Just Add Prompt

A 4678-post collection

Challenge #00128: Once Upon a Nightmare

A feverish nightmare from the slumbering mind of Duncan Matthews…while totally awake.

“How can you stand to breathe the same air as that thing?”

“Hm?” said Jean, her mind had been elsewhere.

Duncan pointed to Essel. “That tranny garbage. I heard you and that are roomies?”

“Well, at least she doesn’t steal my clothes,” said Jean. Her tired voice and monotone said nothing to Duncan. Nor did the notes she clung to with a white-knuckled grip.

“Honestly, being in the same house with that thing would give me nightmares. If I could sleep at all.”

“Really,” said Jean.

Duncan ignored her glare of doom. “Yeah. Trying to figure out all the different ways it could try and rape someone. Has it got rid of the -uhm…”

Jean just raised an eyebrow.

“Ol’ chicken neck?” he made jerky motions near his crotch area.

She doesn’t need to. She never had one,” said Jean. If Duncan had been listening, he would have heard the icy tones of death in her voice.

“Euw. I don’t even want to think about it.”

“You have no clue,” said Jean. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to be trapped in the wrong body? Can you even imagine if you woke up in the body of a girl?”

“Yeah. Easy.” He quickly mimed shooting himself in the head.

“Thanks for telling me that my life is only worth ending,” she said. And with that, she stormed off to talk with the freak, without giving any kind of clue as to what he’d done or said wrong.

Bitch.

He didn’t quite remember the rest of the day. Only that things otherwise went better than expected. Plans did not muck up thanks to whichever lunkhead who had had a funny idea. He had dinner, argued with his parents, and went to bed.

And woke up with tits.

Big, bouncy, and surprisingly painful tits. And his junk had gone. Vanished. He was still himself. His face was still his own. But his body…

His body was now a target.

For every guy…

Just.

Like.

Him.

He opened his closet and found it full of frilly pink things. There were bras where he used to stow his wife-beaters. Panties where his jocks should have gone.

And -euw- feminine things and a helpful calendar outlining ‘trigger week’ in red.

“Are you coming down anytime soon?” said Mom, hanging around his door.

“I’m a girl…”

“Ah,” said Mom with some relief. “Progress at last. I knew this whole thing with pretending you’re a boy had to end sometime. Come on. Find something pretty and fix your face or you’re going to be late!”

She was gone before he could protest.

There were no belts. No necklaces. Nothing to wrap around his neck and no plastic bags he could smother himself with.

There was an optimistic card on his dresser. Apparently congratulating him for staying alive for three months. Someone had written, “Way to go girl!” and he had, evidently, crossed out the 'girl’ and written 'boy’ over and over again until there was no space left. Even inside the O’s of other 'boy’s.

“Dunc!”

Duncan snorted. He was still on the bench. Still staring at Jean and the tranny freakshow.

Graydon leaned into his field of view. “You okay, Dunc?”

He blinked. Shook it off. “Yeah. I thought those mushrooms on that pizza were a bit weird.”

“You trippin’? Seriously? Man, I should have some of that pizza tomorrow.”

“Don’t,” he said. “It’s a bad trip.” He did a covert check. Pecs. Junk. Normal. He was normal. A real boy in the body of a real boy.

“You wanna play Trash the Tranny?”

“Not… today. Listen, I’m not feeling great. I’m'a have to bail. Kay?”

“Yeah. Sure. Food poisoning’s no fun. Catch you later.”

“Yeah,” said Duncan. He went home. Said nothing, and went quietly to bed. Afraid to sleep. Afraid that once more he would wake up in the wrong body. And almost eternally grateful when he didn’t.

[Muse food remaining: 12. Submit a prompt! Ask a question!]

Challenge #00127: Conversations on the Twilight Zone

Jean, Wanda and a little bit of bonding over astral physics. Todd makes an appearance.

“Saw you in the dream-realm, last night,” said Jean. “You were… not exactly hallucinating? I thought I could help.”

“That was you? But you were–”

“Probably veiled behind a curtain of your understanding. I’m sorry about that. I backed off when I realized what was happening.”

“I don’t undertand what you’

Read more »

Challenge #00126: Why Would You Do This to Me?

The noodle incident. Name names.

[AN: The whole point of Noodle Incidents is you never find out exactly what happened. See the Trope Page. Grats, you made this author scream in anguish.]

Sherlock had separated them. Rael, at least, got a hot meal and something to occupy his hands. “So. What do you know?”

“Admittedly, not a lot,” said Rael, getting his credentials straight right off the bat. “I’m not a historian. I only study

Read more »

"I'm Impressed"

Scott’s 1tth straight victory in court and the slight but unmistakeable praise that Glee gives him upon not making an ass of himself while under the cosh. She also admits something about her personal which Scott almost, ALMOST misses in his joy of not losing…again.

(#00125)

“Not guilty.”

Scott quietly breathed out and shared a hug with his client, a kid who was still manifesting and had, in a fit of excitement, fear and hiccoughs, accidentally

Read more »

A blessing? Or a curse?

We’ve all wanted to go back and unsay that one hurtful thing - or at the very least, apologise before a chance at a friendship is lost - utter those words that got us mocked that time, undo that stupid thing that cost us self-respect and possibly more.

Only thing is: Who could stop at one?

(#00124)

Kylie blinked. There were now three of her in her room. Two were older. Both dressed in identical old-fart clothes that spoke loudly

Read more »

Challenge #00123: One Fine Day in the Dimplomatic Offices

Never trust a bald barber, a skinny cook, a woodworker with missing fingers, or a lawyer in any situation.

“Ooo, na that’s plush,” said Shayde. She’d laid her accent on thicker so that she sounded less educated. Irony for the purposes of self-entertainment, because nobody nearby was going to get it.

“This is a standard diplomat’s office,” said the local Director of the Corps Diplomatique.

“An’ the aspidistra’s

Read more »

Be interested to see what you do with this one:

“Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?

- Mark Twain

(#00122)

There were designated busking zones on any station large enough to attract the kind of itinerant population that gathered Minutes by entertaining passersby.

Amalgam had hundreds of them.

Rael knew from long, and partially agonizing experience, that Shayde loved them like nothing else. In the hours not taken up by duty, she would take her ‘axe’ down to one at random, and

Read more »

Philip K. Dick said it best:

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”

(#00121)

“This,” announced the Doctor, “is the Monestary of the Believers.”

“The believers in…?” prompted Sally.

“Everything. Everything that is. And a few things that aren’t. They devote a lifetime to it. Each devotee is not allowed to have the item they’re meant to believe in.”

Sally peeked through the slot. A

Read more »

A new take on an old classic.

To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
To a man with only a hammer, a screw is a defective nail.
To a man with only a nail, everything looks like a hammer.

(#00120)

She ran through the darkened streets, harsh breathing absorbed by the endless fog of Lower Cogtown. She’d lost the whistles of the gendarmerie five streets ago, but that was no reason to stop.

It was no reason to even slow.

To a man

Read more »

Challenge #00119: Strategy and the Zen of Faking it

The surest way to hit your target is to shoot first and call whatever you hit your target.

“That’s a long way down. You must be pretty determined.”

“Thanks. I wanted to make certain this was one thing I couldn’t fuck up.”

“Finals?”

“Finals is only the start of it,” she said. “I lost my flat, my girlfriend, my car, my pet, my parents… failing finals just means

Read more »

Beside Myself.

Jamie’s powers as Multiple - good for pranks and antics and such at his age, but he is, in the end, just a little kid.  What if one of the other Xavier Institute kids somehow wound up with his self-duplication abilities for a day or so, how might they (ab)use it?  (How would this occur? I dunno, some weird mishap with Rogue or something, maybe.  I’ll leave details up to you.)

(#00118)

“Make her stop! Make

Read more »

Challenge #00117: And That's Why a Platypus.

A Mage teaching their Apprentice an ancient Bio-Hazard Disposal spell for failed experimental breeding subjects (as we all know, the traditional answer for a ridiculous and/or ridiculously dangerous creature is “A Wizard Did It”), and why Australia’s wildlife is so… unique. (At least, according to the rest (Real Life - Australia portion) of the world.


(And some of us)

“Co-ordinatum expelarmus…”

“Co-ordinatUS, expel-ee-ar-am-us,” corrected the master. “One wrong syllable, Mistress

Read more »

Challenge #00116: Impressions

Anywhere in the story:

Some people are like Slinkies - Not really good for anything, but they still bring a smile to your face when you push ‘em down a flight of stairs

(alternatively, substitute “see 'em fall” for “push 'em”)

Sara objected to formal fundraisers at the best of times, and tonight wasn’t one of them. Her target, multi-billionheiress Egypt Ritz[1], was the exact sort of person Sara had grown to despise on

Read more »

Challenge #00115: Letter v Spirit

A story in which this:

“It’s time to do the right thing!”
“By which you mean commit a major felony.”
“Think of it as a series of 208 rapidly successive misdemeanors!”


Occurs.

“This is not right,” said Sara.

“It is legal, sweetheart,” said Daddy. They both knew it, but he had to remind her. Her near-reality orbit frequently ignored things like that which was legal.

“That which is legal

Read more »

Challenge #00115: One Fine Day on a Planet That Looks a Lot Like a Quarry Somewhere in England

Anywhere in the story, possibly as a result of a situation originating from Forge tinkering:

If we can confirm its existence, then it interacts with the physical world. If it interacts with the physical world, we can, theoretically, blow it up.

“Sara Louise Adrien, what a surprise seeing you here,” said the Doctor. He’d just literally run into her as the worlds changed.

“Ah,” said Sara. “You again.”

“Still dimension-hopping?”

“Yes,

Read more »