Chewing his cigar stub, a grizzled old man paced the engine room like a caged tiger.

Before him dozens of stokers moved in a fluent dance as they threw shovelful after shoveful of coal into the fireboxes. Sweat reflected on skin made leathery from years facing furnace fervor. "Put ye'r backs into it, lads! Feed the fire!"

He turned, retracing his steps. A smile cracked the barest corners of his mouth as he examined steam gauge after steam gauge. "That's it, lads. Keep it up. We can't let 'er flounder--our freight must get through. Lives are depending on ye' lads!"

(Word count: 100. Please let me know what you like/dislike about the post. Thank you in advance for your time and attention. Other works can also be found linked in r/atcroft_wordcraft.)

Poor dude just wanted to sell some ice cream. I wonder if it was any good.

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The theory that they all could've gotten to the wrong shop though.

I always thought of god essentially creating something similar to a self sustaining criminal ecosystem.

Since the denizens of hell are basically locked there anyway without a way out?, why not just put the big boys in there as well? Naturally, they'll form a hierarchy that would dominate over weaker human souls. This serves two purposes

1. The big dogs keep the smaller dogs (humans) in line and maintain the status quo.

2. To make sure the damned human suffer accordingly

This is the same with real life in the criminal world. It is always safer for the law enforcement if few but big entities running operations where they can be more self contained and predictable than having a fractured system where small times go around causing chaos. This is currently the case with the mexican cartels

Even less to let them roam free in heaven.

The bible says that got put them is a state where they can be free but spiritually blind, it's called "Tartarus" so none of them can see gods purpose or any spiritual light, but they still have their power.

All the suspicious exorcist stuff that happens is one of them.

But it'll end soon.

"Most reapers hate gathering the souls of the young. I will say it is no cakewalk but someone has to do it. Might as well be me. I never did get along much with the younger ones. After 11 they where down to a different reaper, this one was only 9. 9 years old before she was hit by a car. Idiotic parents shouldn't let kids play out in the streets. I have had many requests for games but never have I had one with such taste. A kid wanting to beat Minecraft with me. I would say it was heart warming. If I had a heart that is.

"Are you sure you want to play that game. Ounce we beat it that it." I merely ask this out of respect. I already know what the answerer is.

"Yes! It will be fun I can teach you all the controls."

She was practically bouncing when we got to my home in the void. My room mate was out for the day so we had the gaming system to ourselves.

We played for hours and hours. I was originally going to speed run it (after all death has to have a hobby and mine was gaming) but she had to stop for each small item. Speak to every character and even tame ever dog. It was rather cute. I ran to her defence in the deep dark and she ran to mine as I attempted to farm. We built a farm in the deep dark for me and one in the birch forest above said biome for her.

​

One day while we where in the nether we completed full Netherite gear. She was so happy that we where now *ready* for the dragon fight. Combat was my strength so as she took down crystals I duelled a dragon. I hardly noticed when I downed the mighty beast and we hopped into the credits.

It was only then I realised. She gave me a big hug and said thankyou. How could I of been so stupid. We had beaten the game.

I am not proud of what I did next. It broke every law we have. I sent her soul into the game itself. That way we could continue playing.

​

So I stand here in front you, judge, jury and executioners to plead my case. To claim that I shouldn't be decommissioned. She was still harvested and in the subtext I get 3 souls a year for consumption. Well I claim her as my 3rd soul of the year. I just so happen to be watching my weight at the moment." The court fell silent - This was the best case they had had in century's.

People think demons are all about convincing people to sin and I mean... Yeah, but we also like to sew chaos. I think my brethren are a bit short sighted sometimes. We're all about instant gratification, as a rule, but sometimes playing the long game can be worth so much more.

Think about it. Humans have to eat. When times are hard, its not too hard to give up the occasional vice, but you can't entirely write off eating.

Eating is also a communal experience. The only people who go to a themed restaurant alone are the truly miserable- and everyone else can be made miserable once they get there.

The servers are miserable because they're forced to be on their feet for hours at a time dealing with grouchy customers.

The customers can easily be pushed to misery with poor service. Which in turn makes the servers miserable. Its a perfectly balanced ecosystem of depression and its delicious.

The food isnt half bad either.

🙏🙏🙏 I know I really on auto correct a lot my spelling sucks 🤣 but thank you so much

Damn, I just made him up cause I was tired af

This is the stuff. Great story, 10/10. Or as they would say, 5/7 perfection! :D

Sick days have always been difficult for me, as I seem to experience a series of confounding complications that cause frustration for my fiancée. She has even declared me to be the worst person to care for when I am under the weather, dubbing my condition the "man-flu". While I acknowledge my role in the problem, sometimes it seems that things around me start breaking down when I am ill, leading to a streak of bad luck that follows me throughout my illness. My car tires may pop, phone chargers may develop kinks, and things may be misplaced. I say the universe treats me as it's favorite clown when I'm sick, my fiancée claims that because I believe the world is working against me, it's causing me to create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

To address these issues, my fiancée has implemented a new care policy for when I am sick. I am forced into what we call a "lockdown", and must lie in bed or on the couch without moving, lest I tempt more misfortunes. While this may seem strict, my fiancée enforces these rules from a place of love, albeit with a hint of jest when she complains about my "man-flu." Nonetheless, I maintain that the universe will bend rules to it's evil will and complicate my life when I am sick, adding insult to injury.

On one particular day, my man-flu landed me on the couch, where I watched lame horror movies. I found a sense of community in the cliché of watching dumb teens struggle in a reality that wants them tortured too. I prepared myself to call out the jump scare before it happened. Criticizing the predictability of these movies was fun for me. As expected, the main character was a baby sitter who made a flawed choice. She invited her boyfriend over after the kid went to sleep. Naughty naughty... I sensed a repercussion around the corner, and prepared to call it out. The signs were all there. Sounds in the movie became quiet, with occasional clanking of her own movement, and the scenes became darker. I sat up, ready to call out the scare before it happened. She heard a noise from the basement and prepared to check it out. Frustrated, I yelled, "Don't look in the basement! You know it isn't your boyfriend! This is lame movie jumpscare 101!"

Just as I finished my sentence, the babysitter in the movie turned to the camera and said, "If you don't like it, then turn the TV off. Nobody likes an armchair film critic!"

Disbelief set in, and I sat up, fully attentive. Was this real? The babysitter continued, "How's that for a jump scare, jerk? Your fiancee was right! You totally suck when you're sick!"

My blood ran cold. Screaming, I fumbled for the remote, but it was nowhere to be found. The babysitter continued to mock me, and I could hear her laughing on the TV. My fiancée ran into the room, and I flung out of the chair, trying to turn off the TV manually. My fiancée, perplexed, asked what was happening, but I could not articulate my fear. I turned off the TV.

"What the actual fuck! Are you actually that scared of a movie?"

"No! You don't understand, she was talking to me. Mocking me!"

"Ohhh baby... You are really, really sick, huh? You know movies break the fourth wall as a joke sometimes right? Or were you having a bad dream?"

"This wasn't a dream! The world is being weird! The universe is..."

"Kicking you while you're down. Yeah, yeah, I know. You always say it does. Let me guess, it also moved the remote to mock you. Dingus. The remote is literally on the couch still. You were sitting on it. I think we need to cut scary movies out of man-flu lockdowns."

"I'm serious! Turn the TV on and talk to her yourself!"

"I'm not going to entertain this. It's bad enough that you think the world was out to get you before. I literally can't hear you ranting about how the TV hates you too. Please just go to bed and sleep this off. You're actually starting to have me worried."

As badly as I wanted to make her see my point, I resigned myself. I thought, "this is just a continuation of the universe mocking me, nobody will believe me."

Sickly and defeated, I stumbled back to bed. I'll feel better soon, and then the world can quit playing these games.

[removed]

Pulls your heartstrings, great story. Polish the grammar and dialogue a little and you have industry-wrecking storytelling.

One day at work you were chitchatting with a coworker and you idly mentioned your favorite movie. Jim the coworker sprung to life and started misquoting large parts of the movie and even started to get the plot really wrong. You’d seen this movie hundreds of times and knew exactly what was going happen next. You knew it so well that you could quote it line for line and almost perfectly match the intonation and cadence and could even get pretty close to sounding like the characters.

Jim, taken aback said that your imitation was amazing but asked if you were remembering it right. You told him you were sure of it but just to be sure you went home to pop that old Dvd into that trusty old player.

This DVD player was old granted, but even then it always stood out as being really large especially compared to contemporary ones. It was thick like an old ps2 but with a much larger footprint and it had a really big cooling fan on the top. Thankfully the fan was quiet the few times that it kicked on.

You pulled out that favorite Dvd. The box has always seemed well made for a typical dvd box it has the fancy push button in the center so that you could remove the dvd easily and the plastic was much thicker than a standard dvd box. Despite being more than 20 years old it held up surprisingly well and didn’t look faded at all. You pressed the open button on the player it wasn’t like a typical dvd player in that it was a nice tactile button which actuated a spring loaded mechanism popping out a little tray about halfway out of the device while also popping up a little cover at the same time giving you ample space to insert the dvd and upon closing the cover it restarted the tray and always closed with a satisfying click.

You watched, enjoying yourself as usual until you got to the part where the coworker’s rendition of the plot got really strange. The main character and his trusty band of adventures has just come back from an epic adventure believing that they had saved the entire realm from the wicked sorcerer, and they had returned to the temple for relaxation and healing.

You joking tell, “Don’t go in there! It’s a trap!” To your absolute amazement the protagonist and his band stop and draw their weapons. Their acrobat swiftly runs up a wall to one of the pillars of the entry way and at the top jumps backwards off the wall. He turns mid jump and manages to catch the edge of the stained glass window. He pulls himelf up and then swiftly pulls himself up then repositioned gods hands to raise his head high enough to see through a clear panel in the glass.

That evil Wizard had just used his dark magic to put all of the monks into a trance and forced them to heal his wounds.

<To be continued>

Even though it REALLY doesn't make sense to punish defectors by putting them in charge of your prison system...

[removed]

🙏🙏🙏

What does a godlike computer look like? RTX beyond the mind's comprehension? Supercomputer chips the size of atoms?

Great story by the way! I feel for Caleb

This is one of those times when something went wrong, so you try to stop it from happening, only to be the thing that went wrong in the fist place.

I believe it's the... Bootstrap Paradox? otherwise known as a Casual Paradox.

[Monday's Mentor]

"Ms. Monday!" Julio was relieved to find the teenage girl. He'd heard she arrived at the hotel and he knew it was his chance to be rewarded. As soon as he learned she was there, he dashed to his room and dug out the rainbow-covered photo album he'd kept hidden away for this moment. He bolted out of his room with the album in hand and immediately began asking his fellow co-workers for Monday's whereabouts as well as searching for her himself. It was a large hotel and it took some time to finally discover her in the garden maze. The pale, rainbow-haired teenage girl in a white suit was his boss' daughter; and, she had a friend with her. Another teenage girl with a pair of golden, double-plaited braids running down her back; she wore a brown and green robe.

"Hey, Julio," Monday turned and smile at him. "This is Crystal," she said. "I told her she could visit the hotel any time she wants; make sure the staff knows her," she said.

"She will be treated as your personal guest, Ms. Monday," Julio nodded. "But, if I may have a moment of your time, please...," he added as he brought the album forward to show it to her.

"THAT should have been destroyed!" Monday had the album in her hands by the time she finished reprimanding him. Crystal was surprised; Monday was one of the calmest and most collected people she'd ever met. But, just the sight of the rainbow photo album was enough to make her snap suddenly. She recovered quickly once it was in her hands.

"I'm sorry, Julio; you're still new. Maybe you didn't know," she said. "In the future, please destroy any more of these that you find; and, report it to me after," she said.

"Yes, Ms. Monday," Julio nodded. Her reaction was exactly why he loved working there so much. The owners were always understanding. He found the job through a website that put him to work on a trial basis before he met any of his bosses. After a month the system finally arranged a meeting. His direct boss was Andrew; an employee that joined the hotel staff as a human and worked his way up to becoming a Lich.

Once he was officially on staff, Julio was given a proper tour of the hotel grounds and a duty list. Somewhere in there, Andrew mentioned the mysterious rainbow photo album that was known to appear from time to time. Julio was given clear instructions to follow, should he find one. Alicia, the hotel owner and Monday's mother, was obviously where Monday's level head came from. She was always a thoughtful employer that genuinely wanted her staff to be happy. At least, that was the impression Julio always got. He didn't let Monday's minor outburst diminish his enthusiasm to help the family.

"Is there anything I may help you with, Ms. Monday?" Julio asked. He did the job he wanted to do and was ready to move on to his usual chores.

"No, thanks, Julio. You're good, "I'll take care of this," Monday said. Julio lingered an extra moment in hopes of a reward; the family was usually generous. But, she must have still been annoyed by the album because she waited with her eyes on him until he gave a curt nod and left them alone in the garden again.

"What's that album?" Crystal asked.

"It's... annoying...," Monday sighed. She shifted her weight to lean closer to Crystal as she opened the book. "This little pain in my side is my brother, Alex," she flipped through a few pages of pictures to find one that only had the boy. Crystal saw what looked like a ghostly pale 5-year-old boy with long straight rainbow hair pulled back in a ponytail. Monday flipped through a few more pages and Crystal watched the boy grow up in pictures. The next time Monday stopped to point at a picture, he was a lean, athletic teenage boy with the same rainbow ponytail and a square jaw.

"Since when do you have a brother?" Crystal asked. The news of a hidden sibling came as a surprise. She thought she knew Monday pretty well, and she'd even met her vampire mother. She briefly registered that she really didn't know much about Monday at all. She still wasn't sure how Monday could work for someone as clearly, maybe evil as Ms. Sharp. But, she'd never been able to find the right way to ask.

"In this timeline?" Monday giggled. "Since never," she grinned. Then, she flipped through several more pages of the book to get to the middle. The pictures stopped and Monday singled out a transparent page; then, she bent it. Crystal heard a distinct snap like a thin piece of glass breaking. "I'm trying to keep it that way; but, he went and set up save points. So, this book...," Monday closed the book and held it at arm's length and two small portals opened; one above it and one below. Then, a stream of bright blue plasma poured out of the top one through the book, and into the bottom one. "...keeps popping up trying to get someone to find the node and restore him." Monday discarded the book and both portals closed.

"Whoa...," Crystal was thrilled that she was still learning new things about the universe. But, she also had a sudden insight. Monday mentioned 'this timeline' and Crystal immediately thought of one person.

"Is that why you work for Ms. Sharp?" She asked.

"Huh?" Monday looked at her.

"Because, somehow, she wrote your brother out of this timeline; so you work for her now?" Monday grinned and shook her head.

"You've got it backward," she said. "Ms. Sharp wrote my brother out of this timeline because I'm so loyal. She didn't need to bribe me; it was just a nice reward.

"But why? She's Evil! Probably!" Crystal shook her head. "I can't explain it; but, she gives me a bad feeling in my stomach."

"You talked to Surge and Alis; you saw they were fine, didn't you?" Monday asked. She offered to show Crystal around Sharp Development; but, Crystal wouldn't let the tour end without seeing Surge and Alis herself.

"Yeah...," Crystal nodded.

"Do you know Ms. Sharp's story?" Monday asked.

"She's God...?" Crystal shrugged.

"But, she was born as a Zero," Monday smiled at her. "You can paint any action in a negative light and call it 'evil'. But, no matter how you look at it; Ms. Sharp had the vision and determination to climb to the top herself," Monday said. "THAT is why I work for her."

***
Thank you for reading! I’m responding to prompts every day. This is story #1865 in a row. (Story #055 in year six.). This story is part of an ongoing saga that takes place at a high school in my universe. It began on August 22nd and I will be adding to it with prompts every day until May 26th. They are all collected in order at this link.

"You thought you could call me after all that fanfaronade--"

"--ooh, you're busting out the five-dollar-word--"

"--Your one instruction was to not feed the fire. Instead, you do this? You crash a freight train, flounder through the most basic French--something you're supposed to be fluent in--and nearly get yourself killed."

The office was silent. And then--

"He also completely blew up his cover," the assistant said, uncaring, unrepentant.

"Ride the desk until you learn better." He slammed the phone's receiver down with fervor.

The Commander sat down and sighed. "They get stupider and stupider every year. I need a break."

wc:100( wrote it in wordcounter.net. Seemed to be the best way to get to those 100 words. Just a little blurb.)

I'm not crying I promise 😢

Really cool :)

Runaway

You said not to, so I fled anyway.

You birthed me but you never knew me. When I floundered, you blamed my dreams of adventure. The one thing I have fervor for.

You know what that did? Feed the fire!

When you were working, I ran to the tracks and hopped a freight train. Who knows where I'll go? Maybe to a new country, where they speak a language I'm not fluent in…

Or somewhere other than here.

I never cared that I'm fifteen. You never cared to take me on adventures.

So fuck you, I'm going on my own.

WC: 100

Thanks for reading! Felt like writing a drabble, and it turns out that I immediately got an idea for this. I hope you all like it!