Aliria's 100 One Shot Challenge Thing

[Aliria]

I'm doing the 100 One Shot Challenge! This is where I'm going to post my stories. Read or don't read, I don't really care. Posting is fine!

I am currently at one of one hundred one shots.

Injured • Sinking• Father • Exploit • Boredom • Art of Conversation • Take your Best Shot • Creativity • Flash • Puzzling Words • Ill • Skeleton • Nothing • Servitude • Possibilities • Weightless • Just Say It • Last Words • Immature • Blazing • Help • Presence • Because • Forced • Reversed • Cast Away • Emotions • Questions • Wishing • Crackling • Curl Up • Together • Look Again • Brief • Space • Special • Jinx • Stop Fussing • Cozy • Breaking • Either Or • Tell Me a Story • Waiting • Willpower • Who Am I? • Idol • Unseen • Just Try • For Me? • Your Choice! (You got to 50!) • Useful • Treasure • Ceremony • Lightning • Protection • Stay With Me • Mint • Rescue • Dominant • Thief • Deserter • Stolen • Sarcasm • Darling • How Much is too Much? • Over • Try Again • Hidden • Forgotten • The First Time • Aging • Soldiers • Justice • Tread Carefully • One False Step • Connection • Mess • It Can't Be • In Due Time • Awake • Delicious • Fallen • Trickery • Around the Bend • Well Traveled • Choices • Surplus • Rough • If • Friend • Found Not Lost • Spiral • Deep • I Could Have • Desirable • Resentment • Build Up • Inch by Inch • Dilemma • Blue Sky •

[Aliria]

4/18/2023 3:04 AM
Number 14 is screaming again. The others have all quieted down within a week of intake. It has been nearly two weeks for 14. It's loud, and she never seems to run out of breath. Human lungs should not be able to scream continuously for that long. Of course, it's not like she's a human.


4/22/2023 4:32 AM
I hate working the night shift here. My job is hardly more than a guard for these creatures. Not that the day is much more than watching either, but they don't have to sleep all day to work their job. I hardly get to see Adrienne with this job. And Number 14 is still screaming, though not quite as much as before. I'd love to quit, but what better is there?


4/29/2023 2:29 AM
Yesterday they brought in a new subject. Number 15 makes me nervous. It's a little boy, about the same age as Adrienne. I don't like to think about the subjects as humans, but this boy looks like he could be one of my daughter's schoolmates. At least it's silent.


5/2/2023 2:20 PM
There's something weird about Number 15. Since he was brought in, the others have been louder. Number 14 was finally quieting down, and now it's back to constantly screaming. Numbers 13, 12, and 9 are all screaming too, but not as much. Number 15 itself is strange too. He is silent, but sometimes opens his eyes for a moment, and the others all scream. It's somewhat worrying.


5/5/2023 6:56 PM
May fifth, a day of great things. Today my shift was changed to the late afternoon instead of the middle of the night, and even more incredible, Adrienne turned seven years old! However, Adrienne's not old enough to be at home alone in the afternoons. Today she has a friend's mom looking after her, but that's not going to work in the long term. Adrienne says she could come to work with me, but I don't want her seeing Number 15. Or the rest, really.


5/6/2023 3:41 PM
Well, Adrienne came with me today. I wouldn't have allowed her, but they moved Number 15 into a different room so that he would stop irritating the others. She brought her tablet and is happily playing games right now. As long as they don't move Number 15 back, this seems like it's going to work out.


5/11/2023 2:38 PM
Moving Number 15 didn't seem to have any effect, so they moved him back to the main room. Without telling me. Adrienne keeps staring at him. I've explained to her many times that he's not a human, that he's one of them, that he's a part of the hive and nothing more. She won't stop watching. I need to speak to someone about this.


5/11/2023 4:12 PM
Number 15 opened its eyes again a short time ago. I think it tried to sit up, but with the restraints, it couldn't. After a bit it stopped struggling and simply started back at Adrienne. After a while it closed its eyes again. Adrienne then told me that he was hurt and I should help him. I should get her out of here, this is strange.


5/11/2023 4:51 PM
One of the interesting things about working the afternoon shift is that sometimes other workers show up while I'm here. A few minutes ago, I heard one at the door. For some reason, I pulled Adrienne away from Number 15, and pretended she had asked me the story of how I found her again. She was confused, because for once she hadn't asked me to tell that story, but seemed okay with it. I don't know why I did it, she was only watching it, nothing more, but I don't think I want the others knowing about that.


5/11/2023 5:25 PM
Number 15 opened its eyes again. This is strange, usually in the time I'm here I only see it open its eyes once every few days. When it did, all the others started seeming to try to break the restraints. After a minute or two, they stopped, but Number 6 broke one of the wrist restraints. I need to report that to somebody, but I want to wait until after I can get Adrienne home. You see, while they were trying to escape, Adrienne seemed to want to help them.


5/11/2023 Unknown Time
Number 15 did it again. This time, Number 6 broke all the way out, and proceeded to break out the others, starting with Number 15. It had been suggested that Number 6, a large adult man, be given stronger restraints, but he seemed calm enough that nobody bothered. Number 15 walked to Adrienne, and I pulled her away. It reached for her, and made a strange noise, a sort of flute-like whistling melody. She struggled away from me, and said something to it in the same way. Then she turned to me and said that it said it was her brother. I told her that no, she didn't have a brother, that maybe I wasn't her biological father but I was her family now. She said I was a good dad, but her real family was this creature and the rest of the things. She was really a sort of royalty of the hive and needed to go back home.

I told her to stay, but she walked out the door with the rest of the monsters.

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Well, my original idea had to do with the prompt. Then it turned into a thing with alien hive mind royalty. I don't know what happened. Also wow parts of this are dark.

943 words, 4756 characters.

[Aliria]

The rock flies from my hand out over the surface of the water and hits the surface with a splash, where it sinks down deep into the lake.

"Hold is like this," says Mordecai, positioning my hand around the stone. "Throw it like a frisbee, parallel to the water."

"That's what I'm doing," I tell, him, somewhat exasperated. He makes it look so easy.

"Clearly no, or the rock wouldn't keep sinking every single time."

I slap him, gently, and pick up another rock to try again.

I throw another rock as far as I can. In my head, the perfect still surface of the lake is the road, that one road where we were driving that horrible night that I can't keep out of my mind, no mater how much I try.

The stone is the driver of the other car. The driver, falling asleep after spending the day driving across the country. Losing control of her car, until it slams into the front of a little green Ford where a teenage boy and his girlfriend are driving home after a friend's birthday party.

The teens are happy, slightly overtired, but laughing together about their inside jokes and silly stories. Two teenagers, traveling home the night following a perfect day. Doing nothing wrong, nothing to make them deserve anything bad to happen.

But of course, the universe couldn't care less what we deserved. The universe couldn't care about a thing. Random chance, bad luck, nothing more.

I throw another rock into the lake.

I throw the stone, just how Mordecai showed me. Just like last time, and the time before that, it splashes down below the surface of the water.

"You'll do better next time, Eli," he says, picking up another rock from the stony beach.

The stone slams into the surface of the water, throwing droplets everywhere like the glass and metal flew that night. When the boy who I loved most in the world was crushed by a four thousand pound beast of roaring metal and screaming glass.

One severe concussion. Two breaks in my right arm. Three fractured ribs. Four other assorted breaks. Uncountable small cuts and bruises. One critically broken heart.

The injuries I suffered from my place in the passenger seat. If I had been the one to volunteer to drive, maybe I would have been the one crushed. Maybe Mordecai would have been the one to survive, to come home from the hospital, hurt but alive, to his parents, his little brother, his baby sister who will now grow up the youngest of two.

Mordecai throws a stone. It flies far into the lake, where it hits the water and lands flat, throwing up a spray of droplets but then leaping up into the air again. It bounces across the surface of the lake, not one, not two, but nine times before finally, the rock turns onto its side and slides under the smooth surface to join the stones and silt that cover the lake floor.

"You have telekinesis, right?" I say, my voice bubbling with laughter. "There's no way that's possible without it."

He smiles. "The only magical thing on this beach is you."

And then he leaned toward me and we kissed for the very first time, right there on that beach.

As the next stone flies out into the endless depths of the lake, I remember the time he kissed me at the party. A quick kiss, all too soon over, because of course it was never supposed to be the last. Nothing was supposed to be the last.

There would always be another day. There would always be another date. We would always be okay. Until, one day, there wasn't. There would never be another day, another kiss, another moment. In the moment of time it took for one driver to fall asleep at the wheel, the entire future spiraled off into an endless void of chaos.

"Come on Eli, try it one more time," says Mordecai, pressing another stone into my hand. It's flat, all the better to skip. The shape is close to the circle that he has taught me would make the stone a perfect skipping stone, except one side has a large dent and the opposite is a little bit pointed.

"It's a heartrock!" I exclaim, and we laugh at just how perfect the rock is. How perfect the moment is.

"Well, throw it already," says Mordecai, faking the impatience with me he never feels, even when I know he should.

I fling the heartrock out as far as it can go, and it hits the water, throwing up a big splash, a spray of droplets flying up into the air. Then, it leaps up again from the water, flying out to the side where it throws up another splash, this one even bigger, and then sinks down, down into the lake's depths.

I reach down and pick up another stone from the endless beach of almost-perfect rocks. A flat rock, almost a circle but just a little bit off. A heartrock, just like that one so long ago on that most perfect day, so long ago right here on this very same beach.

I throw the heart away from me, not out to sea, but towards a large boulder behind me.

It hits and shatters into pieces.

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Well, thought my last story was dark? I just somehow wrote something darker. I promise to try making the next one happy!! But this was weirdly fun to write.

893 words, 4783 characters.