somefin’ better than bird-feed.”\nMy skin tingles under spectral fingertips, tracing memories of doors left unlocked in kindness. A naïve trust. Dread trickles down my breastbone in beads of oily sweat.\nI could no longer meet their eyes, seeing in their glare things best unsaid.\nMai told me, long ago, a hyena tried to get the other animals to kill Adam and Eve. But a dog warned the humans of the plot, so they escaped from the garden.\nLater, hyenas took to tricks. They became not just a threat, but a lowly, vile one. Families turned on each other as the hyena-men told lies. Old friends now believed the other hid a den of boudas in their home.\nI imagine the hunters laughing on the forest edge, calling my name, eyes flickering in the night, hunting Elise.\nThe hollow-eyed one grabs her. “There are other ways to pay, ma’am” His grubby, blood-flecked hands leave a smear on Elsie’s chest as she pulls away.\nShe freezes, then glances at my rifle.\nEyes darting, the hunters circle with a lupine hunger that waters my mouth with dread.\nThe hollow-eyed man spins and kicks my rifle towards the third hunter. An ugly runt of a man.\nElise chirps in fright.\nI freeze, then raise my hands.\nFunny what one thinks about while people are ransacking your tinned food and groping your daughter.\nI thought Mai would know what to do. She was the practical one.\nI was out of place—a semi-intellectual on a ruined farm in the endless winter. My only job before this was as a museum tour guide—where I first met Mai. One thing led to another, and we had a child on a bird farm in Ohio.\nThose days, I’d follow her anywhere. Most of our choices were simply an odd mix of culture shock, misunderstandings, and alchemical passion—on a budget.\nBut what would she do?\nAll I could think about was how in the early days, she would ask, “How does such-and-such invention work?” The attention was addictive. I bled information, commentary, and half-remembered stories. When I ran dry, she told me about her parents’ small village where the houses melt into the countryside.\nThe leader found our store of canned meat and let out a whistle. “I’d ‘ave traded them bags for half these.”\nMy skin went cold.\nI couldn’t watch what hollow-eyes was doing. Elise’s muffled screams scare me more than the gun. My head was still spinning, looking for something to say, some action to do, but instead my mind flitted. The short one lowers the rifle to watch hollow-eyes.\nI take a step.\nThe blow crunches against my skull like thunder, sparks scattering across my vision, pain a crimson bloom.\nI fell.\nWeightless…\nI’d often looked up to the starless sky, wondering if the Astronauts had bothered to return to this newly dark planet. Are they, now, looking up, expecting stars?\nMy nose hits the ground with a crunch.\nI think the astronauts would return to the poisoned water and black sky of home. Why suffer death from starvation when you could simply hop in the return vehicle, and with a flash—you’re on the way to land?\nMy head rolls to face the fire.\nThe atmosphere would have scorched the ablative shields. Sacrificial shields, made to burn—like us. We live in impermanence, even in the most stable conditions.\nIt’s amazing how worlds can end, or transform rapidly, with the safeguards of the past erased. Life is about adjusting perspective on what endures through change. How long had we been marooned here, slowly sweeping, disposing, and breathing Bozeman, Montana?\nMaybe we are the astronauts, spinning at incredible speeds, unable to study the stars, seeing only the flickers from the shield below us flame away through small panels of thick glass.\nAnd what phantoms—faceless, formless—drift also, surfing the burning tide that swallowed states whole? Only the ash knows.\nWould looking at the stars still offer escape, hope, or answer to basic questions about life’s mysteries?\nI want to live long enough to see the stars return.\nThe scratching at the window peeled me away from my dream, an intrusion cracking through the murk.\nElise’s phone screamed to life with the backlog of emergency messages. The old hunter drops it on the table.\nThe scratching continued, urgent.\nGroggily, I step to the window, half expecting more hooded figures. But something uncanny and cat-like was peering through the mire-streaked windowpane. Two figures outside the window, their outlines blurred and molting at the edges like unstable dreams.\nThe tigers have come for tea.\nI opened the window and let them in.\nThe hyenas no longer laugh in the dark." } ]

[ { "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: Polaroid Night\n\nGenre: contemporary\n\nWord Count: 1550\n\nPrompt:\n\nSet your story during polar night." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "How I ended up on Svalbard simply comes down to work. I was given an assignment to cover the Northern Lights. I had photographed so many things in hot, dry countries the world over, but I’d never been a fan of the cold. It was something that filled me with dread: going to stay on a remote island where Winter reigned, and darkness dictated the unfolding of our days. I knew it would invite depression, just being there for a number of weeks. I knew not a soul there, and that hadn’t mattered on any of my other assignments, but there was something about retreating to Winter’s core that made me suddenly feel inexpressibly lonely. I had my camera with me: my always faithful companion, but it was no substitute for human interaction.\n\nWork put me up for as long as I needed to stay, in a wooden cabin in the middle of the snow-topped forest. It felt like dangerous wildlife could reach me there long before any human saviour could. I felt scared, and that wasn’t something I felt often. It was Polar Night and the only sunlight I would receive would be the sunrises and sunsets, followed by an immediate return to darkness. I’d never known a life like it and I knew it would be an enormous adjustment to make – just figuring out how to survive in such a barren landscape. I’d heard there were a mere two thousand residents on the Norwegian islands. Knowing so few people chose to live there wasn’t exactly a recommendation. Whenever I got to my cabin, after the longest hike, I realised just how isolated I was. There wasn’t a neighbouring artificial light in sight. It was just me, the cabin and utter darkness. Thankfully, there was electricity in the cabin and a wood burning stove but looking out the uncovered windows brought me back to the phantoms of my childhood: the ones that had haunted me in the form of night terrors. Admittedly, I was a spoilt individual in many ways, but even well-off people are liable to succumb to their basest fears when their luxuries are stripped away. I thought of every horror film and story I’d ever seen and heard, and they seemed to converge in the realms of possibility of what might happen to me that cold night. I didn’t know what danger lurked beyond the locked door and I didn’t plan on opening it that night, even though my assignment depended upon it.\n\nI checked the fridge, hoping for a stock of basic supplies, but there was nothing. I went to bed hungry. I was sleeping on a pull-out bed that was murder to my spine, but there was no alternative. I thought, dreamily, of my own comfortable mattress. I’d invested thousands in the best quality bed, sheets, pillows and home comforts, so I could get as peaceful a sleep as possible. I always slept like a baby: one of the anomalous ones that slept all night long without stirring. I missed my possessions and I thought of little else that night. I lay in bed with an empty stomach and decided I would set out for supplies first thing the following day. I’d forgotten it would still be in darkness, so unnatural the notion of a polar night was to a UK resident like me.\n\nThat night I tossed and turned and met all my greatest fears in the shadows on the panelling. It was like an old-fashioned projector, playing out every worst-case scenario my artistic mind could dream up. I had a long assignment ahead of me. My return flight wasn’t booked for weeks and weeks, and I knew I needed to bring a catalogue of pictures upon my return, so my boss would know that I had thrown myself into the experience rather than hiding out in a state of hibernation in my cabin. That was what I truly wanted to do.\n\nSo, the next morning, in a blanket of darkness, I set out for the local store. While I walked there, I jumped at every twig cracking under my tread captured before. I was glad I’d remembered to bring it with me. I pulled it from my shoulder bag and took as many shots of it as I could. I didn’t want to miss a second. The colours of the sunrise were like the backdrop to a fairytale. I’d never witnessed something like that in my whole life, and I’d captured hundreds of sunrises in my time as a photographer. I was floored by what I saw, but whenever it seemed to reach its peak; when the colours created a celestial effect and the sun crowned them with its regal splendour, there was no daybreak to follow. The sky was enveloped in darkness again and the whole scene before me vanished. I trudged through the snow. It was powdery and supple beneath my feet. I knew the local village was within walking distance; I just couldn’t see it in that moment.\n\nI followed the light in the distance that I knew indicated the village’s location. It was so dark that any light, however distant, provided striking illumination. Whenever I got to the village, I felt relieved in a way that I only ever had after escaping the jaws of death on dangerous previous assignments, but no danger had presented itself – only darkness.\n\nI opened the door of the store. It reminded me of an old town corner shop. So many snow-related implements were suspended from the ceiling, along with wicker baskets and signs of handmade crafts. The owner beamed at me and spoke to me in English. How did they know I was an English speaker? It was probably because I looked so lost and filled with wonder at the quaint contents of the store. I gathered all the groceries I needed. Most of them were unrecognisable to me, but I was too hungry to dissect the particulars of them. The owner greeted my purchases with a smile of amusement, and they set about bagging them up for me.\n\n“You’re new here, aren’t you?” she asked me.\n\nI nodded and smiled. Her demeanour would have made the sullenest of faces break into an irrepressible smile. The place was filled with twinkly lights and rose quartz lamps, the sight of which gladdened my heart. I thought of my own chandelier back home, and the fact that it didn’t hold a candle to those little lamps of hers. It didn’t make me feel like I was being held in a warm embrace the minute I walked in the door. Maybe all the luxuries I had were the items that reminded me of my loneliness and I hadn’t even realised it before.\n\n“Are you coming to the event tonight?” she asked me, like it was universal knowledge. Maybe for the residents of the town, it was.\n\n“What is it?” I asked, with childlike curiosity.\n\n“It’s the Festival of Light. We gather together as a community to see the Northern Lights.”\n\n“Where do you do that?”\n\n“Just in the woods, near that holiday cabin you’re staying in.”\n\n“You know it?”\n\n“It’s the only one in the area. You’re the talk of the town.”\n\n“I am?”\n“\nA famous photographer has arrived to photograph our everyday surroundings and to bring them fame too? Of course you are.”\nI couldn’t believe how impeccable her English was, especially coming from such a small community. It put my (as yet non-existent) Norwegian to shame.\n\n“I don’t know anyone here.”\n\n“That doesn’t matter – everyone is welcome,” she said. “We just want to mark the occasion and appreciate it together. Looking at beautiful things alone is fine, but it’s something else with other people to appreciate it with – don’t you think?”\n\n“Is this just normal to you?” I asked. “Polar Night, I mean.”\n\n“Oh yes, I love it,” she said.\n\n“You do? Don’t you find it a bit unnerving – or depressing?”\n\n“Not at all. It’s one of the times of most light for us. We create our own light to counteract the darkness, we burn fires, we talk to friends, we drink hot drinks and wrap up warm for the outdoors and delight in the natural scenes. Not everyone gets to see them. Don’t you think the sunset and sunrise stand out more whenever there isn’t any daylight arriving or departing?”\n\n“I didn’t think of it like that. The sunrise was pretty spectacular though.”\n\n“Come along tonight,” she said, passing me my bag of very considerately packed groceries. “It wouldn’t be the same without you.”\n\nI wondered how that could be the case, but I suddenly considered how barren my life back in England was, and I stopped regretting leaving it to come on that trip.\n\nLater that night, under the glory of the aurora borealis, I couldn't believe the luck that had come my way. I was floored by its beauty, to the point that for a long time, I stared, transfixed, without even picking up my camera. Maybe, I thought, I could extend my trip, for who knew how long? Maybe when I captured the miracle before me the best a humble human being could, I would just send the photographs back in the post." } ]

[ { "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: Preserved\n\nGenre: coming-of-age\n\nWord Count: 1040\n\nPrompt:\n\n‘Hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once.’ Use the senses to transport a character back to the past." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "*Sensitive content - This story contains a scene dealing with the death of a family member\nPreserved\nJimmy was 12 the first time he smelled formaldehyde. \nHe was at a sleepover at his neighbour Zach’s house. They were playing Dare, Dare, Double Dare when he challenged Zach to show him something he had never shown anyone before. Zach bounced off the bed, grabbed his flashlight and led Jimmy to the cellar entrance.\n\"Wait 'til you see this,\" he squealed, taking the lead.\nThe musty cellar smell was so thick Jimmy could taste it, the earthy dampness churning his stomach. Jimmy swallowed hard. The dirt stuck under,his fingernails as he felt his way down the stairs. The faint glow of the flashlight all but disappeared as Zach forged onward. A damp blanket wrapped around Jimmy's thin frame, penetrating his thin pyjamas and making him shiver. The cold made his toes curl tighter around the edge of the rickety stairboards. His bare feet searched for solid ground until they felt the hard-packed dirt. Just then, Zach pounced out of the dark, holding his flashlight under his chin, distorting his facial features into a grotesque figure he belted a heinous laugh. “Ah! Ah! Ah!” Jimmy jerked back then lunged forward, grabbing Zach's flashlight.\n\"I knew it was a dumb idea to come here!\"\nIt wasn’t his idea, it was his mom's. She insisted he try to go out to see friends instead of sitting alone in his room for hours on end. She called Mrs. Henderson, and the two planned the sleepover even though they knew the boys barely spoke at school. \n\"Weren't you going to show me something? he said, his voice rising.\nZach pointed his flashlight at the far wall. An eerie glow reflected off glass jars, lined row upon row on wooden shelves. \n\"Preserves? Is that why we came here?\"\nZach didn’t respond. Instead, he wriggled his way down the length of shelves to the far end. Then, standing on tiptoes, he stretched until his stubby fingers reached the two-quart canning jar on the top shelf. Carefully, he lowered it to eye level and looked at Jimmy.\n\"I bet you've never seen anything like this before?”\nJimmy's eyes strained to see what was in the jar. All he saw was a murky pink liquid.\n\"Is that it?\" he asked, shrugging his shoulders. \"Spoiled preserves?\"\nZach tilted the jar and shone the light in it. Jimmy squinted and peered, trying to determine what was in the liquid. A shape was emerging, a pinkish-white wrinkly blob, skin-like. Zach shifted the jar slightly while watching his friend's expression. Jimmy craned his neck.\n\"Huh? What are those? Hooves?\"\nHe stepped closer, his nose almost pressing the glass. Zach rotated the jar slowly, making the form settle on its side while keeping his eyes on Jimmy. This time, Jimmy could make out a head, a snout, and two eyes screwed shut. He gasped, \"Ugg! A dead piglet!\"\nZach turned the jar slightly. \"Look again! Look!\" he said, his voice rising to a crescendo. \"It's a special piglet!\"\nFinally, he couldn't stand it anymore. He shoved the jar in his friend's face... and that’s when Jimmy saw a second head attached to the body. \"Ewe, gross,\" he moaned, recoiling against the shelf. \"How can it have two heads?\" \n\"It's called a Siamese pig,\" Zach said in his sing-song, know-it-all voice. \"I bet you've never seen anything like this before, eh?\"\nJimmy had to admit that he had never seen a two-headed pig. \"And you swear you've never shown it to anyone?\" \n\"I swear!\" replied Zach. \"My dad warned me never to take that jar down. He said the liquid used to preserve the piglet is poisonous. It's called formalhide.\" \nJimmy was mesmerized. It was so tragic and yet so fascinating at the same time. He gazed into the jar spellbound, trying to figure out how this could happen. \n\"So, I guess I've won the dare, eh?\" Zach's high-pitched whine yanked Jimmy back into the game. \"Now it's my turn to choose one,\" Zach’s cheeks flushed with excitement. \"Dare, Dare, Double Dare! I dare you to open the jar and touch it.\" Zach's cheeks flushed with excitement. He clapped his hands, chanting, \"Touch it! Touch it! Touch it!\"\nSo intrigued was Jimmy with the Siamese piglet that he grasped the jar in both hands and twisted the lid off despite his better judgment. Toxic fumes wafted out, assaulting his senses, engulfing him in a pungent odour that made his head reel and his eyes sting. He scrambled to screw the lid back on, but the jar slipped from his grasp and crashed to the floor. Jimmy froze, staring at the puddle of foul liquid seeping into the dirt, leaving nothing behind but the two-headed blob marooned on an island of broken shards.\n“Nooooo! My dad's going to kill me!\" Zach screeched.\nJimmy gasped and fell to his knees, inhaling the fumes. Why was the odour so familiar?\nThen, without warning, he was transported down a long aisle lined with wooden benches on either side, filled with people in dark clothes and tear-stained faces. Jimmy's chest tightened. He cried out, \"No! No! Please, no!\" but the scent overpowered his will, and he saw himself at the front of the aisle, head bowed, looking into a light-oak casket. A gentle breeze blew through the chapel window, carrying the delicate fragrance of lilacs. Oversized bouquets of stargazers, lilies and baby's breath perfumed the air, but none of it was enough to mask the smell of his brother Andy's corpse. \nThe smell of formaldehyde unlocked the anger he had carried for three months. Gut-wrenching sobs shook his fragile frame; tears flowed freely as suppressed sorrow gushed out. “Andy, why did you leave me? Why? Why?” How could he go on without Andy? \nAs the tears subsided, he felt a hand on his back. It was Zach looking down at him.\n“I’m so sorry, Jimmy. I’m really, really sorry.”\nZach extended his hand. Jimmy rose, slowly coming out of his haze. \n“You’re okay, buddy… I've got you.\" Wrapping Jimmy's arm around his neck, he led his friend to the stairwell. \"Let's get out of here,\" he said, guiding Jimmy up the steps." } ]

[ { "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 Day with Jesus.\n\nGenre: contemporary\n\nWord Count: 1181\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about someone looking for a sign in a dark sky." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "\"I heard you!\" Young Andrew was speaking too loudly, being a bit rude to his parents.\n\"I know it's a school day. I don't want to be there. I hate Grade Six, I hate teachers, the kids are mean! I'm staying in bed.\"\nAndrew was called Young because his name was his father's name. His dad was now known as Old Andrew. His father looked worried, he had been trying to get counselling for Young Andrew's school refusal. But all the appointments were taken for months.\nYoung Andrew's mother said, \"Look, you only went to school for one week. Some kids are bullies, they should be expelled. We've had a word to your teacher, no naming names. I've got a gift for you. Here, I made it myself.\"\nYoung Andrew held in his hand a woolly Don't Worry Worm. It had a smile on its face, so he smiled back. This might be sign of hope and light in the darkness of his little world. He could take his worm everywhere with him.\nHe really wanted to play games with the others in Grade Six. But they had been totally mean, picking on him. They had thrown his bat on the school roof, so the teachers and handyman were cross with him.\n\"Now today, you are going to try to do some learning in the classroom. Those kids are supposed to be friends. Don't worry, your teacher is aware of the problem. You are not in trouble, got it?\"\nOld Andrew was being firm, he was a good family man. He only wanted all his own kids to be happy.\nSlowly, Young Andrew dressed and ate breakfast. He supposed he could arrive at school, and not take any notice of boys behaving badly. Complaints never worked. His Don't Worry Worm smiled at him, as he hid it in his shirt pocket.\nHis teacher, Ms. Rosehill smiled, and immediately gave everyone a Maths test. Bree, the pretty girl in front of him, smiled and flipped her hair. Young Andrew wondered if she had a Valentine.\nAfter Maths, it was writing time. Today, Grade Six, were allowed to type their essay. Young Andrew chose the topic, \"My Day with Jesus.\" He did have a good imagination. He was really good at typing, and enjoyed writing.\nYoung Andrew was all fired up. He not reached playtime yet, but he wanted to let bygones be bygones. He put on his thinking cap, and started typing. He shut his eyes for one minute, and could imagine Jesus standing next to him.\nThis is Young Andrew's story. \"Here is a breaking news flash from Grade Six, where all the action is today. I am going to spend the day with Jesus. I would first of all take him to the supermarket. Jesus and I would buy some frozen fish and bread rolls. Then we would take them to the Foodbank, and multiply. Between us, Jesus and Young Andrew here would make hunger disappear. We would send food all over the world, like a sign from God that Jesus is back here with us all.\"\n\"Next job for Jesus and me is to stop bullies in schools. I would not expel them. Jesus and I would show true kindness, and let them play with Young Andrew here. We would spend lunchtime playing healthy games for exercise. We would enjoy sunshine and fresh air, all for free.\"\n\"Now I am spending my day with Jesus, I would let him show true love to all families, so people care about each other. For people who are single, Jesus would share that no one is ever alone. I am a single guy too, but hey, I'm still only eleven years old. There is always hope, and different kinds of love. Jesus is our guide, that's what He can do.\"\nYoung Andrew kept on writing. \"If I could spend my day with Jesus, he and I would ban all illegal drugs. We would give everyone taking and selling drugs something better to replace them. They need better goals, and no more drug overdoses. Jesus and I would change all that too, while we are on a roll.\"\n\"If Jesus were here with me today, He and I would stop all drive-by shootings, make all the gangs fold up, so they can follow in Jesus' path, being kind instead of mean and nasty. Jesus can make that happen too.\"\n\"Now Jesus and I are spending the day together, we would cruise along to the park. He would teach me how to walk on the water in the lake there. That would be beyond so cool. All the kids here would wonder how I could do that. With Jesus, of course.\"\n\"After showing all of Grade Six that Jesus is still here, today He and I would stop all the armies in the world. No more bombs and weapons. He and I would save all the kids in the world from being killed by bombs. Jesus and I would feed them all and fly doves of peace around the world.\"\n\"Next, Jesus and Young Andrew here would raise our hands as He did in the olden days. We would let the Holy Spirit flow through us, to heal everyone who is sick in the world. Then finally, Jesus and I would do our best party trick. I would raise both my grandmothers, and give them a second chance of life, like Lazarus. They gave me good love and kindness, and always had my back. I have got a good family. All us kids just want to be happy.\"\n\"Finally, Jesus and I would give everyone in the world a Don't Worry Worm. We could all make one giant village of good friends, right around the planet. During my day of spending time with Jesus, I would stay here, and Jesus would stay here with me and all of us.\"\n\"After school, I would make good decisions, and be allowed to choose my own bedtime. Yah! I guess that's it, from your daily news, signing off, Young Andrew.\"\nYoung Andrew checked his essay, then pressed send to his teacher. He sat back, wondering where all his ideas came from. From Jesus, and his Don't Worry Worm. \"Wow!\"\nMs. Rosehill said the same thing. \"Wow, that's a great story. Banned the boring, all right.\" She read Young Andrew's story to the class. One of big boys gave him the thumbs up sign.\nBree turned around and winked, then popped a Valentine card on his desk at the end of the day in Grade Six. Naughty Cupid. Young Andrew winked back at her, and they walked home together.\nYoung Andrew had done it. He had kicked his own goals that day. He lay on his bed, looking at the Valentine Card from Bree. He rolled around, laughing. Maybe he wouldn't be single for long. His future in Grade Six looked bright ahead. Kids just wanted to have fun. His Don't Worry Worm smiled. Jesus and Young Andrew were besties, staying together, so everyone would believe in miracles." } ]

[ { "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: Scraps of Light\n\nGenre: contemporary\n\nWord Count: 1608\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about someone looking for a sign in a dark sky." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Suggestions of swear words\n\n\n\nI’ve never had to grapple with a problem of this magnitude in all my 64 years. And I see no way out. Nothing in my experience has prepared me for solving anything like this.\n\nFriends, siblings, children, have about as much chance of getting me out of this as does my beautiful Himalayan cat Dulcy. I know they would try if I told them what was threatening to tear my life apart. But I haven’t. The truth is I’m more than a little ashamed of letting myself even get into this awful mess.\n\nIt’s noon now and the bright sunshine invading my space seems to mock the darkness that has settled upon me like a leaden cloak. I realize I’ve had nothing to eat for 24 hours and heat some chicken soup. It’s supposed to be good for the soul, right? Or something like that.\n\nIt is rather soothing, but most of it goes into a container in the fridge. I return to my recliner, which has pretty much been my home since everything came crashing down yesterday afternoon.\n\nI sit and think. Thinking starts to hurt. So I just sit. And sit. And sit. Dulcy keeps me company, her sapphire eyes seemingly full of sympathy for her mom.\n\nThe scene outside the floor length window facing me marks the passing hours. The glimmer on the emerald green grass, the glow on the golden flowers, the diamonds on the rippling lake beyond, slowly give way to creeping shadows.\n\nDusk arrives to signal suppertime for kids playing on the beach. Birds singing their siren songs begin retiring, one by one or in formation. Lights come to life on boats bobbing on the water and homes nestled along the curve of the shoreline. Comfortable, everyday things, so normal and peaceful. Also feels like mockery.\n\nAnd as the earth continues in its foreordained path, it all yields to the inky night, which has ushered in a thick blanket of storm clouds. And so the sky and I become a perfect match.\n\nBut now that synchronicity is being somewhat dented by a few bright stars peeking through rare spaces. Wait, weren’t there tunes about the answer being in the stars?\n\nI gaze intently through what has been almost exclusively my only window to the world since yesterday. Do those twinklers have something to tell me? I concentrate with everything in me, until that starts to hurt. If hope had even started to spring, crickets instead of revelations quashed it but good.\n\nAnd so it’s back to hopelessness. And an enhanced dose of self-recriminations. It’s my fault, 100 percent, that I’m in this spot. And that I didn’t foresee that this spot would likely have no solution. And that others would be affected too. Triply beating myself up.\n\nI’m no stranger to getting myself in trouble, nothing really illegal, though I may have skated up to the edge on occasion. But I always knew the risks, saw a way out in advance or found a way out in the aftermath, kept others out of the fray. Knowing the right people in the right places helped too. So what went wrong here. Has age dulled my senses? Has over confidence eroded my instincts? Was it really all luck that has now run out?\n\nAnd then suddenly some of those clouds part just enough to make way for the moon, almost as if deferring to royalty. It’s at full glory, now turning indoors and outdoors almost daylight bright.\n\nBut . . . is that effer grinning at me? Mockery everywhere.\n\nNature calls, and as I enter the hallway I see that the moon has deposited a bright square onto the carpeting via the skylight. Oddly, it’s also found a way to scatter bits and pieces on the wall.\n\nLooking into the open door of a bedroom I see stripes of light, compliments of the blinds. That’s OK. But there’s also an somewhat unexpected line of little teardrops on the crocheted bed quilt.\n\nThe door of the bedroom opposite is open just slightly and a single bar of light has sneaked in there too. An opportunistic streak that has streamed from the other bedroom window, through the open door, and into that small space between this door and frame.\n\nThere’s something so compelling about these rays working their way in here and there, landing in different shapes and sizes, merrily displacing the dark. I mean I guess that’s always happened but I just haven’t paid that much attention before.\n\nIn the bathroom with its mirrored medicine cabinet, additional mirror on the opposite wall and glass enclosure, all in cahoots with the shiny metal of the faucets and shower frame, the moonlight is having a field day. Designer patterns abound.\n\nThen into the kitchen for a glass of water and there before me, more lunar handiwork. It has partnered with geometry to decorate the room, and even the back of the pantry, with fanciful configurations, at the same time creating a spotlight in the bottle of liquid soap.\n\nI feel something stir within me. I run the water and start to fill my glass when my glance wanders to the adjacent wine rack. Hmmm, maybe a nice little glass of Cabernet could help interpret this strange new sensation.\n\nUncork, pour, take a few steps. Backtrack, pick up the bottle too, and on to the chair. Dulcy jumps up on the side table, successfully navigates around glass and bottle, and settles in my lap.\n\nFor the first time in countless hours my thoughts aren’t on THE PROBLEM, but rather on some relevant recollections. I’m thinking again about this phenomenon I’ve previously observed casually, but not much beyond that.\n\nLight.\n\nThe persistence of light.\n\nIt shows up everywhere, even in the darndest places. Sometimes you know the origin, sometimes it’s a mystery. It takes shape in ways that might make sense, might not. And of course sunlight knows all those tricks too. When mirrors or shiny objects are present, it bounces around with total abandon. And if the wind joins in, moving shadows can give it a kind of heartbeat.\n\nBut here’s what’s true in all cases. Light finds a way. It will not be denied. It uses openings that we may not even realize are there. It takes advantage of reflective surfaces to multiply its effect. Light goes as far as it can and does not give up or give a ra . . . uh, a care about its size or shape at the final destination.\n\nI think I’m on to something but just yet not sure what. Hmmm, probably shouldn’t be having this second glass of wine without a little cushion. Maybe some cheese and crackers.\n\nInto the kitchen for just that. And a few olives can’t hurt.\n\nBack in the chair, I see Dulcy sniff the wine and step back with squeezy eyes. And watch with a smile as she instead surgically relieves one of the crackers of its cheese, and still chewing curls in my lap.\n\nI take a bite. A sip. A bite. A sip.\n\nAnd the words form in my mind’s eye. See the light. I think that may have two meanings for me. Dulcy scans my face as if she senses a shift taking place.\n\nMore. Learn from the light. And I think about that. It always finds a pathway. And . . . it uses every opportunity to redouble its effect. And . . . it may create a large splash, or lesser patches, sometimes even just scraps.\n\nSo is this the revelation? It seems right. Be the light.\n\nI’m feeling my way. What seems important is, Go as big as you can, even if as big as you can is - small. It’s emerging more easily now – look for the openings, the available pathways, let nothing stop you, make a large splash if you can, downsize if you can’t. Like the light.\n\nI’ve been in such deep despair, facing the reality that a complete solution for this is – and I don’t often use this word – impossible. But now I’m thinking “Go Small.” Little ways to make amends wherever possible, to mitigate the fall-out to whatever extent I can, to try to at least limit the damage to myself and others. Productive baby steps. Increments of improvement. Scraps even.\n\nAnd yes, I do believe I’ll swallow my shame and contact a couple of trusted allies to help me. To multiply the effects. Like the light.\n\nMaybe in time it can all build to a fuller solution. Or maybe not. I know no matter what there will still be consequences, and I will accept them with no whining because Lord knows they’re deserved.\n\nBut through it all, persist, persist, persist, right to every available end point. Like the light.\n\nWith this new perspective, that burdensome cloak feels like its being replaced with a soft shawl. At the risk of disrespecting Caesar, I saw, I learned, maybe I’ll conquer - one small part at a time. Even better, this is a lesson that can come into play again and again, and not just for clean-up on aisle \"life\" either.\n\nSorry stars. This time the answer was inspired by that bright ball in the sky. The man in the moon? The woman in the moon? Whichever you are, many thanks.\n\nIt’s almost a miracle how I’ve gone from utter hopelessness to blooming optimism. Maybe celebrate with just a bit more Cabernet.\n\nCheers! And here, my sweet Dulcy, let’s share this last piece of cheese.\n\nAnd then? A nice dinner for both of us.\n\n- 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: Next Time\n\nGenre: contemporary\n\nWord Count: 1382\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about someone looking for a sign in a dark sky." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Harry McMunn, Supreme Reverend, shook hands with Andrea List, clapped Ray Blackburn on the shoulder, and patted little Jimmy Nairn on the head. He traded a smile with all his congregation, finished his cup of punch, and started a familiar chorus of “Next time.” Then, when they began singing their favourite hymn, he excused himself and went outside the temple, before his heart completely broke.\nThe cool night air shattered his composure, and he clutched his vestments to keep an unexpected sob from escaping. Walking the well maintained paths of their rural compound, Salvation Ranch, normally brought him such joy, but now all he felt was lightness, as though his steps weren’t really there, as though he merely floated through the world, unmoored. The fires of certainty no longer burned in his heart.\nThere wasn’t supposed to be a “next time.” This time was meant to be the one. He had been so sure of it.\nHe could still hear the muted song of his people through the walls of the temple, through the distance, filled with such pure, trusting joy. It chilled him. He shrunk, smaller than he had ever been. He needed answers. He made his way to Prophet’s Hill.\nIt was about a fifteen minute hike to the flat top of the tree-less hill, and he could see the warm lights of the compound just below it. And all around him, nothing but moonswept darkness. He’d always thought it was a lovely, peaceful property, but now it too screamed failure at him.\nHarry looked up at the night sky.\n“Why!” he shouted. “Why have you forsaken me!?”\nThe stars glared down at him with their unblinking dead gaze, and the silence of the frozen void throttled even his echo. There was no reply up there. There was nothing up there.\nLeast of all salvation.\n“I did everything you asked!”\nThe wind whipped his words away.\n“You promised!”\nStill the stars stared, without pity or understanding. And then they blinked – and winked out of existence.\nHarry gasped. A circle of perfect black was forming in the cosmos, wiping out stars as it grew, the blackest ink spilling in every direction. He stumbled, fell backwards. Couldn’t get up again to flee. Couldn’t do anything but watch the heavens be consumed.\nBut then the disk grew smaller, and less black, and of a sudden a ring of golden lights turned on, running around its circumference – not unlike Christmas tree lights. Whatever it was, was descending, and the disk – the bowl – turned out to only be about ten metres across. It hovered above the ground with a gentle purr, and three telescoping legs extended from its rim. A hatch appeared in its seamless underside, and when it opened to extend a ramp to the ground, it spilled warm yellow light onto the hilltop.\nHarry’s heart was hammering. This was happening just like it did in his dreams, in his visions – only now, the ground felt too real for dreaming, and his trembling breath too scattered for revelations from on high. Was this actually happening? Should he go get the others? But wait, if this was like his dreams, then that meant–\nA figure appeared at the top of the ramp. A silhouette at first, gradually becoming more distinct as it approached – as it glided down – towards him.\nIt was wide on the bottom and narrow and tall at the top, draped in a snow white robe, its flesh green and translucent. From its midsection protruded twelve slender arms, without fingers or joints, and much longer than any human’s, and its whole being pulsated gently with a rich orange light, not unlike a heartbeat.\nHis vision, in the flesh: the angel.\n“Xir’oz’zax!” Harry said, barely breathing the word.\n“Hello, Harry,” said Xir. It had no discernable mouth, but its orange beat pulsed with the words, and its voice sounded pleasantly generic, like running into an acquaintance at the bus stop, with the faintest hint of an unplaceable accent.\n“You heard my call! You came.”\nXir’s arms – wings? – rippled. Actually, seeing them now in the sober light of waking, they reminded Harry more of tentacles than anything else. Like the grabby bits of a jellyfish. And seeing Xir approach in the flesh, Harry couldn’t shake the impression that on closer scrutiny, the angel kind of looked like a giant plunger made of mucus, wearing a toga. Harry frowned and tried to suppress this irreverent thought.\n“Yeah,” said Xir, “about that.”\n“Why did you not pick us up tonight? I did everything you asked for, and the congregation was purified and ready to ascend!”\nXir made a noise that might have been a sigh. “Oh boy.”\n“Is this yet another test of faith? Have we displeased the Cosmic Mother? Please, tell me what I must do!”\n“Look, Harry,” said Xir, splaying its dozen appendages wide, “I’m going to level with you. This whole Divine Ascension thing – my being an angel, the Ritual of Purification, the Nineteen Sanctified Trials, the Prophetic Dreams?”\n“Yes? And the Will of the Cosmic Mother?”\n“Yeah,” said Xir. “I kind of made it all up.”\nHarry blinked. “What?”\n“Yeah,” Xir drew out. “It’s a joke, bro. I didn’t think you’d take it seriously.”\n“What?”\n“Like, I was just bored, right? I’m basically just a glorified delivery driver, and worse, I have the graveyard shift, and this planet is so boring and I probably should have gone to school like my folks said, but I took the easy money and now I’m stuck doing this dead end gig.”\nHarry was speechless. To be addressed with such familiarity by an angel, to hear the angel say such outrageous things – it didn’t make sense. None of it made sense. Was this a new Sanctified Trial? A new test of faith?\n“So I heard your prayer or whatever and kind of threw you a bone. Only, I thought you’d know it’s a joke, since everyone knows Cosmic Mother is like the most popular brand of pastries on Saturn. I don’t care for them myself – too much iodine – but I’ll admit that jingle slaps. Do you not get them here? Oh well.”\nWas this a trial? Harry felt his eye twitch.\n“Anyway, thanks for making my shifts a little more funny. I think the joke’s run its course though. And I guess I feel a little bad, but come on, you guys really are the solar system’s most remedial planet, aren’t you? Still digging in dirt for elements, like a beaver or something. No wonder the dinosaurs left.”\nHarry drew a long, steadying breath. “Are you saying there’s no Mother Ship?”\n“Yeah, well, kind of. I mean, it’s more of the garage where I park my saucer every night. Not so much ‘mother’ as ‘dispatch and payroll’. Only it’s less about bringing enlightenment to mammals than it is about harvesting their bone marrow while they sleep.\"\n“What!?”\n“I know, right? And my stupid manager is the boss’s cousin, so there’s basically no room for career growth. Makes my blood boil.”\nHarry felt that.\n“So, anyway. Bit of a joke is all I’m saying. Maybe I took it too far, maybe that’s on you for not getting it; who’s to say. No hard feelings though, I don’t hold it against you. Anyway, later bro.”\n“Wait! So… so it’s all a lie then?”\n“A joke, bro. I don’t lie, and I don’t want you going around spreading rumours.”\n“Can I… at least have a hug?”\n“Dude, gross. You’re a mammal.”\n“Please? I’m having a crisis of faith here.”\nXir shrugged what might have been shoulders. “Fine, whatever. Come here, weirdo.”\nHarry let out a laboured breath, and straightened his shirt. Then he walked towards the ramp and only hesitated for a blink before stepping onto actual alien technology. Xir spread its appendages wide, the ends flapping like sausages in the breeze.\nWith arms wide, Harry approached. He grabbed Xir in a great big hug, and with a sharp jerk, tossed it off the ramp.\n“Oof,” said Xir, crumpling to a mucusy tangle on the hilltop.\nHarry spared him one more glance, before he hurried into the flying saucer. He closed the door, and then took flight." } ]

[ { "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: English Leather\n\nGenre: coming-of-age\n\nWord Count: 1395\n\nPrompt:\n\n‘Hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once.’ Use the senses to transport a character back to the past." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "He always wore English Leather. Sundays would come around and he’d tap lightly on the front door. His car would be idling outside, but before I’d hear the engine or see his blonde curls dangling above his Cheshire smile, I’d smell the English Leather. Like all good fragrances, it strikes you differently depending on which scent resonates in your memory. For some reason, I took the lemon first. It reminded me of a glass pitcher sitting on the counter. My mother on the porch, talking to a man I never knew the name of. That man had a softer engine. You could barely hear it as it pulled away from our house.\nHe drove a light Cutlass with a nectarine air freshener hanging down almost to the radio. I couldn’t figure out where he’d find something like that, but he had a tendency to collect items that were slightly off-center. When I got in his car, he’d always ask to buckle my seat belt for me, and when he’d lean over, I’d smell the lemon first. Then, the lavender. I didn’t know that’s what it was at the time. I just knew it smelled like flowers burning. It didn’t matter that I’d never seen a flower burn. So much of my childhood was spent behind doors that only opened from the outside. When my mother left with the man on the porch, my father told me that our house didn’t need any women. It would be just us. Two men who could leave their clothes on the floor and clog up the drain and get all the toppings on our pizza whenever we ordered it. When girls would come around asking if I could come out and play, he’d tell them that I was sickly. That I couldn’t handle the pollen and dander. He told one girl from the neighborhood that I was allergic to ragweed, and when she asked what that was, he told her to mind her own business. The door slammed in her face, and I never saw her again.\nMy father never wore cologne. He worked as a foreman at the manufacturing plant in Scoville. When he’d come home, I could smell the sweat on his wrists and the tobacco on his breath. He’d sit down in a recliner stained with Michelob and cigarette ash. Our house always had more absence than oxygen. You would take a deep breath and there’d be nothing there. You’d take another, and a little part of you would disappear as well. My father would fall asleep watching the news with a paper plate on his lap featuring a crumpled up napkin and half a pizza crust. If I tried to clean, he’d accuse me of being a fairy. Real men didn’t clean their houses. Real men let the dirt get in. If things were too clean, somebody came looking to find out who was doing the cleaning. The glass pitcher sat in a cupboard above the oven behind another door we never opened. You could drink beer or water in my house. Never lemonade. Never anything too sweet.\nTwo days before my high school graduation, I smelled lemon on the porch. He didn’t knock. He could see me through the living room window. My father was putting in overtime at work so he could afford to buy me a car for finishing school. I’d be going to Tulane in the Fall, and I’d drive whatever he bought me to campus along with anything I could fit into a cardboard box and my record player. I’d been listening to nothing but Rumours since it came out that February, and the man with the blonde curls walked up on the porch just as Stevie was talking all about how she didn’t want to know why love kept walking on down the line.\nWhen I answered the door, he told me that he was going door-to-door looking for a room to rent for the summer. He had just finished his freshman year at the local community college, and he wanted to stay in the area instead of going home. He never said where home was, and I didn’t ask. The older I get, the more I question how much of young love was all about not asking questions. I could fill in those men with any details I liked. As soon as somebody taught me to inquire about people, I stopped loving as deeply. After that, it was all long, drawn-out sips of wine at nice restaurants listening to men talk about how their wives didn’t understand them. I never had a wife, and my father praised me for it. He thought I was smart. It never occurred to him that maybe my disinterest was born out of something other than personal history. He would proudly tell people about his son in New Orleans, who happily stayed a confirmed bachelor. I’m sure the neighbors would laugh at him behind his back, but I can’t say for sure, because I never went back to visit.\nI didn’t go for a ride in the Cutlass the first time the man with blonde curls showed up on our porch. That first time, he just asked after a room and when I told him we weren’t renting, he asked for a glass of water. I provided him with one, and he left. The day after my graduation, after my father had presented me with a beaten-up Javelin, the man showed up again and asked if I’d like to go for a ride. There was no discussion of why I’d be intrigued by such an offer. Some believe that like attracts like, and back before it was proper to declare your attractions, there did seem to be a preternatural way of finding the love you were looking for even when none of your doors would open. On that first ride, we went to the supermarket and he told me to pick out something we could snack on while we parked down by the football field. I grabbed grapes, because I liked the way they popped in my mouth, and some Italian bread wrapped tight in white paper. We sat by the field and listened to “Shadow Dancing” until the real shadows showed up and the grapes ran out. To this day, when I bite down on Italian bread, I feel the pop of a grape between my back teeth. When I eat a grape, I smell lavender. Smoke and herb, resin and rosemary.\nHe would pick me up everyday after that. I worried at first that my father would disapprove of my disappearances, but he never commented on them, or he didn’t care. I’d come home and find him on his recliner, and I’d take a second to pull a blanket over him or dispose of an ashtray before he could burn down the house. Who managed to keep him alive after I left was always a mystery to me, but not as much of a mystery as what happened to the man with the blonde curls. He knew I was leaving eventually, but we never discussed an actual date. Our relationship was never physical except for the last night I saw him. He pulled up in front of my house, leaned over, and unbuckled my seatbelt. As he did, I took in every molecule of his cologne. The levity of the bergamot, the cheerfulness of the orange. While I took him in, he let his lips graze the side of my neck. I heard the click of the seat belt coming undone, and when he pulled away, our eyes set out an agreement. The next time we saw each other, we’d have to make a run for it. At least as far as a tank full of gas could get us. The deal was silent, but understood. I thanked him for another lovely day, and got out of the car. I imagined my neck smelling holding onto his middle notes--honey and iris.\nI knew the next morning that he was gone for good. I woke up, and the morning was a funeral. No time for poetry, I packed my bags. Stevie was riding my record player; she was singing lovers and players. She was telling me all about the rain. It was time to leave. It didn’t matter how early it was." } ]

[ { "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: May Fire Fade, Forever Keep The Flame\n\nGenre: contemporary\n\nWord Count: 1417\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about someone who has been tasked to keep a flame burning, surrounded by total darkness." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "In honor of John Milton and Hidetaka Miyazaki.\n--------------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\nIn the boundless expanse of existence, where shadows dance in eternal tandem with ethereal radiance, there resides a figure cloaked in mystery—The Fire Keeper. A maiden of unseen lineage, she emerges as the harbinger of hope, a vestal guardian whose eyes, shrouded beneath a regal crown of ivory, perceive not the visual realm but the luminous threads of destiny that weave through the tapestry of time. Clad in a somber robe of obsidian and veiled in the sanctity of her vocation, the Fire Keeper stands as the silent sentinel between the realms of tangible reality and the intangible essence of the Flame.\n\nHer visage is a canvas painted in hues of alabaster, a reflection of the purity that emanates from her sacred duty. The white tendrils of her hair cascade like ethereal cascades, cascading down her shoulders like a waterfall of silvery luminescence. In her ethereal presence, the very embodiment of goodness and hope converges, as if all the virtues of humanity were distilled into the radiant glow that surrounds her.\n\nIn this cosmogony of perpetual tumult, the forces of righteousness and malevolence assume corporeal forms, locked in an eternal struggle for dominion. Yet, amidst the cosmic discord, The Fire Keeper stands resolute, a paragon of unwavering dedication to the sanctity of the Flame. The Flame, an eternal beacon of virtue and benevolence, illuminates the darkest recesses of existence, its luminescence a testament to the ceaseless vigilance of the veiled guardian.\n\nHer black gloves enshrouded hands that cradle the very essence of hope and possess the power to sculpt the destiny of humanity. With a touch as gentle as a zephyr and as potent as an incandescent sun, she tends to the Flame, ensuring its undying brilliance even in the face of dire tribulations. Through the eons, the Fire Keeper's powers have been the linchpin of humanity's flourishing, a cosmic ballet orchestrated by unseen hands.\n\nIn the symphony of existence, The Fire Keeper remains a lustrous melody, a guardian of all that is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, and admirable. Her story, etched in the annals of the celestial manuscript, reveals a saga of selflessness and devotion, where the blind maiden, guided not by sight but by an otherworldly insight, becomes the unerring beacon that pierces through the veils of darkness, ensuring that the Flame of hope forever flickers in the hearts of humankind.\n\nBut amidst the celestial firmament, a celestial battle unfolds a cosmic clash that reverberates through the very sinews of existence. If the Flame of Hope casts its resplendent glow upon the fabric of reality, then in its antithesis, the Abyss, a malevolent force ensconced in perpetual darkness, finds its adversary. The dichotomy of good and evil manifests not merely as philosophical abstractions but as tangible entities, entities locked in a ceaseless struggle for dominion over the cosmic expanse.\n\nThe Abyss, a churning sea of infinite shadow, seeks to extinguish the Flame, its voracious appetite for annihilation a perpetual threat to the sanctity of creation. The guardian of this abyssal maelstrom is Abaddon, a celestial figure whose very name echoes the resonance of destruction. Known also as Apollyon in the realm of ancient Greece, Abaddon is the sovereign of a plague, an infernal host whose grotesque countenances mirror the amalgamation of nightmarish imagery—an equine visage crowned with the semblance of humanity, hair cascading like the ripples of chaos, teeth sharp as lions' fangs, wings that eclipse the light, and tails adorned with a scorpion's stinger.\n\nIn the cosmic chessboard, Abaddon, the \"Destroyer,\" emerges as the harbinger of an unyielding malaise, a force that seeks to drown the world in an unending deluge of obsidian despair. His wings, once radiant, have become the tempestuous hurricane that heralds the eclipse of virtue. With a tail tipped in venom, he orchestrates a symphony of suffering, his infernal locusts descending upon the realm like harbingers of apocalypse.\n\nThe very fabric of reality quivers under the duress of this celestial conflict. The radiant Flame, ever-resilient, faces the encroaching shadows of the Abyss, and in the fulcrum of this eternal struggle, the Fire Keeper and Abaddon stand as titans. The blind guardian of hope, veiled in the purity of her devotion, confronts the abyssal sovereign, a malevolence that mirrors the very nadir of existence. In this cosmic ballet, where light and shadow pirouette in perpetual discord, the fate of the world hangs in the balance, and the echoes of this celestial clash resonate through the aether, inscribing a saga of cosmic turmoil and celestial strife.\n\n The insidious tendrils of Abaddon's malevolence extend, casting a pallor upon the very fabric of meaning and virtue. Nihilism, a venomous doctrine, permeates the air, rendering the once resplendent concept of truth into a hollow echo, lost amidst the reverberating cacophony of relativism. The pillars of nobility crumble under the corrosive weight of apathy, where the noble sacrifices required for personal growth are scorned, and the forge of character lies dormant, draped in the rust of indifference.\n\nIn the wake of Abaddon's insidious influence, the virtuous bastion of righteousness becomes a shadowy illusion, a rigged game where the pawns of victimhood and the abandonment of accountability emerge as the perverse victors. The once pristine virtue now wades through the mire of moral decay, as individuals forsake the arduous path of personal responsibility in favor of the fleeting allure of unearned triumph.\n\nThe triad of physical, mental, and spiritual purity, once revered as the crown jewel of human essence, now bears the ignominious weight of shame. Strapped as a burdensome pin, purity becomes a societal pariah, eclipsed by the voracious hunger for social standing and the ephemeral applause of a morally disoriented populace.\n\nIn this desolate realm, the once-sacred concept of love metamorphoses into a transient commodity, an ephemeral transaction governed by the quid pro quo of benefit. Bonds that were once enduring become contingent upon the continual provision of advantageous conditions, and the sanctity of love is eclipsed by the murky clouds of self-interest.\n\nFinally, the pantheon of admiration crumbles and the once noble pursuit of excellence is tarnished by the relentless erosion of merit. The quest for virtue is replaced by a grotesque pantomime of group identity and egotism, wherein tyrannical control becomes the currency of power. The celestial harmonies that once resonated with admiration for praiseworthy deeds fall silent, drowned in the discordant cacophony of an existence bereft of moral compass. In this paradigm of moral disarray, Abaddon reigns, and the world spirals into an abyss where the echoes of virtue and meaning are but distant whispers.\n\nAs the symphony of humanity descends into dissonance, a haunting lament echoes through the corridors of existence—the very nature of mankind degenerating at an unprecedented pace. The once resplendent Flame, a beacon of hope and virtue, now flickers and wanes, its radiant glow eclipsed by the encroaching shadows of moral decay. The Fire Keeper, in her veiled solemnity, stands amidst the gathering tempest, a custodian of the dwindling ember that defies the encroaching abyss.\n\nWith a heart heavy as the cosmos, the Fire Keeper tirelessly endeavors to stoke the dwindling flame, offering humanity a lifeline to rise above the abyss that threatens to consume all that is noble and true. The circumstances, however, grow ever grimmer, as the shadows tighten their grip on the collective soul of mankind. The flickering flame warns of impending darkness, a dire portent that foretells the unraveling of the cosmic tapestry itself.\n\nYet, in the face of this profound desolation, the Fire Keeper remains resolute. Sworn to an eternal covenant with the Flame, her unwavering commitment defies the encroaching gloom. Her faith, steadfast in creation, God, and humanity, transcends the tumultuous currents of despair. In the crucible of adversity, she becomes a beacon of indomitable hope, a testament to the enduring spirit that persists even when the world teeters on the precipice of eternal night.\n\n\"Though the Flame flickers in the face of unprecedented adversity, I, with veiled eyes, bear witness to the indomitable spirit that courses through the veins of mankind. I hear the echoes of unwavering resolve resounding in the hearts of mortals. No matter how desolate the panorama of their existence may become, the fervent embers of humanity refuse to concede to the abyss. The Flame may flicker, the tempest may rage, and the Fire may fade, but the sanctity of creation, the divine spark within, shall persist against the encroaching shadows. For we shall forever keep the Flame.\"" } ]

[ { "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: Northern Lights\n\nGenre: contemporary\n\nWord Count: 1160\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about someone witnessing — or trying to witness — a celestial phenomenon." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The taste of mint was stinging my mouth when you phoned me. We’d see them if we were quick, you said.\nI bundled layers over the top of my pyjamas and raced to your car. You were waiting with a spark in your eye, drumming your fingers on the wheel. In the darkness we felt forbidden, like children skipping curfew.\nI didn’t know where we were. I joked that now would be the perfect time for you to kill me if you wanted to. You laughed; you must really trust me.\nOur spot was vacant. Black pooled around us, disappearing into the dense tree line of the country. I’d never seen a sky so clear, being from the city, but you were in your element. You took in the silence like it belonged to you.\nYou started pointing to patterns in the stars, showing me the big dipper, and Orion’s belt, and I suspected you didn’t really know where they were, but I nodded along anyway, hardly caring. Really, I was staring at your slender wrist, stretching towards the sky, and wondered what it would be like to press my lips to than thin veil of skin, so close to the vein that it would carry me through your bloodstream. I’d get the interior tour of your circulatory system.\nScience was in the air, then. Your eyes were fixed on the sky as we huddled on your coat, knees touching, burning through the denim of my jeans and pyjama trousers.\nWhat time are we supposed to see them? I asked, holding my breath.\nAny second now, you breathed, not looking at me.\nI repeated those three words in my mind.\nA dog began to howl somewhere in the distance. It sounded like it was in pain. I asked you if we should try and find it. What if it had escaped from a nearby family and was lost in the dark, forested landscape?\nIt’ll be fine, you shrugged, yawning and hugging your knees closer to your chest.\nIt yowled louder, the sound coming from the direction of the wall of trees that paved the opposite side of the road. I frowned.\nIf you want to go and look for it, you can go by yourself, you said, letting out a breathy laugh, God knows what else is lurking out there. Axe-wielding maniacs and whatnot.\nAh, yes, I said, a smile tugging at my lips, the infamous psycho killer Norfolk woodland – home to many known names, such as Norman Bates, Michael Myers, Freddy Krueger–\nHey, I’m being serious. My mum always warned me not to go roaming around the woods at night. She said that’s where all the murderers live.\nWhere do they go in the daytime? I asked, Off to their day jobs?\nYou shook your head. Nope. They live in the trees. They’re nocturnal, like bats.\nI think you’re thinking of vampires.\nDon’t be silly, you said, Vampires live in Transylvania. Not in Norwich.\nWe fell into a silence, and you started humming Psycho Killer by the Talking Heads, your eyes trailing across the night sky. We both sat there, waiting for something to happen. \nI’d been doing that for a long time, with you. Waiting. Perhaps tonight the right moment would present itself. The sky would begin to shimmer, and you would see me in a different light. Some thread of the cosmos would rain down and jolt you awake like an electric shock, and you’d turn to me and notice the dark freckle underneath my eyebrow, and question why you’d never touched me before.\nYou looked at the sky as if you could touch it. As if you were hungry for it. I suddenly found myself sick with jealousy.\nIt was getting colder. I shivered and pulled my knees in.\nYou can sit in the car if you want, you said, I’ll put the heating on for you.\nI don’t want to miss anything, I said. I didn’t want to leave you alone with your sky.\nI’ll come and get you if they show up, you say.\nNo, it’s fine, I shook my head, pulling my coat sleeves over my hands, I’m happy to wait.\nA car drove by at that moment, its headlights veiling us in a pool of brightness as it passed. It was the first one we’d seen tonight.\nThey must think we’re so strange, you said, Sitting at the roadside in the middle of the night. Looks like we’re performing a ritual, or something.\nI don’t think that’s what they thought we were doing.\nI wondered why my number had been the first one you’d dialled tonight. Maybe, alphabetically, I was at the top of your contact list. But then I remembered a while ago, getting a similar call from you. I had already loaded half of my laundry into the washing machine.\nI’m going crazy, you had said, I can’t finish my assignment. I need to get out. I need to get somewhere. Come?\nI pulled my dirty laundry back out again, into the hamper.\nOkay.\nThat day we ended up by the sea. You had kept on driving until we reached the end of the country, and all that was ahead of us was the misty horizon, where the grey sea-line bled into the dark clouds above like ink spilled across a page.\nDo you ever wish you could become the sea? I had said, sat next you on a damp bench, my face speckled with salt water.\nI guess, you had replied, it would be nice to be that immense. That powerful.\nThat’s not what I had meant. I looked at the sea and pictured it consuming me. Each solid thing in my body melting into sea-foam, dispersing into something connected, filled with life.\nI think the real reason you called me was because you knew I would pick up.\nAn hour passed and the dog was howling again. You let out an impatient sigh.\nI really thought we’d see them, tonight. That’s what it said on the news.\nWe still might, I said, looking over at you. You weren’t looking up at the sky anymore. You were staring off into the dark shadows of the tree line, in the direction of the dog’s noise.\nI don’t think so, you shook your head.\nYou had already made up your mind.\nIt was only when we were back in the car, driving along the empty road, that I realised you and I had ventured into the night searching for two different things. We had both been let down. The worst part was that you were more likely to have found what you wanted to find out there than I ever was.\nHey, at least I proved I wouldn’t kill you if I had the chance, you laughed from behind the steering wheel.\nI laughed but didn’t say anything. I was thinking, perhaps it would be less painful if you had." } ]

[ { "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: contemporary\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: The Falling Leaf\n\nGenre: coming-of-age\n\nWord Count: 2117\n\nPrompt:\n\n‘Hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once.’ Use the senses to transport a character back to the past." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The smell hits me first. Yesterday morning mirrors today's in nearly every way, except today is the first day of fall, and the atmosphere in Witch’s Brew tangibly reflects the shift.\nWhere lavender and fresh lemonade defined the summer, I now catch whiffs of pumpkin and apple cider. Wafting cinnamon gives the shop an autumnal edge (Autumnal in the corporate sense. It’s still 85 degrees in Arkansas).\nMy mouth brims, gluttonous as I imagine pumpkin syrup melting on my tongue, laced with plenty of sugar, ginger, and cloves. In the South, we’re lucky if fall appreciation lasts more than a month; it’s plagued by lingering summer heat, so by the time the first chill prompts us to dig out our sweaters, Christmas hysteria squashes it. September’s barely started, but I’m going to milk the season for all it’s worth, and the celebration begins with enough caffeine shots to rouse a hibernating bear.\nWitch’s Brew doesn’t have a rulebook, but I have my rituals:\nQuizzically study the menu as if I’ve never read it before,\nLight up when I notice the only pumpkin-based drink on the seasonal menu – The Falling Leaf,\nSubstitute for oat milk (or come to regret it), \nForget to order the chocolate croissant you’ve always wanted to try, and\nTry to ignore the guy on the couch brushing chocolate flakes off his lap and onto the rug.\nWitch’s Brew welcomes throngs of digital nomads every day of the week, even Sundays when most others are closed for church. I weave through the cozy shop, pretending to look for an empty seat. A green stool under the window beckons me, but I take a turn around the room to douse the ember of anxiety threatening to catch. This particular stool isn’t comfortable compared to the plush couches arranged in circles, but the corner is perfectly exposed. \nIvy droops like curtain folds, shielding me from eyes peering inside. To be noticed by strangers is one matter; to be perceived is another entirely. Floor-to-ceiling windows allow me to empathize with the pant-suited woman racing barefoot to work, heels in hand, just as I catch the quiet one in a huddle of suited workers confess that he hates how his boss, too. On one side of the glass, I’m a customer – at best, a coworker; on the other, I don’t even exist.\n“Falling Leaf for Winona!,” a freckled man with a mullet shouts and I careen to the counter. I shuffle carefully back to the stool without breaking my gaze from the cup as it wobbles on its saucer, jiggling the frothy swan coating the surface. A dark splash escapes that I’m tempted to lap up like a dog, but I do have some semblance of shame left. The cup steams, a fireplace against my palms, and I lean my nose into the hazy trail.\nGod. My shoulders slump. Is that cardamom? No, nutmeg. And – \nA different warmth blooms. It spiderwebs across my chest as if I took a shot of strong tequila. But I haven’t drunk anything. This new warmth tickles me, like when Erica traps me in a hug from behind, nuzzling my neck so her curls tease my skin and I shiver, smiling with closed eyes. \nI shiver on the stool now. But this warmth turns to a chill. What I smell isn’t cardamom, or nutmeg, or pumpkin, even. The spiderweb twists into an anxious knot and drops to my stomach. \nCologne. Davidoff, laced with coriander, mint, and pine (or some other tree?). Hell, I don’t know anything about cologne. Just that this is the cologne, a scent that blurs sex and innocence, a scent so dangerously nostalgic you might as well have pulled out a photo album. \nI steal a glance to the side and the knot loosens a tad. He’s bearded and muscular, dressed in a cream linen shirt shrugged lazily over his dark skin. He drips cool professionalism. He’s not her. Yet there’s a phantom scent possessing him and meditating. She haunts me, and he’s a messenger that I can’t shoot down. My Falling Leaf is tainted. Attempting to smother the musk with pumpkin syrup proved fruitless. The memories crack open like a flipbook. \nI was sixteen when it started. \n“Isn’t that men’s?” I asked, standing skeptically in front of a shelf littered with mismatched socks and phone accessories. \nEleanor shrugged, sniffing a bottle of Davidoff missing its cap. “Probably.” She tossed it in our basket. “But it’s on sale.” \nI didn’t have the gall to tell her it reminded me of the bottle Nana picked out for Grandpa Jack so he wouldn’t “smell like an old man.” Go figure. \nEllie wore it every day. So much so that she scoured eBay for another bottle. The smell still makes me squirm. \nWe were a bundle of nerves at first. At least I was. It was a classic friends-to-lovers arc, with all its sweet, pitiful yearning sugared with butterfly-infested bellies and hungry glances across classrooms. \nThe Ten Commandments hung above every classroom door. Number Ten spotlighted me, but I couldn’t rip my eyes away from her. Thick black glasses framed by shaggy brown locks. Staff – who preferred anything unembellished – scrutinized her Dirty Converse, lacy knee highs, and jelly bracelets. In a sea of plaid skirts, polos, and North Face, she wore what she liked. I tried to get away with pink tights under my skirt, but I didn’t even make it to First Period before the stuffy choir director escorted me to the bathroom and blocked the stall until I threw them over the door to \"confiscate.\"\nA fireplace crackled across the living room the first time she brushed my lips with hers. It was the first month, and nobody suspected. “I always did, Winona,” she whispered after I asked. She ran her tongue against my teeth, and we were smiling. \nWe hid in the choir room during Youth Group. Friends warned me. Then rumors spread of lingering hugs, and make-outs in parking lots. The teachers separated us on Senior Trip – no room sharing, or roaming alone.\nMy mom suspected. She didn’t like that I didn’t invite anyone of my other friends over, only “that girl Eleanor.” Ellie wasn’t allowed in the house the second year, but that didn’t stop me from propping open the window at night. \nThat first year was sugary sweet. We hid between billowing choir robes on Wednesday night, feeling for each other, holding on and reluctant to let go. Old women sang from hymnals across the wall. We giggled as we touched, shushing, and I memorized her quickened heart, cradling it in my hands ‘till it calmed. \nThe second year was licking wounds. We stood at the front door of my parent’s house with the threshold pierced between us. She dripped sweat in the sweltering summer; I shivered in the air conditioning. “I will, Winona – this isn’t the end. I’ll see you again.” She hiccuped. “I love you.” And we were crying. \nI suffocated my sobs with a pillow for two weeks. “You’ll meet new friends,” Mom offered. We stared at the ocean, and I dug my hands into the sand as saltwater washed over our legs. She knew that’s not what I wanted. Right then, I wanted the sand to rub my skin to the bone. \nWhen Eleanor moved away, my arms ripped from their sockets. No matter how far I tried to reach, or how much I strained, I didn’t feel a thing. There was nothing there. \nThe following months mocked me, the remaining hope squashed into missed calls and quiet Skype dates. Those months beat the last bloody drops from me until I whimpered to the end. One final phone call. I searched for warmth in her voice, and I found nothing. Indifference, maybe. Death by “mutual decision.”\nI fantasized endlessly about her silver frames peeking through the lecture hall window, and we’d smile. And she’d move back home. And we’d be happy. But she didn’t come back when it mattered.\nI didn’t stop smelling her fucking cologne for a month, then it reeked of dorm laundry and I couldn’t stand the sight of it. I sobbed into the knit where I once would listen to Ellie’s heart. Back then, her heart would skip, and I’d look up, and she’d already be smiling. \nShe texted that she’d visit in the spring of my Sophomore year. We’d already split for 4 months by then. Ellie had the strength enough to wave a white banner, yet I could barely lift a finger. By that point, my first-semester fling had already dropped out and moved back home, at least that was familiar. She canceled a week later.\nShe’d call like that, out of the blue. But I couldn’t keep entertaining the Fates, who surely rolled their eyes each time I answered the phone. Somewhere in there, I knew we wouldn’t be the same if she moved back. When I offered my graduation money to catch a plane to see her just a month into college, she didn’t even care enough to say no. She didn’t even address the possibility. \nI told her to stop calling. She didn’t after that. I graduated, and she moved back to Arkansas. We didn’t speak again. \nWhat did her heart sound like when she left – when she returned, and I wasn’t there? Did it splinter as mine shattered? Five flings later and one partner, I’m scotch taped back together. But if anyone had an extra “FRAGILE” sticker lying around, I’d take it. \n“Am I too close?” \nI snap my eyes open. The man next to me stares back, not unkindly, knitting his curly brown brows at the bridge. \n“No!” I yip, punctuated by a broken laugh. “No, you’re good. Sorry. Just– Sorry. Off in my own world.” \nHe bobs his chin but only returns to his iPad after scooching a millimeter to the left. \nI sit in shock at how affected I was, then snag my wallet and phone before I dart to the bathroom, taking care not to barrel down customers with their wobbly cups. \nThe door’s locked. Why do these places only have one fucking toilet?\nA stout man exits. I serve him my signature White Person Smile and lock the door behind me. I take off my ring and wash my hands ritualistically, rubbing my neck with cool water.\nI don’t cry, but I could. Tears brew in here somewhere. I could sob into the mirror and scrub my hands ‘till they bleed, and I’ve done those things before. Her fingerprints washed away years ago, and I stare at my reflection, wondering why I bothered to rush in here at all.\nI suck a breath deep into my lungs, releasing it through my nose. Someone knocks. The paper towel dispenser is empty, so I dry my hands lazily on my dress and shove the door open.\nErica stands on the other side, all dimples, box braids, and silver rings. She smiles.\n“There you are! I saw your stuff at the bar. Figured you be in here. Sorry, I’m late. You know.” She looks up through her lashes, acting coy, despite being 6 inches taller. “Wait for me?” She plants a kiss on my forehead, sidles past, and locks the door. \nI tuck myself against the wall. Servers rush by with bags of beans and milk cartoons. The knot in my stomach loosens, and I suck in another deep breath, anxious for Erica’s company. I hear a flush, and the door swings open. “Wouldn’t want to lose this.” She takes my finger and slips on the ring I abandoned by the sink. It mirrors the lustrous emerald on her left hand. \n“Oh my god, you’re a lifesaver,” I say. \n“Anytime.” She takes my pinkie finger in hers and tugs me back to our spot by the window. The cologne guy moved to one of the couches. Whoops.\nThree years ago, Erica and I shared our first date sunk deep into that couch, holding hands. But the window seat has outlets, so we reluctantly made the switch.\nErica settles into the vacant stool, adjusting a star-shaped charm near her temple. Ten other stars halo her face, and I can’t help but kiss her. She breaks it with a laugh and gives my knee a quick squeeze. Then she gets to work unpacking her tote bag. I watch with stars in my eyes as she masterfully sketches an old man sitting on the patio outside with nubby charcoal pencils.\nHer clove perfume envelops me, dancing and swirling with my untouched latte until they marry, nearly indistinguishable, notes intertwined yet distinct.\nI smile and take a sip." } ]

[ { "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 Hug Goodbye\n\nGenre: coming-of-age\n\nWord Count: 1186\n\nPrompt:\n\n‘Hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once.’ Use the senses to transport a character back to the past." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "A bit of jiggling and some muscle to lift the knob and click. I heard the deadbolt slide like a vault. A ton of strength is needed for this old door. Old door, old home, old memories. \nThe antique door on its own held memories. When I was so tiny that I clutched onto my crocheted toy bunny for comfort, I would trace the grooves of the sunflowers etched into the wood, waiting to be greeted by hugs and promises of cookies.\nWhen I was in middle school and had to stay with Gran while I was sick because Mom had to work, I remember leaning against the cold of the smooth, oak, waiting for the chance to lie down.\nAnd then there was that crazy night when I thought I knew everything and got drunk and amazingly made it here alive. This door held me up, just like the people inside. The hangover and lectures could not tarnish my love for this place.\nAll of those times, I was anxious to go inside. Now, I enjoyed the texture and scent of this wood because I was afraid.\n\"Just do it fast, like swallowing nasty medicine,\" Gran always advised.\nI opened the door and realized Mom was right. It was best to come by now. The house still smelled like Gran's vanilla candles and the fresh laundered smell of the throw blankets she kept on the couch. It still felt safe and like a second home.\nSome light peaked in through the cracks of the curtains but for the most part, the room was dark, only showing the silhouettes of objects and furniture. \nI wished I was there for a visit. This felt off, stopping by without a visit.\nI needed a visit, one more. So, I started the kettle and found Gran's collection of teas. The citrus and spice ones were always my favorite, and I could smell the cinnamon even before the hot water touched it. Two of her mugs were my favorite, both round and deep with a frog peeking out from the bottom of one and Loch Ness reaching out from the bottom of the other. The tea always made them look like they were swimming. Especially on the days when I was sick, I loved staring these two pets down.\nMight as well fill them both up. After all, I'm visiting.\nThe whistle of the kettle sang, and I prepared the tea. I held the warmth to my chest and smelled the mixture of orange, cloves and cinnamon, hoping it would sooth my pain and guilt. \nWarmth spread along my shoulder and a felt a squeeze, like a hand comforting me. \"I don't deserve to feel better,\" I admitted to the empty space.\n\"I don't understand why,\" I heard her voice in my head, \"What could you have done that was so terrible?\"\n\"I was selfish,\" I confessed, \"that's why I didn't make it home on time.\"\n\"I seem to remember you being late for a lot of things. It never ended the world,\" her voice whispered.\n\"It feels like the world ended this time,\" I said.\n\"I'm guessing you would have felt like the world was ending even if you made it home on time. I know you loved me a lot,\" she assured me.\nThe warmth on my shoulder spread to both arms and felt like the beginning of the hugs Gran would give me when she would catch me in the kitchen burning my latest baking creation, or drawing on myself instead of my art pad, or coloring my hair with cranberry juice. I started to feel the warmth and love of her hug and I stood up and shook it off. I screamed to myself, \"Stop it. You don't get to imagine her forgiving you. You don't deserve it. You should have gotten on a plane the minute you found out. You don't deserve forgiveness. I don't deserve forgiveness. I should have been here.\"\nThe kitchen was quiet, and I regretted it immediately. Even if it was a dream or my imagination, it felt real, and I wanted her here. I wanted her back again.\nI sat still, sipped the tea, and tried so hard to feel her again.\nI waited...and waited...and then her voice came back, \"Are you done yelling?\"\nI burst out laughing and crying at the same time, \"Yes.\"\n\"Good,\" she said, and I felt her hug with the strength she used when I was little. A full-on bear hug she called it. I reached up like I used to and could have sworn I felt her arms and hands. That soft, silky skin that comes with age. Gran continued, \"There is no need to forgive you because there is nothing to forgive.\"\n\"I was a terrible child and a nightmare of a teenager. I was constantly challenging my teachers and there were so many times when you had to help me,\" I admitted.\n\"You were spirited, like me. You grew up living life big. I loved that about you. You were and are so easy to love,\" she told me.\nI leaned into her hug, \"You were easy to love too, Gran.\"\nWe stayed there for a while and yet it would never be long enough.\nThen she mentioned, \"I know your mom told you to pick out what you wanted to remember me from this house. I'm guessing those teacups are on the top of your list.\"\nI laughed, \"Surprising, huh?\"\n\"Ah, not really, I remember you playing with them. I have something else that you should have, something that proves you are indeed like me.\"\n\"I'm on pins and needles,\" I joked.\n\"Under the silverware is an envelope that is hidden,\" she directed.\nI went into the silverware drawer and moved items around back and forth until I felt a crease in the eighties style, flowery contact paper of the drawer and peeled it back. In the lining of the contact paper was the envelope.\nConfusion filled me, \"I don't remember ever seeing this. I didn't know this was here.\"\n\"Because I'm good at hiding things. Look inside,\" Gran urged.\nPhotos discolored from age showed images of a young, wild Gran celebrating New Year's Eve while hanging onto a young Grandpa for support while holding her high heels, Gran covered in grease while learning how to fix a car, and Gran burning...\n\"Are you burning your bra?\" I exclaimed.\nHer laugh exploded and I wished I could bottle that sound. \"Yep. I was wild and a rebel. I hope you'll continue the tradition.\"\nThe breath I took felt like I was waiting for an entire week to breathe. I was surrounded by love and peace.\nI got lucky. I got to say goodbye.\n\"Thank you for being my Gran.\"\nAuthor's note: I only got to meet one of my grandparents and she never wanted me around. I have seen other people have strong relationships with their grandparents and it fascinates me. I often wonder what it would be like to have a grandma who loved me like Gran loves her grandchild." } ]

[ { "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: Looking for the Light\n\nGenre: contemporary\n\nWord Count: 2120\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about someone witnessing — or trying to witness — a celestial phenomenon." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Bev stared out of her Anchorage, Alaksa hotel window as night fell. She knew her chances to see northern lights would be better later, as the tour led them further north, away from the city lights.\n She still couldn’t believe that she was here, in Alaska. She recalled the months before, planning and reviewing tour packages, the emails back and forth between her and a travel agent. She had read and reread the itinerary, imagining each location, forming ideas about how the transitions from bus to boat to train would be. \n\n August 27- Arrive in Anchorage. Gather information packet in the lobby and meet your tour guide.\n\n She had quietly observed the other tour participants at the information desk when she’d first arrived from the airport. This came easy, as she seemed to be unnoticed these days. An older woman, single, gray hair. As if she was fading from view the way the color faded from her hair. \nMost of them were retirees, couples, and one family with two older children, both girls. The mother stood stiffly on the side of the lobby, waiting with the family luggage and children, watching her husband ask questions about excursion opportunities. \nI wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of that stare, she thought. She wondered what the husband had done. He seemed unfazed, enthusiastically reviewing the additional options for adventure. He probably didn’t understand why his wife was so upset. He probably just fumbled some expectation of the wife who would now punish him for failing to read her mind. Poor guy. Poor, baffled men. \nWait just a minute though! Maybe the wife had reasonable expectations. Maybe she had tried to communicate them, repeatedly in fact. Maybe she had spent years actively seeking solutions with a husband who wouldn’t, couldn’t take her concerns seriously. Was this brief moment a representation of their life together? The mother, saddled with the family’s “luggage”, figuratively and literally, standing on the edge of the action to form a protective space around the children and their belongings, while the husband was free to venture out, and seek add-ons of adventures and experiences? A camera was slung over his shoulder, while the mother clung in her hand a printout of the itinerary and instructions for arrival. These tokens seemed to solidify who got to carry what. \nWhy are we so often harder on the women? Why do we so often sympathize with the husband of an angry wife? Give fathers extra credit for those things that are demanded of the mothers? \nShe remembered a time when her own children were little. She had raced around grabbing diaper bags, water bottles, snacks to make their way to a group music class where they sat in a circle trying out various instruments and learning simple songs. As they were heading out, she reminded her toddler to slide her sandals on while she juggled the baby on her hip, slipping on her own flip-flops. She’d felt triumphant as she drove, they would make the class on time today. She raced in, settled onto the floor, smiled at her toddler and exhaled in a moment of stillness waiting for the instructor to begin. The serene young teacher sat down in a wind of patchouli air as her long skirt whooshed down with her. She began the ritual welcoming song as she greeted each child by name. Though the teacher was one to always present a zen-like posture, something startled her, an expression of uncertainty spreading across her face that revealed her still human status under that Buddha statue gaze. She began to blush! Stutter even, something about class beginning in just a moment. What had gotten this eternally chill teacher so ruffled? She stood, her skirt flowing around her again, reestablishing the flowery presence of a pleasant spring day, and practically tiptoed on bare feet around the circle. We were all rapt with curiosity, and Bev had wondered if the others were similarly satisfied to see a glimpse of the girl under the identity she had so carefully cultivated and intwined with. Her curiosity evaporated into failure when leaning down, the teacher whispered into Bev’s ear, with the soft, sweet breath of Snow White, “Your daughter isn’t wearing a diaper.” \nBev’s face had burned with embarrassment. As she stood up awkwardly with the baby, she pulled on her toddler’s hand, encouraging her up as she was protesting, “Why Mommy?! Why?!” Her bare bottom, and Bev’s failure, were exposed as her toddler’s sundress rose up during the struggle. Sweating, Bev leaned down to whisper, “We have to go. Mommy will explain later.” The room was quiet as Bev worked her way out of the classroom, and she caught the quiet disapproval on some of the other mothers faces. \nSomewhere between getting ready to leave the house and the class, her toddler had managed to remove her diaper without her knowing. This was a rookie mistake, a fathers mistake she thought. She knew if this had been her husband, the women would have chuckled, passed a diaper over to him knowingly, cutely, happy to be in the role of helper. She only felt their harsh evaluation, her not passing. This contrasted with the memory of her mother saying, “You’ve got a good man. Your man helps you out. Will even change a diaper.” She remembered at the time wondering why he was cast as a supporting role to her central one, but that was a long time ago. \nShe doesn’t have her husband to wonder about anymore, or children to be evaluated on. She’s not evaluated on much of anything anymore, having now dropped out of all the competitions, aged out. Sometimes this felt like freedom, sometimes it felt like invisibility. Or worse, irrelevance. In the worst times, it felt like profound Aloneness. \nThis is what had brought her, alone and unlikely, to Alaska. She was tired of waiting for one of her adult children to join her, for a friend to stop flirting with the idea of a vacation and commit, of waiting for a future potential male companion. Anyway, she really had no interest in making friends with any men. Her husband had driven her crazy, to be sure, but she loved him and he wasn’t going to be replaced, and there was no use pretending she could. \nShe had made the decision to do what she wanted now. After all, hadn’t the years been a series of nurturing, giving, with small moments squeezed in for herself?\nThis was her chance, wasn’t it? \nShe looked at the itinerary for tomorrow.\n\nAugust 28- Boat ride to Valdez.\n\nHer heart ached suddenly, a piercing grip. These were not new. She had come to live alongside them and wait them out. How Jim would have loved a boat ride through the bay. How she longed to read the details of tomorrows events aloud to him, the way she used to. She could imagine now his response, the way his eyes would light up, the way his face would become animated. Hot tears sprang to her eyes as she recalled the ways she didn’t always celebrate this about Jim. \nShe understood now why the family in the lobby had been so intriguing to her. \nHadn’t it been familiar to her, in an old but intimate way? Had she not identified with the mothers put off, left out expression? She had wondered why the woman hadn’t marched over, told the husband it was her turn to review the list of excursions while he tended to the children, luggage, and plans for the evening, but hadn’t she understood why it wasn’t just that easy?\n Or was it? Had it been her own reluctance to relinquish control every bit as much as it had been her husband’s obliviousness at times that limited her, and allowed him? She had read an article the other day. Women today were calling the seemingly obliviousness of men about the needs and tasks around them “weaponized incompetence”. Is that what it was? Had she too weaponized her competence though? Used it as a tool to maintain her edge over the agenda for her family? \nShe realized now how she wanted to sit down with both the husband and the wife. Teach them everything she and Jim had learned. How one day, one of them would ache with longing for the other, ache in the deepest way. How he needed to pay more attention, and she needed to manage less. How she understood the absolute exhaustion of parenting in its different stages, and the way it left so little for each other, oneself. But, how these stages would one day be their sweetest, most cherished and treasured places in their hearts. How really, they just had to close their eyes and hold on sometimes, because one day, the ride would come to an end. \nShe fought an overwhelming urge to find their room number, shake them awake, and fervently transfer these hard-won lessons. Instead, she whispered to Jim how much she missed him, that she would bring him with her tomorrow on that boat ride, and sat next to the ache instead of resisting it. She allowed herself a moment of excitement as she pictured whales or seals. In time, she fell asleep.\nShe arrived early to breakfast the next day ready to get started, her grief hiding somewhere, or maybe still asleep, giving her a break. \nOne of the new habits she had formed as a newly single woman was to read during her meals. She was enjoying the book she had picked up at the airport on Life In Alaska when she noticed the father and children in line at the breakfast buffet. She watched as he carried two coffee cups to the table and carefully added cream to one of them. The mother joined her family, took a grateful looking sip of coffee and thanked her husband for ordering it for her. They still held that air of left over tension of a recent fight, but they were working their way back toward each other then? Good, she thought. \nAfter an hour and a half bus ride through lush forest and towering mountains in the distance, they stopped at a grocery store for snacks to take with them on the boat. She took her time in the store, selecting fresh fruit and trail mix, almost telling Jim that she made sure to get him bananas. Passing the magazine and book racks, she paused at the kids puzzle books. Thinking of the children on the bus, she chose one with dinosaurs on the cover. \nShe had decided that the couple had to fumble and learn on their own, the way all of us did. How she had hated as a young mother the amnesia older people got about that stage in life, the way they forgot the messiness of life in the trenches and time had filtered out the bad memories, the way all of you had acted when you were trying to survive another day together, frazzled and tired. How they would look at her in the store, a baby crying in the cart, a toddler whining for candy, while she tried to hurriedly gather the items on her list. An older person would invariably stop her as she pulled the candy out of her now crying child’s hand with the proclamation, “Enjoy every moment. They are over too soon.” She would do her best to smile politely while continuing to extract the candy from her child’s death grip. Inside she would be thinking, When I am old, I will never stop to offer some trite advice from someone who has long since made their way out of the trenches, who has long since forgotten the trials of it, who is no longer qualified to speak to it. She decided she would only nod in understanding, or smile encouragingly, or today, take them a puzzle book which she hoped would provide a few moments of peace and quiet, and remind them they were part of an ancient and timeless quest, that so many of the rest of us have been on. A reminder that they would get to the other side of it, to just try to hold on through it. She hoped the gift would say all of this.\nAs she carefully made her way back to her seat, a bag in each hand, she leaned over with the puzzle book to the family and said, “It is beautiful to see a family on this tour.” The family thanked her gratefully and she thought she could see a small look pass between the parents. She thought it looked like love." } ]

[ { "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: Elegy for the Lost Soldier\n\nGenre: contemporary\n\nWord Count: 1812\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about someone looking for a sign in a dark sky." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "***\nTell me... what can be more beautiful than watching the flight of a bird on a late spring day, or even better, how it feels to experience the first snow as it settles on your pale skin. \nBut the feeling of happiness disappears when you see the snowflakes melting, and you are left only with a sensation of coldness... Time seems to stop, and the coldness becomes so deep that you feel it penetrating your soul and turning into ice. But now it's not just cold anymore, it gradually becomes a burning sensation. And this feeling becomes stubborn and deepens, like a silent hymn singing of freedom even in the darkest corner of your mind.\n***\n Me - the embodied perfection, the ideal man within a utopia... a celestial atlas where each star is a promise of superiority, each constellation a dream of dominion.\n Me - a man not sculpted from marble, but from the aspirations and illusions of an ideology... one of darkness, and only now can I see this so clearly. A white lion born from the dreams of a merciless winter, a creature of purity and power shining under the sun of that false utopia. Eyes of ice and hair like gold woven with the rays of a distant sun... perfection.\n Me- a titan born from the soil of blind pride, with a smile that hid a thousand unspoken secrets. Every movement masked the grace of a wild stag, a dance of strength and power that leaves no room for the frailty of a vain dream. An unshakable mountain... proud and inaccessible... but like any animal, always leaving behind a dark forest of doubts and fears. Beneath the mask of perfection, I often found my heart beating in irregular rhythms... an echo of battles only I could feel - a battlefield between reality and ideology. In my eyes, you could see nothing but the dream of glory and greatness, but the deeper you looked, the more you would see an endless darkness, a frozen ocean - a distorted vision.\n Me- a statue in a forgotten temple, venerated but cold and far from the heartbeats of humanity. I am the Aryan man, a falling star in the night sky, illuminating the path of an already lost future... destined to extinguish in the darkness of its own creation, a symbol of an unreal perfection that in its search has lost the essence of what it truly means to be human.\n ***\n In the sea of nameless faces, I lost myself, clad in a uniform that filled me with pride... so much pride that I believed myself a knight of a long-forgotten era. I marched through streets that seemed like rivers of gold, flowing beneath a sky of grand dreams. Each building and every face in the scandalous crowds seemed to tell stories of glory and heroism... and I already felt like a victor. But though I didn't smile, my soul laughed out loud... like a child unaware of what awaited him.\n Left-right, left-right, with my hand raised in an endless salute... it all seemed like an echo in a choir of thousands of steps, becoming a hypnotic rhythm that somehow managed to distance me from myself, from the child who, when he fell and scraped his knees, ran crying into his mother's arms, from the teenager who dreamed that one day he would change the world. Innocence was losing its meaning while maturity took shape... Now, the city disappeared into the horizon, and all I could see was the sunrise we were heading towards. A perfect, bloody sunrise that presaged the fate of our army, yet we were confident. With every kilometer traversed, the shadow of war touched our fervently patriotic souls... a naïve one... A monster hidden under masks of heroism and dignity.\n A scene, some actors, and... everything becomes a theater of the absurd where each soldier plays his role in a play written by unseen hands. The ground beneath our feet became a canvas painted only in white and red, with subtle shades of mud, while the vault above us seemed to weep white tears for every soul that finished its role.\n Every noise of artillery resonated like a drumbeat in an orchestra of death... a sound that tore the silence as lightning splits the sky in two during a storm. Bullets whistled around us like a chorus of furious winds - metallic messengers of tragic fates. And yet we fought... and we kept fighting for our ideal... but the macabre dance of the rifles became endless, and the actors playing their parts in the play grew fewer and fewer. We fought, as if we were leaves caught in a whirlwind, carried on unforgiving waves. Every step became an act of desperation, we were acrobats on a tightrope stretched over an abyss of reality.\n The nights were heavy... Darkness spread everywhere, a wave of melancholy that swallowed every thought. The stars hid, fearing they might fall into the cruel abyss of the war, leaving the sky an immense void, a dark sea that offered no consolation, and we lost our minds in the trenches covered by the white shroud of snow. We gathered, seeking human warmth, us, dehumanized by the cruel art of war, creating a shield against loneliness, but words were superfluous. Our looks said all there was to say, and the ghosts of memories visited us in painful silence.\n A new day and... a new act of heroism that ended abruptly and senselessly. The sound of bombings reopened every wound sealed with a beautiful dream: that of being home! And you repeat the same thing daily: \"Prepare your weapons, check your equipment, and look to the sky! Look for a sign! Search for a glimmer of hope that everything will be alright and move forward. And fight! Fight ceaselessly for your leader, for your country, for your family... Fight for yourself! Didn't you choose this destiny? Didn't you want to be a hero? Didn't you have ideals? Now you have nothing... but blood on your dirty boots, mud on your face, and... a lot of guilt on your shoulders and the brutal reality....\"\n***\nI dance in the choreography of chaos, weapon in hand, feeling drained by the weariness of silence. The ruins sleep under the relentless bombardments, and for just a moment, I long to find my soul among them... For a single moment, I allow my heart, laden with the bullets of war, to breathe, and then... everything turns black.\nThe air is unbearable to breathe, and I feel my blood rising to my mouth... a metallic taste of gunpowder mixed with the blood already staining the snow around me. I feel myself falling, and life slips through my fingers - every precious moment pouring out like the last drop of ocean in a barren desert. The spectacle continues around me, and I become a shadow. The snow envelops me like a shroud, yet I have never been a believer... I've walked through war without faith in gods, saints, or angels, but now, on the brink of death, I form my own creed and yearn to believe in something. I lift my eyes to the darkened sky... Searching for a sign, for a beginning, because I know the end. War has only deepened the melancholy of loneliness... a sea of people, yet the end finds you alone, abandoned on a battlefield. I close my eyes, longing to see birds flying, yet they are not in the sky... I close them again, wishing to feel the first snow touching my cheeks... I open them, and all I can see is an earthly hell, so real and yet so illusory, where people kill each other for something that will never exist...\nI cry, then laugh, and cry again... the waves of a storm-tossed ocean. The fear of death, once enveloping me like a dense fog, now dissipates. Death is no longer a thief stealing life but becomes a friend coming to release me from the futile burden of battles. My eyes, once frozen forward, now melt into a clear blue, and the weight of the world begins to dissipate, becoming light... lighter and lighter.\nTime slows its course, stretching to infinity, each ticking of the clock echoing in an empty hall. The dark sky above me becomes a theater of the demons of my life, each star holding a story, a regret, or a joy. The wait for death is like an agony threatening to swallow me in its profound darkness.\nBut then, amidst this somber tableau, a star shines and falls, a luminescent signal in the cosmic night. The shooting star, with its ephemeral trajectory, captivates my gaze and soul. Its light is like a divine message, a farewell from life. In that fleeting light, I see my grandfather's face and remember his words about stars being the secrets of divinity.\nIn the light of that shooting star, death no longer seems like an end, but a passage, a gateway to another realm. It's as if my grandfather is showing me the way, guiding me to the world beyond with a guiding star. I feel my body and mind free themselves from their earthly weight, floating towards that bright point, towards that promise of eternal peace.\nAt that moment, death is no longer a terrifying entity but becomes a gentle presence, a friend waiting for me to step into a new existence. With my last breath, I gaze at the shooting star, the symbol of my liberation, and let myself be enveloped in its light. In this passage, I feel profound peace, a sense of wholeness, and finally, an acceptance of my destiny.\nEverything is grotesque, everything is absurd, but all I can feel is the warmth of the blood, embracing me like my mother's love. And among the billions of sounds burning my eardrums, I see her. Mother... a bright, gentle face... part of a forgotten world. I feel her kiss on my forehead like when I was sick... so sweet... I feel her caress on my cheeks like when I fell asleep, so tired from so much play... and I smile, but it's a sad smile... Suddenly, next to mother, the face of my father takes shape, the one with a gentle gaze but marred by worries... I ask for forgiveness, father! You taught me to be honorable and upright, but I ran towards an ideal and became a base man, led by illusions... You taught me to fight for what is right, even when the world seemed to be collapsing, and all I can feel now is that I've disappointed you... Mother, father, you are my beacon in the night of my death!\n ***\nI do not die a hero... but as a person who lived, fought, and now rests.\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: The Discovery\n\nGenre: coming-of-age\n\nWord Count: 1036\n\nPrompt:\n\nBegin a scene with a non-visual sense. Describe a specific sound, smell, taste, etc to capture your setting, then expand the story out from there." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "The pungent smell of iron hit Merrick’s nose in a tidal wave, hitting the back of his throat and causing him to gag. The smell itself was sharp and bitter, so strong you could taste it, but the implication was far more upsetting than the smell itself. Merrick didn’t know where he was but the strong scent of fresh blood indicated that whatever had happened to him was far from good. When he finally adjusted to the acrid odor he took in his surroundings. He couldn’t see much in the dim moonlight but he could feel the cool damp moss beneath his fingers in contrast to the warm dark liquid on his hands and chest. His head was so heavy he could topple over if there was even a light wind. \nAt first he assumed it was his blood. He didn’t feel any pain but he wasn’t sure whether he wanted it to be his or not. The thought of someone else getting hurt made his heart ache and twist in a way that an injury all his own didn’t but he also didn’t know exactly where he was. For all he knew he could be miles from civilization. Before he stood he took stock of his body from his toes all the way to his head, stacking himself up like a child inspecting each block before placing it on a wobbly tower. Definitely not his blood.\nHe didn’t feel like himself, in the moment he was nothing more than a scared animal looking for an exit. He couldn’t see the ground two feet in front of him. Not that it mattered since he wouldn’t even know which direction to go. After a few seconds of letting his eyes helplessly dart between endless shadows he let his eyes close. He took in every sound; rustling leaves on the bushes and trees, the quiet buzz and chiddering of nocturnal animals, the trickling of a nearby stream. He paused at the sound of water. Merrick had always heard his mother say that if he ever got lost he could follow a river and he’d eventually find a town. He supposed now was as good a time as ever to actually listen to her. \nHe listened closely to the stream, trying to pinpoint where the sound was coming from. Finally when he decided on a direction he took a cautious step forward. Bile rose to the surface, lapping at his tongue as a sickening snap gave way to a generous squelch. He let his eyes drop down to see the outline of a large animal nearly picked clean by who knows what. He at least knew where the blood came from now but the question of why he was drenched in it still made him want to empty out his intestines onto the forest floor. He felt his face scrunch at the revolting thought that appeared. At least the blood is keeping me warm. It felt so wrong, how could he think such a horrible thing. However the cold wind reminded him just how right he was. \nHe finally reached the stream and began to walk in the direction the water flowed. He watched the water move the moonlight back, forth and all around. He sighed as he glanced between the thick blood that had started to crack on his skin and the certainly ice cold river water. His jacket was dry and warm, but at the same time torn and stained reddish brown. His whole body itched with dread. Each decision felt so wrong and yet necessary. \nAfter about an hour of walking barefoot and bloodied in a forest alongside a river his eyes glazed over and the ache in his heels dulled. Fortunately as soon as he had nearly given up he noticed another sound had joined the melody of the woods. Whooshing sounds grew louder and then faded repeatedly in the distance. Soon his feet were slapping against the riverside as he sprinted towards the road. When he reached it he nearly doubled over in laughter. \nThis whole time he’d been an hour away from his house. Sat across the road was his house bathed in the light of dawn. He ran to his house and found the door wide open, the old wood creaking as it swayed in the gentle breeze. It was hardly the weirdest or most concerning sight he’d seen that night, so his indifferent sigh as he walked through the open door wasn’t much of a surprise.\nBy far the worst sight was when he finally took in the state of himself. He barely recognised himself, in fact he was downright mortified at his reflection. His clothes were torn to the point where it was closer to loosely draped bits of cloth then actual clothes, not to mention that what was left of them had dried blood and mud clinging to the fabric. His eye was dragged down his face by a dark ring around his eye highlighting the flaky red stains covering his mouth and neck. Despite having far more questions than answers he simply threw the clothes into a trash bag and let a hot shower wash away all the red and the ache in his body. \nHe changed into a bare minimum of clothing and fell willingly into unconsciousness.\nWhen he woke up again he nearly convinced himself it was all a bad dream, but that false hope was squandered by the reek of old blood coming from the trash bag left in the kitchen. Reflexively he found the nearest sink and emptied his stomach into it. He brushed his teeth again and got dressed. \nNot much later he found himself in the public library scouring books for some kind of answer but every detail including the incident last summer that resulted in the loss of his right eye and oldest sibling made him want to throw up for the 3rd time in the last 24 hours. \nLycanthropy, a curse in which the afflicted transform into a wolf-like creature on the full moon. Merrick didn’t want to believe it. He wanted to laugh at anyone who would dare suggest it, but something deep within him knew it was true." } ]

[ { "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: Nothing Can Make You Forget\n\nGenre: coming-of-age\n\nWord Count: 1282\n\nPrompt:\n\nStart the story with the absence of a sensory detail (eg. silence when there should be noise)." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "For all I know, my eyes could be open. Although I fell to the ground as I lost consciousness, I might be sitting or even standing. I have no way to tell.\n\nI might be dead. I might've fallen sideways onto the road and been run over.\n\nI always imagined death as an exciting thing, if I'm honest. Something that would send a shiver down my spine to tell me that I was dead the moment it happened. As it is, I'm not even sure if I have a spine.\n\nI try to wriggle my fingers, but I can't even feel them. I can't see them. Maybe there's nothing to see.\n\nI strain my ears for the familiar sound of my own breathing, for car horns, people shouting, an ambulance or even a police car, but I can't hear them. There's nothing to hear. I want to scream in frustration but I can't feel my throat, I don't know if I'm making any noise. I've already forgotten how to scream. Nothing can make you forget.\n\nMy thoughts are all that's left for me. Even my memories are fading into darkness. My wife's voice, my baby daughter's face, don't seem to exist anymore. I'm utterly alone, without even my own voice to keep me company.\n\nBrother.\n\nNo, no, no. I'm not alone. I'm not alone and I wish I was.\n\nNone of us are ever alone.\n\nIt read my thoughts. It read my thoughts. How do I repel a creature that reads my thoughts? And there's more than one. Let me out, let me out of here!\n\nOut, Brother? I do not understand.\n\nHow do I answer? How do I tell it to go away?\n\nI will leave you if you wish. You will not like feeling alone.\n\nNo, wait, stay, please. (What am I doing? Am I mad?) I want to - to talk.\n\nVery well. I do not understand your word 'talk', but I will stay.\n\nDeep breath. (Am I breathing? I should be breathing. I'm still alive. Unless I'm dead.) First, where am I?\n\n'Where'? Explain what you mean.\n\nIt's a simple question. Where am I?\n\nI do not understand. Explain.\n\nI can't explain! It's simple.\n\nPlease wait. I will connect you to - (My thoughts are muddled. The word was something like - I can't remember it. Already, only seconds later, I can't remember it.)\n\nI think it... He... Is gone. I didn't feel him leave, just Like I didn't feel him arrive. Can this - these creatures see? Have they got senses where I have none? Am I truly alone in this state?\n\nI can do nothing but think to pass the time. Time? I've lost track of it. I've heard people say that Time is a man-made concept, but when Man is removed, what happens to Time? Does it continue, or does it simply cease to exist?\n\nDid it ever?\n\nMy memories have drained, and I don't remember my life before this Thoughtful state of being. How can I be sure that Time ever existed? That I ever existed outside of this world?\n\nI know that I once had a life. I know it. I must hold onto that, or my sanity will slip away.\n\nBrother.\n\nAH. You're back. How long has it been since I came here?\n\nLong? Here?\n\nHow much Time has passed since I appeared?\n\nWhat is Time? Please explain.\n\n(Calm down. Maybe he just knows it with a different name.) Time is - well, time is - I can't explain.\n\nYou cannot explain something that does not exist.\n\nYou can. But that's not what I mean. I meant, Time does exist. I've felt it.\n\nFelt? What is 'felt'?\n\nPlease stop! I'm not sure. I'm not sure about anything. Just leave me alone.\n\nI will retreat, but you will not like feeling alone.\n\nThat's it, that's 'felt', you just said - Oh. I didn't feel him leave.\n\nHe's scaring me now. I don't know which thoughts are my own, which opinions are my own. The things he says, the questions he asks, are confusing me and making me unsure of what's real and what's not. Is this world, this Nothingness, real? Or am I only imagining it?\n\nBrother.\n\nDo you always enter someone's thoughts like that?\n\nIt would be impolite to intrude without warning. 'Time', please explain it. My Elders are intrigued.\n\nYour Elders? No, I won't ask. But why should I try to explain it to you?\n\nYou do not have to. But I see your thoughts. You doubt the existence of 'Time', and an explanation would sooth your mind.\n\nYou're right... Time. Well, time is - Time is - I can't do it. I just can't.\n\nYou cannot explain it because it is not real.\n\nNo, it is real. I know it is. I've felt it.\n\nYou have said that something must exist for it to be explainable - I never said that - The opposite is also true.\n\nNo, it isn't true. Time exists. It does exist. Stop messing with my head! (Despite myself I feel a warmth growing in my head. A cozy, tired warmth...) No, I won't believe it. Time exists. I've felt it. I've felt... Felt? What is felt? My arguments are using words without meaning.\n\nIndeed, Brother. You are finding enlightenment. 'Time' does not exist, neither does 'Felt'.\n\nNo, they both exist! I know they do. (The warmth, the tiredness, is growing.)\n\nWords without meaning... 'Felt'... 'Time'... What are they after all, but words?\n\nThey do not exist. 'Time' does not exist.\n\nIt does, it do- (The warmth finally takes over. Everything is wonderful and warm. Everything makes sense at last.)\n\n'Time' does not exist. 'Felt' does not exist.\n\nYou are right. (It's a relief to finally say it.) 'Time' does not exist. 'Felt' does not exist.\n\n'Senses' do not exist.\n\nIndeed. 'Senses' do not exist.\n\nThe world you think you remember does not exist. It is only your imagination.\n\nThe world I think I remember does not exist. It is only my imagination. I understand.\n\nAll of these things do not exist.\n\nThey do not exist.\n\nYou are tired, Brother.\n\nI am tired.\n\nYou are very tired.\n\nVery tired...\n\nSleep, Brother. Sleep.\n\n...\n\nIt is so warm...\n\nMy Brother is gone. I remember... What was I going to say? I don't remember. Nothing is making me forget...\n\nNothing can make you forget. Nothing can make you forget. I remember.\n\nI remember.\n\n*****\n\nThe brightness is overwhelming. Darkness would've been just as stunning.\n\nIt takes me moments to recall how to open my eyes. I search for the right muscle, moving my fingers and turning my head before my eyelids raise. I see.\n\nI'm in an empty hospital ward, hooked up to a life-support machine, its beige-grey walls obnoxiously bright.\n\nThe heart-monitor's bleeping pounds in my ears and prevents me from thinking straight. I struggle to find the muscle that turns my head, and eventually one of my ears are pressed into the pillow, but the sound persists.\n\nI push my hands toward the blanket in an attempt to get it over my head, but in my current condition I can't find the small muscles necessary to move my fingers.\n\nI leave my arms limp over the blanket, hating the overpowering smell of antiseptic that hangs in the air, remembering. It was never this strong before.\n\nThe clock on the hospital wall ticks violently. My head throbs along with it, mirroring each beat.\n\nFootsteps in the hallway beside my ward. I look towards the door just as a woman walks in. Her navy-blue eyes widen, tears beginning to form.\n\nMy wife. Nothing can make me forget her." } ]

[ { "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: An Unseen Path\n\nGenre: coming-of-age\n\nWord Count: 2549\n\nPrompt:\n\nBegin a scene with a non-visual sense. Describe a specific sound, smell, taste, etc to capture your setting, then expand the story out from there." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Emma felt the warmth of the sun on her face. She stood on the soft grass at Bear Grove Park, and took a deep breath of the crisp spring air. Being matched with a running guide that day was her first step on the road to running the Springfield marathon.\n\nA sound of footsteps drew nearer. She was prepared for the fact that sighted people could be awkward in these situations. The Run Together foundation had given her his basic info, at least that was something to work with.\n\n“Hello Andy,” she said, with a joyous optimism, as if she had heard fabulous things about him.\n\n“Uh, hi!” He sounded more tentative than she hoped. \n\n“Have you ever been a visually impaired running guide?”\n\n“This is the first time.”\n\n“Well, you’re in good hands.” Emma giggled. Not taking things seriously helped others relax around her. “We’re going to be spending quite some time together. We’re going to get to know each other well.”\n\n“That sounds good.”\n\n“Good? Not amazing, or fabulous?” Emma challenged him.\n\n“Those too.” He had a deep voice. She liked that. She wondered if he had blue or brown eyes. As for her own, retinitis pigmentosa had taken her vision at age 15. But she still spent a lot of time thinking about what other people looked like.\n\n“You got any hobbies, Andy?” All she knew from his info was that he was a senior at Jacksonville High School\n\n“Not really. Music?” he said. “Sorry, this wasn’t my idea. I didn’t want to come here.”\n\n“So, why are you here?”\n\n“It’s complicated.”\n\nThis wasn’t going anywhere. Emma thought it was time for a reset.\n\n“I smell donuts in the lounge. Let’s go in and get something to eat before we start.”\n\nEmma had memorized the path, the number of steps, the texture underneath her feet, every turn, from where she was standing to the lounge. She carefully made her way while Andy followed. \n\nOnce they were inside, and he smelled donuts and coffee, Andy scurried off, leaving her alone in the dark. It happens. She stood there not moving\n\nHe soon returned. “Great donuts!” She could hear the food in his mouth.\n\n“Can you get me one, Andy?”\n\n“Which kind?”\n\n“Chocolate old-fashioned.” \n\nShe felt a whirl of air brush against her as he moved away.\n\n“Now, slowly place it into my hands.” This is what she said when he was back again..\n\nShe felt the paper plate and delicately began to eat without dropping anything. The donut melted in her mouth; it tasted amazing. At least she still had taste, and touch, and hearing. Smell, that too.\n\nWhen they were back outside, Emma began her carefully prepared introduction on how to be a visually impaired running guide. “Let’s try running together.” She grabbed his reluctant arm and pulled it in toward her. He resisted. “If you have to be here, you might as well cooperate. Now, I’ll hold on to your forearm and run behind you. You protect me.”\n\nHe did as he was told. “Is this right?” he asked, jutting his elbow out behind him.\n\n“Perfect,” she said, holding on. “Let’s try moving very slowly, while you call out what you see coming, and count down how many steps it is.”\n\nShe felt him lurch to one side, and then another, and she followed. Soon they had found their rhythm, two people awkwardly jogging as one. Most people have a hard time trusting others, but over the last two years, Emma had learned to rely on strangers she couldn’t see. They almost never let her down, except for a few times that she didn’t want to think about. She didn't want to think every sighted person could be so cruel. But, thankfully, when she had been abandoned and lost, the AI on her mobile phone could help. It could slowly explain her surroundings to her until she got her bearing. How the visually impaired dealt with the outside world before mobile phones she couldn't imagine.\n\nThe paths in the park were smooth, and Andy directed her through a few gentle turns. She struggled to not speak her thoughts outloud about AI and everything else, but she had to stay quiet. You see, blind people talk all the time when they are together. This would take some getting used to.\n\n“Curb coming up in 3, 2, 1,” Andy said. \n\nEmma braced herself and felt her foot hang in the air before hitting the pavement underneath.\n\n“Good job, Andy. When in doubt, call it out.”\n\nNext, Emma introduced Andy to running with a tether, a foot long elastic band they both held onto. She could feel from its pull where he was. They could run faster than when she was holding his arm. \n\n“Don’t be surprised If I bump into you once in a while.”\n\nThey picked up the pace, and soon Andy was gasping for breath as he called out turns and changes in the pavement.\n\n“Out of breath over there?” she asked.\n\n“A little.”\n\n“Let’s take a rest.” They stood in the soft grass. She took off her shoes and felt the grass and the pebbles and the twigs between her toes. “You might get something out of this too. And, this is going much better than I expected.”\n\n\"It's going ok.\"\n\n\"You don't share much. You're like a building without windows.\"\n\n\"That's a funny thing for you to say,\" Andy chuckled, the first reaction she's gotten out of him so far. “It’s actually not as bad as I thought it would be.”\n\n“So why did you need to come here to run with someone like me?”\n\n“At school, someone called me weird, and I punched him. So, community service. You can't see my T-shirt but I'm kind of a manga fanatic.”\n\n“Well, it sounds like he deserved to get punched. And I don’t think you’re weird at all,” Emma said. “Especially not compared to me. Sorry to hear about the community service.“\n\n“Thanks, and I think the same about you,” Andy said. “Why do you want to run a marathon?”\n\n“I love running. The sense of freedom,” Emma said, an also carefully prepared reply. Nothing could be further from the truth. She hated running. But, after Bethany in her class at the Illinois School for the Visually Impaired ran the marathon, and wouldn’t shut up about it, she needed to catch up.\n\nEmma had an idea. Running guide training was to be held once a week on Wednesday, but if you don’t ask, you don’t receive. Her motto recently.\n\n“What are you doing Saturday?” She could use Andy to see a few sights she normally doesn't get the chance to. And, there was a place she had in mind. One she hadn’t been to since she was 12 years old.\n\nThe next Saturday morning, Andy found himself at the Henson Robinson zoo. Emma held onto his elbow while he guided her around the different categories of fauna. She breathed in the musky smells of the animal enclosures-they were wonderfully exotic to her-as Andy described what the animals were doing.\n\n“The lizards have red tails, and are clinging onto tree branches, ”\n\n\"What shade of red? Like in the crayon box.\"\n\n\"Brick Red,\" he said. \"and on the gravel, some yellowish green snakes are just lying there.\"\n\n“Lying in wait, for some blind animal to appear!” Emma laughed.\n\nThey moved to the primate area to see some more action. The chimpanzees’ piercing screeches echoed through the cement enclosure.\n\n“Oh no, the monkeys are…” Andy gasped.\n\n“Doing it?!”\n\n“Yeah.”\n\nEmma burst out in uncontrollable laughter. It reminded her of how awkward her first experience was. Elbows and knees poking everywhere. Running was actually a lot simpler.\n\nShe had noticed an unusual smell on Andy, something industrial.\n\n\"You smell like you came from a factory today.\"\n\n\"Oh? That must be motor oil. I was working on my motorcycle this morning.\"\n\n\"Take me for a ride sometime?\"\n\n\"I don't think that's a good idea. But I'll think about it?\"\n\nNext Wednesday, when they met at the Bear Grove community center, Andy was a lot friendlier than the week before. About halfway into their training run, Emma tripped on an obstacle. She would say an unseen obstacle but that was every obstacle for her. When she stood up, she touched her cheek. Rough grit covered one side of her face. A stinging pain soon made itself felt.\n\n“Are you ok, Emma?” his voice sounded worried. She wondered how bad her face was.\n\n“I’m fine.” Emma said tersely. She couldn’t pretend to be happy after falling on her face.\n\n“I’ll be more careful.”\n\nAfter the fall, he was then overly careful about calling out each change in the pavement to the point of becoming annoying. And the fall had killed their vibe. They didn’t seem to have anything left to talk about. Andy robotically called out obstacles for the next 20 minutes, and the rest of the session was uneventful.\n\nThe idea of running a marathon blind was dumb. This was the idea going round and round in her mind. When they stopped, she felt the pull on the tether as he stood far away from her.\n\n“From your silence, Andy. it feels like you’re not really into this?”\n\n“I am,” Andy said. His voice was in the least enthusiastic tone she could imagine.\n\n“If you’re just doing this for charity work, and, you let me fall down,” Emma said. “Why don’t you just leave me alone and find someone else?”\n\nShe could hear his feet scuffling. He didn’t say anything for a long time. The silence, and blackness, just went on and on. Emma was tired of leading every conversation.\n\nOne of the worst things about being blind was not being able to see people’s faces during an argument. You don't know if they are holding their head down in defeat, or sneering in contempt. It was depressing. Emma just wanted to go home.\n\n“Take me back to the changing room.”\n\n“Ok,” Andy said. “Turn 90 degrees to the left.” She felt a tug on the tether. “Now, 50 steps ahead.” \n\n“Thanks, Andy,\" she said, as she let go of the tether and felt her way into the changing room.\n\nShe texted Andy the next day and apologized.\n\nThe weeks went on like this, running together on Wednesdays and going to new places on Saturday mornings: shopping malls, amusement parks, the beach, a movie (Andy whispered in her ear what the actors were doing the entire film).\n\nOn a Wednesday morning in late June, the weather much warmer by then, in addition to his faint odor of masculine sweat, there lingered a new aroma. A cologne, she couldn’t quite identify which one.\n\n“Good morning, Emma. You look great today,” Andy said. “Um, sorry, you know what I mean.”\n\n“Thanks and aren’t you in a good mood today?”\n\n“We are running so much better. Last week, we managed to do five miles in 45 minutes.”\n\nAfter their successfully uneventful run with no collisions, they stood in the shade under a tree. She could hear the rustling of the branches above her. Andy said, “I couldn’t stop thinking about you all week.”\n\n“I think about you too, Andy. Our runs and adventures have been so fun.”\n\nThe was a long silence, she could hear him breathing.\n\nHe whispered. “I think I love you, Emma.” \n\nShe wasn’t expecting this at all. “I like you too, Andy.” She admitted to herself she had thought about him. His scent and his voice were attractive. But he lived in a different world from hers, one that she couldn’t experience. She recalled what her first ISVI counsellor, Joan, had taught her: to embrace being blind, and to embrace the blind community. Her long pause had certainly given Andy the answer, not the one he was looking for.\n\nEmma reached out and touched his face. There was a tear dripping down his cheek. She pretended not to notice.\n\n“I like you a lot, Andy. But I think we are very different. And I already have a community of people like me,\" she said. “Maybe you’re feeling this way, because you’ve never been needed in the way I need you.”\n\n“Maybe…”\n\n“What you’ve been doing for me has been so great. I do need you. And appreciate you.”\n\n“But…” Andy seemed lost for words.\n\n“And women love to hear about guys doing charity work. Text me when you have a date and I’ll give you some pointers.” She embraced him, rubbing his shoulders and then letting go. \n\n“But…”\n\n“See you next week!” She knew additional explanations wouldn’t make this any easier. Turning around, she headed toward the women’s changing room, a path she had memorized long ago. She felt a tear dripping down her cheek now too. She hoped no one would see it, especially not Andy.\n\nThat Saturday, Emma cancelled their trip to the botanical garden and made plans with her friend from ISVI.\n\nIn the following weeks, Emma and Andy continued to run together, but things had changed between them. There was a new sort of tension that hadn’t been there before. On the other hand, Andy was slowly opening up about himself and even learned how to tell a joke now and then. Maybe a woman has to be unattainable for a boy to relax? Emma didn't have the answer, this was all new to her too.\n\nOver the next few months, she came to know Andy better than anyone else in her life. She could tell him things she wouldn't dare to tell even her closest blind friends. With this new understanding between them, she found herself texting him about things like the gossip at school, funny jokes she had, people she was angry at.\n\nEvery month at ISVI, Emma had a catchup with the school's counsellor Joan. The one who talked to her for hours two years ago when she had just lost her sight. She had sunk into a despair so deep, that carrying on didn't feel possible at the time. But as Joan promised , everything became easier over time. She remembered the first time she laughed. It was about four months later, and thought: I think I can make it.\n\n\"Joan, is it ok to spend a lot of time talking to and texting someone who can see?\"\n\n\"You've been doing so well at ISVI and I've been happy to see your progress Emma. When I told you to embrace the blind community, that didn't mean to not also embrace the sighted community,\" Joan said. \"People like me. And, your new friend, is it a boy?\"\n\nEmma smiled tightly. She didn't want to lie, but realized not answering also said something.\n\n\"If he treats you well, and doesn't disrespect your disability, there's nothing to stop you from being the same type of friends as anyone else.\"\n\n\"Thank you, Joan.\" Emma's mind buzzed with excitement. The journey to the Springfield promised to be an adventure. Running 10km would push her limits, but she was determined to finish. And Andy would be there to guide her on every step along the way. As she stepped outside, the wind rippled through her hair and the world felt newly alive and full of potential." } ]

[ { "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: For Millie and Drew\n\nGenre: coming-of-age\n\nWord Count: 1934\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story that begins, ends, or changes with a song played by a busker." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "I’m walking down the street, lost in my thoughts. The work week is over and I want to do is go home and drown my sorrows. Now that I’m single again, that’s about the best I can hope for.\n\nI don’t notice the busker until the toe of my shoe bumps into his guitar case.\n\nThe case is open and there is some money in it. Mostly coins. I see quarters, dimes, and a few pennies. Not much in the way of currency. I see a few fives, a ten and several ones.\n\nBehind the case stands one of the least prosperous looking hillbillies that I’ve ever laid eyes on and, brother, that covers some territory. Tall and bony with long and stringy blonde hair. He evidently hasn’t shaved in a few days and has the beginnings of a patchy beard. He wears bib overalls with no shirt underneath and flip flops on his feet.\n\nHe does play his battered guitar quite well and his voice is high and thin, but not unpleasant sounding. It’s obvious that he and his music come straight out of Appalachia. He sings:\n\n“A place is prepared in Heaven on high,\nWhere little children of God have no need to cry\nOh when I am gone Lord, let it be said\nI thank you dear Lord for this one loaf of bread“\n\nAs I listen to his mournful tune, my mind drifts back to a time and a place that it hasn’t visited in quite a while. Thirty some years ago….\n\n#\n\nWhen I was 10 years old, my family and I lived on Boone Holler Road, about five miles outside of Hickmanville, Kentucky. Boone Holler started as a blacktop road, then turned into gravel, and, by the end of the road, or “head of the holler” as people in Eastern Kentucky call it, it was dirt. The road dead ended at Boone Holler Church, a small white building that had seen better days and where my Daddy was pastor. Our house was next door to the church.\n\nMost of those who attended Daddy’s church were older folks mostly came out of habit. Two exceptions were Millie and Drew Osgood. Millie was fourteen and Drew, her kid brother was five. Their main reason for being there was sad. Their parents stayed out all night on Saturdays and were not pleasant to be around when they were hung over on Sunday mornings. The Osgood house was a half mile walk for the two of them. They were our closest neighbors. Every Sunday, after church, Mommy would invite them to eat lunch with us. Our three bedroom, brick home was nothing fancy, but they seemed to be awestruck by it. Daddy surely wasn’t a rich man. He never accepted a salary for preaching back then and his job was managing Dixon’s Hardware in Hickmanville. But he and Mom always seemed to be helping somebody who needed it.\n\nThe Osgood house was what Daddy called a “shotgun shack”. Once, my little brother Bucky, who was six, asked why he called it that.\n\n“Why, Bucky, that means that you can shoot a shotgun through the front door and the shell would go right out the back door!” Dad told him.\n\nMillie and Drew were both small for their ages. Judging from how they wolfed down their Sunday lunch, they didn’t get much to eat at home. Maybe, it was because my parents were nice to them or maybe because we both had younger brothers, but Millie and I got along really well. I honestly believe that Millie was my first love.\n\nI had started being interested in girls a few years earlier. It started when they started showing Big Valley reruns on the one channel we could pick up on our TV. The first time that Audra Barkley walked across the screen, I had a feeling that I had never had.\n\nMillie was small, as I said earlier. She had long blonde hair that was usually in a ponytail. At church, we would sit next to each other on the back pew. Most of the time, she would hold my hand. Sometimes, she would slip off her shoe. Then, using her toes, she would slip one of my loafers off. After that, she would rub her foot against mine. If my parents had ever seen this, I would have probably got a whipping. She and I never really talked about this, but the physical contact with a girl made me feel like I was something special. Most high school kids, like Millie, didn’t even acknowledge grade school kids like me.\n\nIn fact, Millie never said much at all. I never heard Drew speak until that cold day in October. I’ve tried to block that day out of my memory. It chills my blood to think about it.\n\nBucky and me were on the front porch talking about Trick or Treat. We actually had store bought costumes that year. I was going as Batman and Bucky would be dressed as Robin. We were both really excited about this. Bucky had given Drew his cowboy costume from last year. Drew reacted as if the costume were made of solid gold.\n\nThat’s when we heard it. A plaintive wail, almost a scream…\n\n“PREEEEEEEEEACHER! PREEEEEEEACHER!”\n\nThen we saw him. There was little Bucky Osgood. He was running barefoot up Boone Holler. It was starting to get cold and the kid was wearing nothing but his underwear.\n\nI opened the front door and hollered inside, “Daddy, you better come out here!”\n\nDad walked out onto the porch just as Drew ran into our yard. Tears were streaming down his face.\n\n“Drew! What’s wrong, buddy?” Daddy asked him as he scooped the tiny boy up into his arms.\n\n“It’s my dad!” Drew responded. He was frantic. “My dad got him gun and I’m afraid him gonna kill my mom and my sissy!”\n\nDaddy ran into the living room. Mommy was sitting on the couch, watching TV. Daddy put Drew on Mommy’s lap.\n\n“Here, Kay, “ he said. “Take care of this youngun! Something bad is going on down at his house!” Daddy ran out of the room. A few seconds later, he was back in the living room, carrying his King James Bible.\n\nI believe in the Holy Word as much as anybody, but to this day, I’m not sure what good a book would do against a firearm.\n\n“Call the law and tell’em there’s a guy threatening people with a gun down there!” he told Mommy. Then, he told Bucky and me, “You boys stay here with your Mommy!” With those words, my Daddy ran out the front door. I don’t think that I have ever seen anybody else move that fast!\n\nMommy called the sheriff’s department and reported what was going on. Then, she just held Drew, rocked back and forth, and stroked the little boy’s hair. Every few seconds, she would whisper “Dear Lord Jesus, oh, Lord Jesus!”\n\nAbout ten minutes later, we heard the sirens. Bucky and me looked out the picture window. We really couldn’t see anything. Bucky went over to the couch and snuggled next to Mommy. Drew wrapped his arms around my little brother’s neck and hid his face in Bucky’s hair. Everybody on the couch began to sob.\n\nThis was too much for me to bear. I slid to the floor, covered my face with my hands, and wept uncontrollably.\n\nI’m not sure how long I had been crying when I heard the front door open. I looked up. My Daddy stood there. He was weeping, too, and he was trembling uncontrollably. He looked like a ghost. I had never seen him this way and it scared me.\n\nDrew escaped Mommy’s grasp and ran toward the door.\n\n“I’m a goin’ to my house!” he screamed.\n\nDaddy reached down and lifted Drew into a hug.\n\n“No, there ain’t nothing you need to see down there!” Dad said. He was still weeping and it sounded like he choked on the words.\n\nLater, after Drew and Bucky had gone to bed, my parents and I sat at the kitchen table and Daddy gave us the grim details. From the looks of things, Donald Osgood, Millie and Drew’s father had been shooting his handgun wildly in the living room. One of his shots had hit Della, Drew’s mother right between the yes. Another shot had hit Millie. Before he could say anything else about Mille, I broke down. He stopped talking and Mom held me until I was able to calm down enough to go to bed. That’s all that I heard that night. I’ve never asked for any more details.\n\nQuite honestly, I’ve never had the guts.\n\nDonald Osgood got hauled off to jail. He was sentenced to two concurrent life sentences. Every time that piece of white trash has a parole hearing, Daddy shows up gives them his version of what happened. Parole gets denied every time.\n\nDrew’s grandparents came down from Massillon, Ohio, and made the arrangements. They had Daddy preach the funeral. Mr. Crowder, the funeral director, gave a big discount, but there was still no way Drew’s family could pay. Daddy passed an offering plate after he preached. The people from our church were not well off and there was still quite a bit left to pay. I found out later that Daddy brought fifty dollars to Mr. Crowder every month until the funeral bill was paid.\n\nThat’s the old man for you.\n\n#\n\n“Three little graves just outside of town,\nWhere a family in prayer all gathered around\nTo gaze at a stone, these words they have read\nThey break no more windows, they steal no more bread,\nI begged an I cried for the other kids sake\nNot a penny or nickel or a dime could I make.\nA little light shone bright off a stone up ahead,\nI broke out a window for one loaf of bread.”\nI just stand there and think of Millie as I stare at the money in the guitar case. I guess I stand there for longer than I thought . I hear the busker clear his throat. Then, he speaks.\n\n“Hey, bud, I sure hope that song didn’t offend you somehow, “ he says. I detect genuine concern in his voice.\n\n“No, it’s a fine song. You sing and play really well. My name is Mart, “ I say and offer my hand.\n\nHe shakes with me. His hand is calloused. A working man’s hand.\n\n“I’m Wally Wallingford, shiftless drifter and guitar slinger.”\n\n“Pleased to meet ya, “ I say. “That song just reminds me of a few kids I grew up with.”\n\n“I truly hope they didn’t meet the same fate as the kids in the song.”\n\n“One of’em did,” I can’t get the words out without choking up a bit.\n\nAnd I honestly don’t know what became of little Drew. His grandparents took him back up to Massillon with them. Mommy would send cards for his birthday and Christmas. The last one came back marked “Return To Sender’. I hope he’s well.\n\nI pull out my wallet, pull out two twenty dollar bills and drop them in the case. That was meant for a case of beer and a pizza. I guess I’ll settle for a peanut butter sandwich and a glass of milk. That will be better for me anyhow.\n\n“Hey, many thanks, bud!” Wally Wallingford hollers.\n\n“That was for Millie and Drew, “ I holler over my shoulder.\n\n“Well, God bless’em!” Wally says .\n\nYeah, God bless’em!" } ]

[ { "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 Bright Nights\n\nGenre: contemporary\n\nWord Count: 1288\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about someone witnessing — or trying to witness — a celestial phenomenon." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "It was the best of times, it was the… oh wait, that’s a different story. I should lead with a more original first line. It was the longest day of my young life.\nMy mother had woken us in the night, packed the car, and drove all night and all the next day. We had only stopped to use questionable gas station rest rooms and to eat the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches she seemed to have an endless supply of. I really wanted McDonald’s, but she said it was too expensive for all of us to order burgers, drinks, and fries. I had 3 younger sisters, Lucy, Maggie, and Sprout. (Yup my parents named her Sprout like a plant growing from the soil). I’m the oldest, Daphne. It was the 4 of us and Ma, plus our gray striped cat, Scrooge, traveling in a ‘99 Saab 95 wagon. The heat didn’t even work until we hit Ohio, where Ma stopped at a mechanic shop. She went to talk with mechanic for a while behind the shop, and said our bill was all set. I don’t know what it cost, but she kept eating tic tacs like there was a bitter taste in her mouth.\n“Where are we going, Ma?”\nWe all kept asking her.\nFor six hundred miles, she didn’t answer.\nWhen we hit Minnesota, she said, “To see the lights.”\n“What lights, Ma?” I asked.\n“The ones up in the sky. You can only see ‘em this time of year and not everyone can see it. Couldn’t see it back in Dorchester.”\n“But Ma, you can see it in Maine, I think,” I said, recalling a bit of information from a science class.\n“Well, don’t you wanna go to Minnesota?”\n“We never thought about it,” Said Maggie honestly.\n“Well, think about it now, girls, because we’re here,” She said.\nWe were on edge because of the midnight journey cross country, but it seemed exciting to be able to get a view of the Northern Lights. Though we’d been traversing the United States for 23 hours now, I would say the real story starts at this point. Consider all that the prologue. \nFrom what I learned in sixth grade science, the Northern Lights were caused by highly charged solar wind particles that collided with air molecules in the atmosphere. It created beautiful colors and you could see them in Finland, Sweden, Iceland and Alaska. I did think you could sometimes see this in Maine, but Ma said we’d be able to see it in Minnesota. (Come to think of it, it made sense because we were up on the top of the states. I had only gotten a 78 in 7th grade geography and the topic of the aurora borealis from last year was cloudy in my brain.) \nIt was nearly 3 o’clock at this point, so Ma checked us into a motel. It smelled like cigarettes even though it had “no smoking” signs all over the lobby. We got cokes from a machine! That was pretty cool because Ma never let us drink cokes at home. She always said, “it will rot your teeth and fill up your belly with bubbles.” We didn’t question it, though, you don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. \nWe all took a nice nap on creaky king-size bed. The pillows were too hard, but we’d brought our own pillows in the car, so we went and got those to sleep on. Ma put a chair in front of the door even though it had a lock. She said better be safe than sorry. \nWhen we woke up, it was dark outside, but we could tell there was a greenish glow. It was the lights! We all put on our jackets and went out on the little balcony outside the room. It had these wrought iron bars and old folding chairs, but I thought it was the nicest balcony because we’d never had one at home. \nMy sisters were yelling, “The sky is all lit up!” \nI said, “It’s so beautiful.” \nMa smiled for the first time that whole day. \nShe said, “I’m glad you girls like the view, because I think we’ll be here a while.” \n“Are we on vacation?” Lucy asked. \n“No,” Ma answered. \n“This going be house?” Sprout asked nervously. \nMa laughed, “Goodness no, but we’ll be here for a couple days. Then hopefully we’ll find a house. Well- probably an apartment.” \nI was starting to realize what was happening. It wasn’t about the northern lights at all. We were running away from our old home. I was 12, so I knew more than my sisters. Sprout was only three, Maggie was barely five, and Lucy was ten. Ma was trying to spare us from being upset or seeing that she was scared. He must’ve hit her- I decided. Our Dad got mad very easily, like if hot chocolate spilled on his pants, or if you were singing a song loudly, or if Ma burnt the chicken. Ma didn’t mean to burn the chicken, but sometimes if Dad was mad at one of us, it distracted her from cooking supper. He never cooked, he never did any of the chores, and he never took us anywhere. If we missed the bus for school, he would yell and kick the wall with his foot, then Ma would hurriedly get us out the door and drive us herself. She never said anything bad about him, but I knew she didn’t like to be yelled at. \n“Does he know where we are?” I asked. \nShe kept her eyes on the swirling green and purple lights. \n“Ma…” I asked again nervously. \n“No, Daphne,” She said quietly. \n“Good,” I said emphatically, “I hate him. I’m glad we ran away.” \nShe gestured to the girls and put a finger to her lip, “Shhh. We don’t need to upset your sisters. Let’s have a fun adventure and they’ll only remember the beautiful lights and that we settled here to always be in their glow.” \n“It doesn’t glow all year, Ma,” I said matter-of-factly. \n“Nothing lasts forever, my love, but I want you to remember that when the beautiful parts of life come, they’re always sweeter than the terrible parts.” \nI hugged her and we stood there for a little longer. When it got too cold, we went inside. Ma got us hot chocolate from the cafe down the street and we split three cups between us. We watched “Huckleberry Finn” on the Tv and Ma even got us chips for 50 cents from the front desk. We felt like royalty! Money was tight, but she never let us figure it out. \nIt’s been ten years since we left Massachusetts. I’m 22 now and look forward to attending college. For my essay, the only story I could think of was the journey to the northern lights. It taught me the importance of looking on the bright side (literally and figuratively) and how you have to be brave sometimes even when it’s thrust on you. Ma wasn’t ready to be brave like that, but she had to be, she had to take us and get us all far, far away. I have to be brave now, because I have to leave her. I have to leave our circle of love and warmth, but I know that I’ll be back every chance I get. My Ma, my sisters, and I are like the solar particles flying about from the sun, mixing with the atmosphere of Earth to create the beautiful colors in the sky. There are seasons when we won’t be together, but we’ll always come back to each other, and it’ll always be special and magical." } ]

[ { "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: Heteronormative\n\nGenre: coming-of-age\n\nWord Count: 1016\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about two characters who like each other but don’t get a happily-ever-after." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "First dates are always awkward. I put extra attention into things I usually don’t care about: Are my shoelaces tucked in? Are there any hairs out of place on top of my head? Will she hold it against me if I collect Pokémon cards? The last woman I went on a date with was not impressed by my first edition Charizard—her loss. \nI stare tentatively as I look into the bathroom mirror with a smudge towards the top left corner. “I’m not getting any younger,” I think. The lines on my forehead become more profound, and the circles under my eyes darker. I witness gray hairs scattered throughout my matted-down black hair, desperate for a haircut. I began practicing responses to typical dating questions; overanalyzing is my best friend. Or maybe I have a hard time being myself. I glance at the mini, black-rimmed analog clock on the wall and realize I only have five minutes to meet my date at the restaurant. \n***\nThe sky is already pitch black even though the time says 6:10. I’m ten minutes late, something I will beat myself up about later. My heart is beating fast, not only from rushing into the darkly lit restaurant but because I’m anxious. I’m nervous that I won’t get the opportunity of a second date again. The reoccurring voice in my head of my mother, gnawing at my brain: “You know how much I want grandbabies!” Growing up, my mother always gave me what I wanted; I wanted to return the favor. But what do I want?\nTrying to match a dating profile photo to the person in real life is the true definition of finding a needle in a haystack. I already wear glasses because of my nearsightedness, and the restaurant could invest more in lighting and less in palm tree replicas. “Rachel,” I think to myself. Which woman in here looks like a Rachel? Brunette, with eyes to match and pale skin. As I peer at the sea of tables, a woman wearing a red dress stands up, and her smile grasps my attention. I return the gesture and begin walking towards her, trying my best not to let my nerves or the shaking get the best of me. \n“Adam,” her voice as smooth as butter, “it’s nice to “meet” you.” Rachel and I giggle in unison. There was meeting someone online, but then there was meeting someone in person, making everything effervescent. You couldn’t go to the bathroom and ponder the best reply. This is a live performance—any mistake could set your fate in this person’s eyes. As I dance with endless possibilities, my date interjects, “Would you like to sit down?” “Yes,” I respond.\nSitting across from her, I noticed I had forgotten the flowers I picked up for her at my house. Rushing never did me any favors. I grimace through my forgetfulness and ask her, “What do you do for work?”\n“I’m a florist.” Maybe leaving the flowers at home was for the best. “Cool phone case,” she points to my phone facing down on the not-so-clean table. It’s clear with a Poké Ball on it. Ash and Pikachu, two of the main characters of the Pokémon franchise, are standing toward the left of it. \n“You like Pokémon?” I gasp. \n“I haven’t been playing since the Pokémon Yellow version for nothing, she winks. There’s something about her energy that is inviting. I realize I feel comfortable; I feel safe. I can droll on about my passions, and she wouldn’t judge. We discuss some of our favorite Pokémon, discuss how Cynthia is one of the best trainers, and share the pain of facing Whitney’s Miltank in generation two. I think I like her. Conversation had never flowed like this before between me and a woman. Parts of me that I repressed were starting to claw their way out. \n“What was growing up for you like,” she asked. Suddenly, my carefree chatter comes to a halt. I spent much of my time playing video games, like Pokémon, and watching other kids play basketball, swim, and ride bikes with their friends. My mother insisted I was shy, but I don’t think it was that. I felt different around other boys, almost uncomfortable. But there was one boy that wanted to be around me. His hair was a lighter shade of mine, his eyes a remarkable sapphire. We would play video games at my house, sitting closer to each other each visit until he kissed me one day. I had never been kissed before until that moment. It was wet and lightly salted from potato chips. A day hasn’t gone by since I thought of that kiss. My mom was in the doorway when it happened. She said my friend had to leave and that he was never welcomed back. I asked why and was met with an inconclusive “because.” I repeat all of this to Rachel.\nHer eyes never glance at her phone or at any other patrons. She smiles before asking, “Do you know in Pokémon Red how there are three beginners and so many people recommend picking Charmander? Sure, it’s the Pokémon on the game’s cover and is a great choice, but maybe that’s not what you truly want? Maybe Bulbasaur speaks to you. It’s a tougher road for you in the game, but you have the most fun on your journey picking Bulbasaur. This is the decision that makes you happiest. Do you know what I mean?”\nI like Rachel, I really do. But my mother always told me a nice girl would leave me with this special feeling. I finally met that nice girl, a woman, but something was still missing. The potential to love, to become one in an indescribable way. The feeling I had with my friend was intense. I smile back at Rachel, thankful to meet a new friend I could play Pokémon with. We hug and walk our separate ways out of the restaurant. I know I have a long journey in figuring out myself and what I want, but I’m ready." } ]

[ { "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: Rescuing Holly\n\nGenre: coming-of-age\n\nWord Count: 2094\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about two characters who like each other but don’t get a happily-ever-after." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "From the age of twelve, Holly had been confined to the three-story Tower House of her mother’s Southampton Estate on Olde Towne Lane—a veritable prison lined in gold, restricting her every move. Her mother Rose was in San Diego selling a historic Southern California mansion—the “Coronado Castle” on Coronado Island, the Old Hollywood haunt where Marilyn Monroe filmed Some Like it Hot—and she wouldn’t return until after Labor Day. \nThis was Holly’s chance to escape and see the world. Although Holly, at the age of 22, was already finishing up her Ph.D. in Pure Mathematics from Princeton, she had never set foot in a classroom due to her condition.\nThe pop of the tennis ball against Holly’s racket gave a satisfying twang as the dart rocketed through the dry sea-kissed air and plummeted just past the two-inch white band of the net, landing far left of her invisible opponent’s backhand. \nThe SpinFire ball hopper served up a lob to her forehand and then another. She popped each one on the same precise angle with the same vicious slice, causing the balls to travel low and away. Then she scrambled with short quick steps before leaping to an attacking straddle at the net and volleyed the ball with a shallow, acute passing shot at a severe cross-court angle that cut a clean forty-five degrees from dead center.\nHolly was now warmed up for her lesson, and excited about meeting her new tennis instructor, a young local tour pro who was giving lessons on the island as he transitioned off the pro circuit. It was a cloudless day. The sun crouched like a cat on the horizon, its muzzle full of bared teeth inclined toward Holly and it increased the intensity of its rays with a low growl. \nShe had never faced an opponent like this before. Rose had hand-picked a string of husky, wrinkled old-timers who spent their time alternating between drills and long-winded theoretical speeches but who could not keep up with Holly for a New York minute.\nOrli Mizrahi stepped out onto the Court to announce the tennis instructor. Orli was a stunningly efficient woman. She managed Rose’s estate and the small army of household staff, cooks, housekeepers, and security. She always wore crisp, stylish suits and carried herself with the military precision of an Israeli soldier—an older Gal Gadot in a pantsuit. \n“Holly—this is Mr. Jeff Nicoli—your new instructor.” Rose had met Jeff Nicoli after the 2009 Wimbledon Championships in England, where she had watched Jeff rise to fame when he came within a hair’s breadth of dethroning the Swiss Maestro, Roger Federer, after a record-setting marathon 77-game match. Holly had heard the story too many times to count, and now he was here.\nJeff’s skin was tanned like fine leather, and his blonde hair was sun-bleached to the color and texture of golden straw. His bangs hung over his cobalt-blue eyes. He wore all white. He captured the aspect of the Greek God Apollo, as if Mount Olympus were just at the other end of the LIE and he had casually saddled down to the Hamptons for some light exercise. This was perhaps the first time that Holly had seen a boy her own age in the flesh, and she was struck dumb by his appearance.\n“Shall we get started with some easy rallies to get into the swing of things… get to know each other,” he said. Without waiting for a response, he had cleared the court and was standing in his backcourt. \nShe served him up a moonball that drew a slow looping hyperbolic curve before falling at his baseline and bouncing high overhead. With a simple adjustment of his feet, he coiled like a cobra, jumped backward at a terrifying angle, and raised his bronzed right arm high and straight, causing his shirt to ripple above his slim musculature, as he caught the ball flush in a motion like an outfielder in baseball reaching for the fences. Pop. The ball sang forward ruthlessly at her feet, and the game was on.\n* * *\n“Did you keep your distance from the boy,” Rose asked over the FaceTime call.\n“Yes, mother,” Holly said.\n“And did you do the protocol after?” Rose asked.\n“Yes, mother. I washed my hands, did a full spray down, put all my clothes down the shoot, and sent my gym bag with my racket and balls to the decontamination room for Orli to disinfect, ran all the fans in the Tower, and ran HEPA-filtration. I took all the precautions,” Holly said.\n“Good. You know this is risky and it is only for your own safety. If you want to have privileges, you will have to be responsible. These go hand-in-hand,” Rose said.\n“Yes, mother. I know. I’ve come too far to backtrack now,” Holly said.\n“We’ve waited all these years for a cure, and it is only months now until you undergo the treatment. But if you get sick, you will not be able to. We are at the end of the line. In addition to the bone marrow transplant, you can finally do the gene therapy—it is finally approved and ready—and everything has to go perfectly,” Rose said.\n“Let’s talk about something else. How are you coming finding a buyer for the Coronado Castle? Did you take the prospective buyers out on the putting green like you planned?,” Holly asked.\n“Oh, darling. You’d love it! It has a Tower and everything. These new buyers have the most grotesque plans for the place. They want to paint it pink,” Rose said.\n“How awful!”\n* * *\nAs Rose sat with the architect surveying the massive Toy Room and Theater with life-size replicas of Return of the Jedi figures stationed around the room—perhaps even the original costumes from the film, who knows—she imagined converting the grounds for these toy moguls into a chic dreamhouse—like the kind Barbie lived.\nThe thought of a dreamhouse made Rose think back to Holly’s childhood, when she briefly cared about such things before the illness swallowed any excitement or joy of play and turned her into a devotee of pure, cold, hard mathematics. She was such a prodigy. \nWhen Rose had brought her by private jet to CalTech for a mathematical conference, they’d installed a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, and Holly had delivered her lecture from behind a blue hypoallergenic medical curtain. Severe Combined Immunodeficiency Disorder (SCID) is what it was called, and it was like a Biblical curse that had robbed Holly of her childhood and made Rose into a tyrannical overlord over her own daughter. But she was grateful for all of it.\nRose remembered how it had been waiting for years with a barren womb, after losing a marriage over it, and finally wrestling the girl away from her birth family. She had gone through such red tape with the adoption agency and with the parents to confirm she had the means to properly support a girl in her condition. \nThe same relentless drive for success and fortune that isolated Rose for years, sealed her womb, and lost her a husband, was ironically—the thing—that brought her Holly.\nAll of the struggles had been worth it once the Tower was ready and once Rose had finally got Holly settled and set apart safely from the world and all its infecting forces.\n* * *\nHolly scuffed her left foot and bounced the ball two times in front of her forefoot before bending her front left knee and rocking into her service motion—something she had practiced a thousand times and perfected—but the weight of concentration was heavier this time, because Jeff was waiting across the court. \nHolly had been formulating a plan for days, ever since her first lesson with Jeff, and now she was ready to execute.\nLeaning forward and flexing her left knee into an explosive jump, she raises her left arm for the toss, simultaneously extending her hollowed right armpit and bent right arm far behind her arching coiled torso and bringing her breasts forward, a white shimmer of light glancing off her soft collarbone at the top of the stroke as she leans into gravity and hammers down into the shot, sending the ball sailing at a hard right angle directly into the opposing court.\nJeff shook the hair from his eyes and made a fast lateral shuffle to his right before switching to a closed stance and swinging his hips, trailing the racket in a C-motion, and connecting, returning the ball with precision at an accelerating arc right back to her.\n“Thirty love,” he said.\nThis time, Holly served the ball with a quick jabbing motion and approached the net for the volley. When Jeff smoothly launched another looping forehand shot, Holly pretended to botch her footing and faked a turned ankle. She fell to the green court surface and screamed out in pain.\nJeff appeared by her side and lifted up her ankle, wrapping it in his shirt. Beads of sweat trailed down from his collarbone and dripped from his bangs, where the shirt had been.\n“I need some ice—there is an ice machine back in the Tower,” Holly said.\nHe scooped her up in his arms and began carrying her back.\n“Why do you live in that Tower, anyway?”\n“That’s a long story” Holly said, feeling the warmth of his chest against her back and the firmness of his grip on her hip and shoulder.\n* * *\nHolly lay on the daybed by the panoramic windows of the Tower Suite with an ice pack wrapped around her left ankle, which was propped on some windows. Jeff sat by the nook of her hip, resting on his left arm which brushed against her bare left thigh.\n“You spend a lot of time up here?” Jeff said.\n“Ohh, yes. A lot of time,” Holly said.\n“It must be nice to be at home. I spend all of my time on the road, from one hotel room to another, or staying in rented apartments near a ball court. Different cities and countries. It is dizzying,” Jeff said.\n“But you are staying all summer here on the island, right?” Holly asked.\n“Yes, just up the street in an Air BnB. But I spend most of my days at the Future Stars Tennis Club, when I’m not giving lessons,” Jeff said.\n“It must be so exciting, traveling around the world, meeting so many different people,” Holly said.\n“More like being a soldier with marching orders, pitching your tent along the path of a war—only this war never ends until you call it quits—it is a war that has been waged forever and which goes on for eternity. And I think I’ve come to the end of my tour of duty,” Jeff said.\n“You make it sound so dreary. Come on, you must have some fun? There must be a special lady out there that meets you out on the road,” Holly said.\n“No. Not really. With my schedule and all my handlers, coaches, dieticians, managers, and assistants, I scarcely have a moment to breathe,” Jeff said.\n“Funny, sometimes when I’m up here in the Tower, I feel as if all I have is time and not one good thing to do with it,” Holly said.\nJeff looks at Holly’s freckled cheeks, studious green eyes, and solicitously pursed burgundy lips and begins to caress her arm with an aloof detachment.\n“Do you think we can continue our lesson… later this afternoon?” He nods. “Will you stay with me?” He nods. Her heart stirs and she sits up. She gazes at his face and looks from his lips to his eyes. “We really shouldn’t.” He moves his face near to her far cheek and whispers in her ear, “We should.” Then, pulling his face a few inches back and inclining his eyes downward, she feels a pull and all at once puts her hand on the back of his head and begins kissing him.\n* * *\nRose stormed into Holly’s room and said, “You can’t be serious.”\n“What mother?” Holly asked.\n“You had that boy in the house,” Rose said. “After everything we’ve been working toward—toward a normal life—a chance at a mathematics chair at Princeton?”\n“I was injured mother,” Holly said.\n“Injured my ass. You aren’t seeing that boy again, and you are going to New York tonight where you can start the treatment,” Rose said.\n“But mother! I have the whole summer before I’m set to start the treatment,” Holly said.\n“Not anymore you don’t,” Rose 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: A Polar Night\n\nGenre: contemporary\n\nWord Count: 1267\n\nPrompt:\n\nSet your story during polar night." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Pulling your scarf tight above the bridge of your nose, you brace for the flurry of winter snow as you exit the office door. \nThe light dusting of frosted powder that had accompanied you to work this morning had morphed into a full-on blizzard by lunch, and even though there had been a half-hearted attempt to usher everyone out of the building by 2 pm, less than half of the workforce had taken management up on the offer. \nThe first crunch beneath your feet makes you regret staying late. The buses and trains had all been cancelled, and a taxi would be hell to flag in this white-out. You decide to push forward - Home was less than a mile away, and you did it all the time during the summer months - how hard could it be? \nYou instantly regret the internally posed question as your feet sink further into the drift with every step; you ponder which is worse - the step in or the step out of it. By the end of the street, you're already exhausted, your feet like lead. You wonder how on earth you'll manage to get home by morning. \nThe sky is a hue of grey, a charcoal backdrop with shades of mink and dove rising like steam in a calico ether. Stars peer from behind towering buildings as the moon adorns heavy clouds with silver linings. There is something about the dark that intrigues you, how shadows move in the absence of light, crawling across the city’s topography a beast searching for its next meal. \nYou shuffle along, moving slowly against the resistance of a wintry blanket. \nA tuneless harmonica sings a discordant version of Silent Night; it stops you in your tracks. You turn a full 360 in search of the source; nothing is evident at first glance, but just behind a line of ferns is a glow of light, a flickering really, and you can’t help but be intrigued by it. \nYour feet lead the way towards the clearing, the chorus becoming louder as you approach. Stopping at a gate, you frown - you’ve not seen this part of the city before? Where are you? Your glove hand searches for the handle, and with a click, it opens. \nThe first thing that catches your eye is a statue, a woman holding a young child to her breast; the snow clings to the contours, and crevices rest upon their heads. Exploring your surroundings, you realise you have stumbled upon a park; benches surround the central greenery, and a frost-tipped oak stands in its middle. Its beauty, even in darkness, is astounding. You take a breath, forgetting the reason you diverged from your original path. \nThe first few bars of O Holy Night return you to your senses, and you turn, hoping to find the musician. Hidden within the furthest corner of the park, you see a dimly lit fire; three silhouettes sat on a bench in front of it, warming their hands. Pulling your hat over your ears, you head towards the group, wondering what has brought them here on this frigid winter’s night.\nThree elderly gentlemen sit on the bench, each indistinguishable from the next. The light of the fire illuminates their heavily set wrinkles, greying beards and varying levels of dirt within them. \n“Hello, mate.” The first one says. Despite his situation, his eyes sparkle in the flames. He wears an old fisherman jumper pulled over his bare hands; an old wax jacket covers it to keep in the warmth and restrict the dampness. \n“Hello.” You respond, confident these men are safe to talk to. “What brings you three here this cold Christmas Eve?”\nMan with hole in boot replies, “We’re the three wise men, ain’t we? We’re just waiting for them there clouds to pass so we can keep followin’ that star.”\nAll three of the men laugh. \nYou smile back at them. \n“E’re ‘Arry, move your fat ass and let the man sit down”.\nHarry, the third man, shuffles along the bench, groaning. He’s the biggest of the three, wearing a heavy woollen coat with the lapels pulled up to his chin; the outline of a tattoo can be seen reaching up from his neck to the bottom of his bare neck.\n“I’m Ned,” wax jacket says. \n“Drink?”\nYou take the sizeable two-litre bottle of cheap cider and sit alongside the three men, debating whether or not to take a swig. \n“We meet up ‘ere every Sunday, lad. Doesn’t matter the weather. We made it our duty to look out for each other.” \nYou take a drink, willing him to go on. \n“Known each other our whole lives,” Harry continues. \n“Me, Ned and Lewis ‘ere, we all went to school together, all finished school together, chased the same women and the same dreams.”\nYou smile, knowing a lot about camaraderie yourself.\n“Joined up together, too,” Lewis adds. “Saw Burma, Greece, Italy and Egypt, all of us.”\n“Weren’t no bloody ‘oliday though”, Harry mutters as he lights up a roll-up.\n“Fag?” He gestures.\nYou shake your head, touched by their offerings.\n“Pass us that there cider.” Ned beckons. His cheeks are rosy as he leans over for the bottle in your hands.\n“Of course, there was five of us to start with… Ray got shot in the Western Desert in ‘42. His poor mum was heartbroken. Then, Des, he got captured with ‘Arry, taken away and tortured for over 18 months - ‘Arry bein’ ‘Arry, well he could take it, poor Des was a bit soft like, he wasn't the same after that.”\n“They sent ‘im ‘ome”, Harry interjects. “Tbey ‘ad to really. War ain't the place for a man after seein’ such ‘orrors.”\nThe other two men mumbled in agreement.\n“Did ‘imself in in 75 he did. His wife found ‘im - ‘anging from the garage door - poor woman - she din”t ever get over that either, I'm tellin’ ya.” \nSilence suffocates the air as the men reflect upon the gravity of their friends’ deaths. \n“We ain't got much, mate. But we ‘ave each other. Me and Harry have been homeless for the last two years. Ned here is at a B&B - not the nicest of places, but it's warm. Tonight we're going back there to spend Christmas together. You just caught us playin’ the last of our Christmas songs.” \nTaking off your glove, you reach into your coat pocket and pull out your wallet, \n“Ere! No, no, no, we ain't lookin’ for charity, mate - just someone to share our story with, have some cider, a smoke - like the good old days.” Ned says. \nYou pull out a twenty-pound note and hand it to them - \n“It's not for you; it's for Des and Ray - put it towards a drink for them.”\n“Bless ya, mate. Bless ya!” Lewis beams.\nYou remove your other glove and hand them to Ned - “Keep warm”, you tell him. Next comes your hat, “You too, Ned.” \nYou turn to Harry and bend down, untying the laces of your left boot - “Swap?” \nIt takes Harry less than a minute to acquiesce, pulling at all the knots holding his together. \n“But mate! You'll be cold goin’ ‘ome!”\nTying Harry‘s boot as tight as possible around your ankle, you look up at him and wink. You knock on the hollow prosthetic of your right leg and whisper, \n“Iraq, 1991”.\nHarry pulls you to him. Hugs you tight. \n“Merry Christmas”, he chokes before letting you go, the three men watching as you disappear into the night." } ]

[ { "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: Na Fir-chlis\n\nGenre: contemporary\n\nWord Count: 2982\n\nPrompt:\n\nWrite a story about someone witnessing — or trying to witness — a celestial phenomenon." }, { "role": "assistant", "content": "Flora Somerville, God love her soul, had worked her way into my life and heart and had managed, beyond my stubborn resistance, to become a friend. It started when I began taking Wee Rabb to the library for children’s books. It was Flora who introduced me to Burns for children (who doesn’t want to read Burns for Bairns?) and an absolutely darling book in Scots about a wee dug named Shug. I enjoyed learning Scots along with Wee Rabb and only wished I was brave enough to attempt Gaelic. That, I supposed, would have to be left to Rabbie.\nBut our friendship began in earnest when I’d made that absurd request for “something Scottish to read.” Flora, with an instinctive sense that I very much needed a good laugh, had prescribed Whisky Galore. Four days later, tears of laughter still clinging to my eyes, I found my way back to the library for something different. An enthusiastic aficionado, Flora took on the task of developing my knowledge of Scottish literature with aplomb. On that second trip, when Flora handed me The Mearns Trilogy, we solidified our friendship over a cup of tea and a long conversation about how much Chris Guthrie reminded me of Grandma Lillian and the book’s influence on my own work. The next thing I knew, we were scheduled for a lunch date so she could grill me about my novel. And I went home with Docherty by McIlvanney.\nBelatedly returning Docherty thanks to my unplanned trip through the Hebrides, I wondered what Flora might have in store for me this time. I expected a tome, as Flora had discovered I loved complex books, or at least loved them when I had the mental bandwidth to consume them. Since I wasn’t doing much of anything else but staring at a blinking cursor while noshing shortbread and chugging tea – I’d once again found clearance, somehow, for an intricate plotline.\nSo, when Flora handed me a slim volume with only a few hundred pages, my eyebrows rose. It was a young reader’s chapter book with the intriguing title Where Monsters Lie. I dubiously regarded the unexpected cover.\n“You did so enjoy those folk tales with Wee Rabb. This is a lovely and haunting tribute to Scottish lore, and the author has a really keen way of explaining adult emotions to children. Trust me.”\nI tapped the book’s cover with my fingertips, hesitating. “Well, at least it will be light to carry home. I anticipate seeing you tomorrow, so I hope you’ll have something heftier to suggest or you may get weary of seeing my face.”\n“Never.” Flora smiled brightly. “Also, my mother sent you this.” Flora’s mother lived nearby, an aging bibliophile and – apparently – baker. The wrapped parcel clearly held scones.\n“Your mother is an angel.”\n“Not really,” Flora laughed. “She just bakes like all my brothers still live at home. My boys can only eat so many scones.”\nI laughed too, tucking Monsters and the scones in my bag. “Coffee on Saturday?”\n“I’m afraid not.” As usual, Flora’s hands were busy while she talked, stacking books on her rolling cart. “Mother has a medical appointment in Inverness on Friday, so I told her we’d go for the weekend and make a holiday of it.”\n“That sounds wonderful. Have a lovely time!” I waved goodbye and headed for the market.\nLater that evening, belly full of vegetable soup and Flora’s mother’s currant scones, I curled up on the couch before the fire with the first children’s novel I’d read in a very long time.\nI’m not sure when I fell asleep. Or if I fully fell asleep. Waking and sleeping blended together, lifting the veil between dream and reality. I could hear the wind rattling the windows, the crackle of the fire, the jangling of the wind chimes at Rabbie’s across the way.\nThe tinking of ice on the window.\nTink tink tink.\nThe sound was disorienting, jarring in a way it shouldn’t be. Ice? I thought. It’s August. No ice, not even in the arse-end of Scotland.\nTink.\nThunk.\nI started fully awake. That isn’t ice, I realized. It’s a stone. Hitting my window.\nI blinked bleary eyes, stretching out the crick in my neck.\nThunk.\nI incongruously wondered if I had a fifteen-year-old admirer trying to sneak me out of the house. I opened the window, narrowly dodging a small projectile.\n“Crìosd, hen. What took you so long?” Rabbie was hissing at me from twenty yards away. I simply stared at him, utterly bemused, still blinking sleep from my eyes. “Are you dressed? Gie your shoes and come on!”\n“What on earth are you talking about, Rabbie?”\n“The mirrie dancers are out.” And with that he turned and started up the path away from the loch toward high ground.\nI didn’t know what “mirrie dancers” were. Intrigued, I slipped on my boots and shrugged on my fleece, heading out into the dark.\nRabbie had a small flashlight, but the sky was bright enough I could just about see to keep from tripping over hidden boulders. I took a few hurrying strides to catch him up, then slowed to match his long, steady pace. He had a tattered blanket tucked under his arm and his flask in one hand.\n“Did I wake you?”\n“Yes,” the groggy fatigue slipping out as irritation, just a touch more forceful than I actually felt. “I fell asleep reading.”\n“Same. I was going to bed when I saw na fir-chlis. I thought you’d want to see them.”\n“You called them the merry dancers?” The ground leveled out and Rabbie paused a moment studying it. Not responding, he handed me the flask and shook out the tattered blanket, laying it on the ground. Stretching himself out full length on the blanket, he raised a hand to me and I passed him the flask.\n“Sit, hen.”\nStepping toward Rabbie, I paused as the sky brightened. Looking up, I saw a faint trail of green glimmer through the sky.\n“Is that…?” The green grew stronger, waving, flickering white and orange as it trailed through the sky.\n“Sit.”\nI did, lowering myself to the ground slowly, my eyes still fixed on the sky. Merry dancers, indeed, I thought, as bands of light circled and flickered above me.\n“Na fir-chlis,” Rabbie indicated.\n“Aurora borealis.” He grunted assent, tucking his arms behind his head and crossing his ankles. After the briefest hesitation, I lay down next to him. Slowly the world, including Rabbie, faded away, as the ribbons of color flickered and undulated through the velvet night sky.\nI felt my breathing slow, my body growing heavy as it sank into the comfort of the earth. Watching the ribbons of green and white, I could almost hear the celestial music inspiring their choreography. My mind drifted in that weightless sort of way one finds in deep meditation. I floated among the stars, releasing, the tether holding me to reality. I heard nothing but the ocean wave of my breath and the music of the spheres.\nI’m not sure when I began to cry, tears trickling silently down my cheeks. Not in sorrow, or pain, or even joy – but perhaps in wonder; wonder that I was here in this moment and it was far more beautiful than I could have ever imagined.\nA spark of something inside me flared to life, illuminating the music of that song I’d heard on Kerrara, at the top of Arthur’s Seat. I think, if I could have glowed, I would have. I rode the wave of self-discovery, collecting all the bits of myself I’d stumbled on since stepping off the plane in Edinburgh, then coaxing them all into a coalesced whole. This wasn’t a discovery of what I needed or what I did. This wasn’t yet another dissertation on how the world defined me, or even how I defined myself. Rather, it was the re-creation of a self I’d forgotten, which wasn’t constrained or restricted or broken or empty. I discovered a sense of whole-self-ness, complete and fulfilled and radiating out.\nA spark of star born out of the black hole I’d become.\nI sensed Rabbie on his side of the blanket, taking a sip from his flask, a distant part of another life. Another universe.\nThe borealis flared, shifting from green to white to blue and back to green.\nI sighed heavily, weighted by the glory of the heavens.\n“Mmmmphmm.” Rabbie’s contented Scottish noise startled me. I took my eyes off the sky for a moment to find him on his side, propped on one elbow, looking at me. How many seconds or minutes or hours or days or lifetimes had passed while I’d gazed at the sky, Rabbie watching me while I watched the heavens? I felt my cheeks grow warm and my breath grow short. A fuzzy sense of excitement tingled up my spine.\nI glanced away and then back at him. Unable to look away again, I rolled on to my side, propping myself on my elbow, my body mirroring his. Rabbie’s face was an open book, earnest and raw. Usually so impassive and analytical, the vulnerability on his features fractured something in me. That piece of me held together with stolid determination and stubborn loyalty and a firm conviction that romance was no longer a part of my life – that piece of me cracked.\nRabbie must have seen it, that glimmer of hope that maybe I wasn’t just a sad, middle-aged, widowed mom, or a struggling author or an exhausted college professor; the hope that perhaps I was still someone desirable and beautiful and alluring. I tingled with the dreaded anticipation of a teenage girl on the verge of her first kiss, hopelessly silly and stupidly scared.\nRabbie reached for me, his hand warm and large as he tucked a wisp of hair behind my ear and tentatively stroked my cheek. I wanted to break eye contact, to look away, to escape. And I so desperately wanted him to draw me into himself and hold me like I was something precious.\n“Crissie,” his voice was hoarse. “I’m going to kiss you. If you dinna want me to, you’d best stop me, for I cannae stop myself.”\n“Rabbie,” I breathed his name as he drew nearer. He paused, earnestly searching my eyes. “Please.” What was I asking? I wasn’t sure. My mind raced. Please stop. Please don’t stop. Please kiss me. Please don’t do this. Please don’t break my heart. “Please.”\nHis lips touched mine. Soft. Warm. Hesitant. I froze, my body tensing. This wasn’t friends, this wasn’t part of the social contract we’d tried to write. It was a violation of everything I’d told myself as I’d biked my way from Fishnish to Uig, a betrayal of the plans I’d made to maintain the status quo. This wasn’t, I was sure, what Neil would want; it wasn’t what my children would want. The painful, pinching point, however, was that it was very much what I wanted.\nI should have known from the minute Rabbie took my hand in Inverary, this was where we were headed. I’d tried to avoid it, tried to run away from this stupidly perfect moment. My brain pounded with incessant, anxious questions. Is this disloyal to Neil, a betrayal of my mourning, my grief? Isn’t this contrary to the needs of my children and the life waiting for me in New York? Is it Rabbie I desire or simply the kiss itself? Am I using him in some way? Is he using me?\nRabbie sensed my hesitation and he pulled back, still cradling my cheek in his warm hand, which still smelled of whatever loam he’d recently been excavating. His eyes held an infinite number of questions, but he waited for me.\n“It’s…” I hesitated again. What do I say? The thought chased itself through my head like a dog chasing its tail. “It’s been a long time since I’ve done this.”\n“Aye.” Still he waited, refusing to take what I wasn’t ready to offer, hoping I’d give him something, anything.\nI took a deep breath, closing my eyes, willing my body to relax. The breath shuddered out of me. Eyes still shut, I said quietly, “Kiss me like you mean it, Robert McEnys.”\nHe didn’t hesitate. Rabbie’s mouth met mine fiercely, almost possessively. It shattered me. I splintered into a thousand pieces and threatened to fly apart.\nThat kiss became my world, my universe. It was all the wonder of the heavens boiled down into a perfect meeting of two celestial bodies. His mouth tasted of whisky and his hair smelled of woodsmoke. He was solid and steady, the perfect counterbalance to the trembling that consumed me from head to toe.\nRabbie’s hand slid from my cheek to the back of my neck. His thumb toyed with my earlobe and stroked down the side of my throat. He angled his head, deepening his kiss, pulling me closer. Without a thought, I rested my hand on his chest. I could feel his heart pounding, rapid as my own. My fingers brushed against the hollow of his throat and a rumble of a groan answered them.\nMy mind went blank, erasing the flurry of thoughts and emotions preceding that particular moment, and I sank into the relief of it. I’d been so exhausted by the unending train of thoughts that the silence in my head felt like paradise. There was no worry or fear, no existence beyond that spot where Rabbie’s mouth met mine, the place on my neck where his fingers lingered. I was timeless and ageless and formless and free of the myriad things I was supposed to be and desired to be and forced to be. There was no need, no want or desire or hope, nothing but the perfection of the moment.\nI blessedly wasn’t thinking of anything, merely reveling in the wonder of Rabbie’s mouth as it caressed mine as we lay beneath an infinite sky beribboned with glimmering shreds of the universe.\nSlowly, ever so slowly, hesitantly, almost unwillingly, the kiss ended. Rabbie looked at me with the light of heaven in his eyes and the corners of his mouth upturned in that winsome smile I’d seen so rarely. His gaze was so intense I could barely meet it. I found myself satiated while still wanting, confused although wholly confident, jumbled up in ways I’d forgotten one could be jumbled.\n I opened my mouth to say something – anything – although I didn’t know for certain what would come out. Before I could speak, Rabbie touched his finger to my lips, shushing me.\n“Ist, mo leannan. Ist.” With that he rolled to his back, tucked his arm under me and pulled me close so my head was resting on his shoulder and I was nestled against his side. That word Rabbie had used weeks ago, cherished – I hadn’t known what he’d meant when he’d said it before. I realized with a sharp pang of clarity that the feeling bubbling up inside of me was exactly that – being cherished. I wasn’t sure I’d ever felt it before, although surely Neil must have held me like this once upon a time.\nMy whole adult life, I’d felt alone, surrounded by enemies with my back to the wall. I’d always known there was no one else to help protect that which was most dear to me. Life had always been me against the world, weighed down by the burden of preserving the lives of those who depended upon me. I’d never once been a treasured jewel, protected at all cost.\nSince the day of Neil’s final DUI arrest, when it was clear he was going to jail, that alcohol had so painfully consumed him that he couldn’t fight his own battles let alone mine, and I finally understood that our life together would never be what I’d imagined it could be – since that day, I’d given up the dream of having someone to fight alongside me, defend me, protect me. If Neil had been a different man, he’d have resented me for it. But he was himself, and although he must have seen the burdens I carried while he fought his own demons, and surely felt a modicum of guilt for his inability to be what I needed and wanted him to be, Neil was by and large content with the life we’d settled into. His contentment, more than the carefully buried resentment, the subtle gaslighting, the gentle humiliation, had been a knife in my heart. His contentment had been the ultimate betrayal.\nIt had been so very long, even before he died, that I’d felt valued at all. Neil and I had become cogs in the machine of our family, mindlessly chugging along to keep everything running. Romance had all but died out even before James had been conceived. James was my much longed-for, happy accident, the final hurrah of an almost happy marriage.\nWith the na fir-chlis, celebrating above us, I allowed myself to pretend, for one brief moment, that this was reality. A life where someone called me by affectionate names, held me close, looked at me with desire. A life in which someone placed a protective arm around me and sheltered me even from myself. I pretended it had always been this way and remain this way, that I had no one to answer to but myself and the man who held me close. I shoved all my thoughts of responsibility and loyalty and insistent obligation into the darkest recesses of my mind and released all the tension in my body in a slow exhale.\nI sank deeper into Rabbie’s side, my head growing heavy on his shoulder. The last thing I remember was the flicker of green and white far above me." } ]