Subject was found beheaded in the park. The head has not been located; subject was identified by fingerprints - no wallet or ID had been located. No blood splatter, suggesting the beheading occurred post-mortem, but analysis showed the beheading occurred in a single broad cut with an edged blade. Subject displays bruising consistent with drug use and physical altercations. Subject also displays signs of frostbite, despite the body being found in late August and being reported seen throughout July (but not August). Slight decomposition had been noted by the time the subject had been found, suggesting 3-5 days in place depending on whether subject had been refrigerated prior to disposal. Actual cause of death is not known at this time: toxicology doesn't suggest an OD and no other lethal injuries could be identified, and absent the head the prime candidate is blunt force cranial trauma. Subject had been previously diagnosed with psychosis approx one year prior and claimed to be "hunted by fairies". Subject reported to be homeless as well as a drug and alcohol abuser. Next of kin has been notified, but thus far has failed to show interest in collecting the subject's body. No CCTV coverage of the area in which the subject had been found is available.

"Sir, this is a Wendy's."

This resonates.

I, too, believe in power of "found family."

Welcome to the Prompt! All top-level comments must be a story or poem. Reply here for other comments.

Reminders:

>* Stories at least 100 words. Poems, 30 but include "[Poem]" >* Responses don't have to fulfill every detail >* See Reality Fiction and Simple Prompts for stricter titles >* Be civil in any feedback and follow the rules

🆕 New Here? ✏ Writing Help? 📢 News 💬 Discord

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

Frank Fisher, found dead with a 2-foot-wide, 3-foot-long sword plunged in his back, a wooden spear through his kneecap, and a cauterized gunshot in the front of his head, with no bullet inside.

[removed]

Some stay for a bit. But when they start seeing signs of the void energies affecting them, they all leave fairly quickly, thanking me for my hospitality. It is one thing to have some sort of chiropteran person tell them that they'll regret staying here, it is another thing entirely to see those same warned of effects on their bodies. Their hair becoming dark where it was once bright. Their flesh showing the tell-tale purple cracks that makes it obvious that the void is inside them. Few are those who've dared to stay long after that. And mostly, they've burned. I thought this was to be my life until death. Helping lost travellers, warning clever and cunning people of the dangers of this place, petting murkbunnies, riding night mammoths around. Not a bad life, but not one likely to change.

But now it seems that this place have brought forth an unexpected change to my life. I am no longer as young as I were. And any potential romance I would ever have with anyone here would be unlikely at best due to my unusual appearance; one that is only accepted by the lost travellers due to how confused they already are. And due to the fact that none could stay here long, even the time it did happen, it would always result in me ending up alone, no family to speak of. Until today. Much like how my large adoptive family of scholars and mages told me, a small horde of beasts have appeared at my doorstep. Fractal tigers grinning gleefully, shadewolves twisting and turning their two-dimensional bodies like crazy. And two night mammoths, their snake-like trunks carrying two bundles in them. Infants. Already bearing signs of healthy adaption to this place. Gently, I reach out my long beastly arms, and take the two tiny things into my hands. They're warm. And young. From the trees I hear the moth-calls ''Two and two. Boy. Girl. Void fed and void born.'' Usually the moths only mutter about the lack of light in this realm. But for them to speak clearly, like this, is unusual.

Nodding to the beasts, who are already on their way to do whatever beasts do when one does not observe them, I walk back into my large home. Born here. Just like I was. If their parents come for them, I shall give them over freely, provided that they are not too bound to this realm yet. I am not as jealous as the void is. But shall their kin never claim them, they will be my kin. They will have a home; and that home will be my home. And unlike those who raised me, I will not leave them. I will not burn as they watch. I will be there for them, until my flesh goes back to the cool embrace of the void, until my soul will depart the Voidwood, the realm-between-realms.

/r/ApocalypseOwl

The void. The abyssal shores of the Nevermore Ocean. The quiet forest where night never comes and day never breaks. A thin, strange land that lies beyond the limiting borders of time and space. It is a place of the lost and the bewildered. Where those who truly become lost beyond all maps, beyond any guidance, throughout all worlds, are its only visitors. These lost souls, who have passed not into death, nor back into the warmth of life, but has been misplaced utterly and completely, can find the Voidwood. They come exhausted, often wounded, and confused. They rest for a moment, dress their wounds, and eat the strange pulsating fruits of the trees that grow in between all other things. Then they sleep, staying for a single night of rest, insomuch as they understand what night could be. Of course, such rules apply only to those who can think in the manner that mortals do. Beasts can go here, and many have settled down to live in this place, becoming animals tainted by void. This realm has no ruler, no master, no owner. It is a land that lies within the firmament, beyond the pale, over the hills and far away; it is a land that only existed a long long time ago, and yet it is also a place that one day will come to be, and in many places it is already happening, has happened, and will happen again. It is a realm beyond the reach of gods, but not beyond the reach of stories.

There is only one house in the Voidwood. It is large, with many comfortable rooms, and it is made from the smoky crystallised wood of the voidtrees. It is the only permanent habitation, the only place with proper beds and a good proper meal to be had. And that is where I live. It is the only homely place in this abyssal realm. I am not a traveller. I am not lost in this land beyond the woods that are lovely, dark, and deep. I do not have many miles to go, nor any promises to keep. I am the only person who came here by natural means. And thus, I am the only person who can live here for long. The precise details of my birth is unknown to me. I do not recall who or what birthed me. Or if perhaps I was hatched from an egg. Naturally, an infant would have perished if someone hadn't looked after me. At first the beasts of this place took me in. Night mammoths, fractal tigers, the dream-shells of the Argentavis, all of them have known me, and have never sought to harm me. Beasts like them, they carried me to the only other inhabitants of this realm; The ones who seek to come here and stay. Wizards, scientists, strange priests. All of them come to prove something or escape someone. All of them die eventually.

Having been born here, I grew up with the powers of entropy and dead dreams moulding my body, making me a part of this place as much as the voidtrees, the dead stars, and the ghost whales that I see from the shores of the Nevermore Ocean. But they are all too old to adapt. Too old for their bodies to acclimatize to this twilight realm. And yet, they strive to survive here for a time. They took me in, and cared for me. Taught me language, numbers, and many branches of magic. They were kind to me. Even though I'd already been altered and fused with the strange energies of this unreal location, they loved me. Even as I grew stranger and stranger still, they did not cast me out. My eyes became orbs that shone with a baleful Tyrian purple shine, and they did not balk at my existence. When I was roughly eight years by their reckoning, my ebon skin contorted and pulsed like nothing that anyone can describe, my flesh twisting and turning in a bizarre and unnatural way, leaving me covered in midnight fur, they did nothing but console me, having been frightened by the painful experience. When I was 12, they marvelled as charcoal-grey leathery wings unfurled from my back, where previously there had been no indication of such things. Remarkably useful for keeping warm or flying around the infinite lands of this void.

Yet, it was not to last. As they became touched by the strange powers of this place, they began to get a haunted look in their eyes. Always furtively glancing at the dark horizon, at the starless sky. And mumbling under their breath, about how dark it was, how they had forgotten the sun. Inevitably, it meant them attempting to return. Opening a gateway home. And the single moment upon which they beheld the light of their own world once more, caused them to shrivel and burn into a pile of jet-black ashes. While they burned, they would smile. Smile in joy as they died from seeing their long missed home again. In time, they all died. No matter how I pleaded for them to stay, no matter how much they knew that they'd been altered too much to survive here. They always found a way back. And always burned.

I eventually left, bitter memories of dead caretakers mixed with years of teachings, giving me a unique perspective on this place. Using magic, I built my own home. A large one. Based on the picture of an inn I saw once in a book. Travellers lost in time, space, and reality, come to my house now, and I offer them food, drink, and a night of rest, probably better than whatever they would otherwise had have to have out there in the wide black woods. Out where the dire shadewolves howl endlessly at a moon that isn't there. Out where curious critters of every strange sort can gawk at them. I take in old confused men who have lost their minds and thus have lost the world, the mists in their memory allowing them to wander in. I console small scared children who are confused and frightened, after they found a hiding spot that was too good, during a game of ''hide and seek''. Young couples, fleeing some manner of danger. Very discombobulated families who really should have stopped a while back and asked for directions. They enter, they eat, they calm down, they sleep on soft beds, and wake up back in their own world again.

All is once more right in the world.

Of course, this place is not only for them. It is, as a matter of fact a trap, of sorts. A beacon of civilisation in the midst of a place made from rejected universes, sunken continents, extinct species, and evaporated oceans. How could any scholar ever avoid it? How could anyone who in their curiosity has thrown caution to the wind, and landing themselves here, just not come in for a visit?

I offer them food and drink, just as I would to anyone who finds themselves here in this dark foreboding realm. But unlike those who came here by accident, I explain to these curious men and women of a thousand different fascinating species what will happen should they stay. I warn them of their deaths, should they make the choice to stay, and offer to share all the notes that the people who raised me made about this place. All to get them to leave. To get them to safety. A few have offered to take me with them, but I do not think that wise. I may have been born of a normal world's flesh. But I have lived here in the Voidwoods all my life. I have only eaten the food of the dark lands, such as the black eggs of the docile dark dodos, or apples that are black all the way into the stem. I am of the void now, and I can never leave. Not that I want to, someone has to warn people about this place. To make them stay away for as long as possible.

[removed]

Well done, you beat the system.

I like the name choice

Thanks

The employee who works the Minnie Mouse suit at Disney World was found dead in her costume, sitting on a bench in the middle of the park.

My immediate thought was that OP just binge watched is it wrong lmao

"Alec, are you feeling alright?" I heard my roommate Thaddeus ask from the other side of the door to my room. Thaddeus was a 2000-year-old vampire who originally lived in north London. Despite being Stateside since shortly before the American Revolution, Thad still has his, if slightly modernized, British accent. The kind that would make anyone swoon.

Anyone but me that is. My name is Alec, I'm a monster hunter. You would think that we'd be mortal enemies, Thad and I. Quite possibly the only reason we haven't killed each other yet is the threat of mutually assured destruction. You see, neither of us can afford the rent on this place alone, so we...tolerate each other at best.

"I'm fine," I lied, grimacing through the pain as I took off my shirt. I had been hunting last night, killed a werewolf from breaking into an orphanage. But the thing had managed to get a few hits on me. Including several deep gashes in my side that were bleeding profusely.

"I can hear that your heart rate is elevated and your breathing is much shallower than normal! And I smell your blood! Alec, please be decent because I'm coming in!" Before I could stop him, Thad had broken the door open. His eyes widened at the sight of my injuries. He stepped closer, obviously straining his self control as he struggled with the urge to drain me dry. "You're hurt worse than I thought."

"It'll heal."

"You could bleed out without medical attention." Thad reach under my bed and grabbed the large trunk I kept underneath. He ripped the lid off and gingerly felt through the items, being careful to avoid silver things and blessed stakes. He hissed a few times before his hand came back out, red and blistered yet healing quickly, holding the forst aid kit I kept in there. "Luckily for you, I did learn from the apostle Luke, serve in the Union Army as an Army Surgeon during your country's quaint little Civil War, and as a doctor in both World Wars to know a thing or two about this sort of thing. Most of my patients made it." Before I could protest, Thad had already applied hand sanitizer to his hands and put on a pair of latex gloves. Then, he filled a syringe with morphine and took my arm.

"Trust me," he said, loking me in the eyes as his eyes turned red and his fangs lowered, his nails sharpening to claws. He traced my arm with his fangs, his eyes never leaving mine. He coaxed a vein to appear, and then slowly, carefully bit down, piercing my skin and latching to the vein. He brought the syring to close to his mouth and angled the needle so that it slid along his fangs and into the vein before pressing down the plunger all the way. As he pulled back, the pain already started to subside a bit. Then, turning to the wound, he leaned close, tracing the edges with his tongue, causing me to jump and bite down on a moan of shock and pleasure that decided to lodge itself in the base of my throat. "Our saliva helps with the healing process, nut due to the size of these gashes, you'll still need stitches."

I nodded my head as he began threading the needle before taking his lighter and heating the needle up to sterilize it. When I met him a year ago, I couldn't stand him. This 6'2" man with tanned skin and short wavy curls of jet black hair. His body was as sculpted as Michaelangelo's David, which he constantly reminds me that he modelled for, minus below the belt stuff, which I've seen the print of when he comes out of the shower or wears grey sweatpants (much bigger than the sculpture would suggest). His sea green eyes that twinkle when he talks about his favorite things from history or the way they crinkle and his dimples come out when he smiles.

"All done," he said, after he had made the last stitch and cut the thread. His eyes found mine again and the room seemed to heat up by a thousand degrees. I found myself leaning closer, my eyes closing. I felt him do the same. As his lips met mine, it felt like the birth of a billion galaxies.

I pulled away breathless, either because I'd been holding it or because we had been making out for so long that I'd either lost it or forgotten how to breathe. My heart was racing as I looked into those annoying sea green eyes. "I think my condition warrants overnight observation doc," I smiled nervously.

Thad nodded enthusiastically. "Absolutely. And I have yet to do a full exam." And with that his lips were on mine again as he pushed me onto my back, a roll of gauze, forgotten, unrolling as it went towards the wall.

I liked this exploration. It helps that the wording of Hestia's vow does specifically mention "never knowing the touch of a man"

"I don't understand why it's so hard for you to clean the damn mirror!"
"I can't even use the mirror!"
"That makes it easier for you to clean! You can see all the spots!"
"Stop trying to distract me! This has nothing to do with the pre-diced garlic you keep buying. I told you you can only buy it fresh if you're going to use it even though a powder would be so much easier."
I leapt back into the argument. "You don't get the same depth of flavor with powdered garlic."
"That's not the point! You don't see me buying peanuts. I respect your allergies why won't you respect mine?"
I laughed, "Haha. Point."
"No! Don't you," he tried to stifle his smile but it was made harder by the fangs. "Don't you start!"
"Oh yeah? Am I...cross-ing a line?"
The laughter tugged at his beautiful, dead face.
"Don't make me bite you," he said with a huge grin on his face.
"You'd like that...wooden-t...you? Damn, I don't think that one worked."
He shook his head at me but the smile didn't fade. "Too much of a stretch. Where's your game at today?"
"As spotty as the bathroom mirror."
"FUCKING FINE. I'll clean it. Stop buying that shitty garlic. It smells so strong and gets everywhere too easily."
I would have to relent on this one. If he was finally going to clean the mirror I guess I should do something in return. "Fine, but my chili won't taste the same."
"I wouldn't know since I've never been able to eat it until now, asshole."

Who am I and where are we you ask? the former is both a very simple and very complicated question the latter is just complicated.

so to the former, the simple answer is I am Perdita. The complicated answer is I am the Queen of Nothing. That's where you are by the way. This humble house of mine is the only thing here and that's what I've taken to calling it, Nothing.

Its surprising that you even made it here in the first place. This is a place for only the most thoroughly lost after all and you seem to have a good head for directions.

Me? I was born here. but you. to get here you must have been truly lost to end up in Nowhere.

So the second question, right. This is Nothing, my house, it sits in the middle of Nowhere. Nowhere is where you end up if you get lost trying to go anywhere from Somewhere or somewhere from Anywhere. To arrive at Anywhere you have to get lost going from Here to There and to reach Somewhere you have to get lost going anywhere from Here or There. Here is reached by getting lost where you are and There is reached by reaching your destination without actually having a destination.

I'll give you a second. It can take a while to wrap your head around....

....

....

Leaving? I'm afraid that isn't so fast a process. If this were any of the other places I mentioned simply trying to go somewhere specific and not getting lost on the way is good enough but not so much for here. Try getting anywhere once you arrive and you just find yourself ending up back in the middle of Nowhere, outside my door.

That said, a good nights rest can find you right back where you ought to be. we can talk more in the morning if you're still around when I wake up. The Guest room is upstairs on the left and feel free to help yourself to my fridge. I'm turning in early.

Well this is awkward, considering that Hestia swore an oath to Zeus to remain a virgin for all time and never marry.

Good take on "tension". I didn't even consider that.

"That kind of talk is what got us into this mess!"

Agon paced the deck with a spear in one hand and an uncovered torch in the other, taking a grim satisfaction in the anxious eyes of his fellow crewmen. They had bullied him, long ago. So long ago that most of them probably didn't remember it. But they were right about one thing: he was crazy. He would burn the whole ship to punish the world for blowing the Titanic off course.

Or at least he'd let them think so.

"Did the founders of Athens raise our city on their knees?" the bronzed warrior continued, "Was the Serpent of Paideia slain with pleading and pity? The gods demand a sacrifice!"

Where he stalked, men and women stepped back to give him a wide berth. All but one: Mars' daughter Argo. Her chestplate gleamed blood-red in the evening sun as Agon stepped closer, their breaths mingling. Agon smiled, Apollo's fire through the windows of his eyes. "Are you volunteering?"

"Stop this, Agon. We all swore an oath of brotherhood."

"We swore an oath to destroy anything that stood in our way! Look where your pathetic attempts at peace swept us. You call yourself a daughter of war? And to think I once loved you."

"I loved a man who spoke music and poetry, not these vile threats."

"A man who tastes poison must spit his words."

Argo's height nearly matched his, despite the man's imposing size. Paarthurnax watched them bicker from his perch atop the mast. He was further from the action than his few friends on the deck, but he could see the inevitable as well as anyone: Agon would get his wish. There would be blood before the sun set.

"We need you, Agon," Argo tried one last time. "Whatever horrors wait between us and home will be twice as deadly without our second best warrior. But I will put you down myself before I let you kill one of our brothers."

"Second best?"

Both demigods' eyes gleamed. Unbidden, a sailor passed Argo a spear and shield. "Get my shield," Agon spit. They stepped apart, the crowd parting around them. Sunlight flashed on the bronze shield, blinding Paarthurnax for a moment. Perhaps it was Apollo's blessing - perhaps it was a warning. The gods were fickle.

All except one.

"Wait!"

Paarthurnax dropped to the deck. Both pairs of eyes - all pairs of eyes - turned to him.

"I can find the way home."

Both challengers raised an eyebrow. Argo laughed, a short, humorless sound. "You? You can barely find your way off the ship when it's time to fight."

"I can save us," he insisted. "What we need right now is not battle, it's to get home. Don't let your pride blind you to that. Give me seven days, and I swear I will get us home."

The demigods turned to look at each other. Finally, Agon lowered his spear. When he spoke, he didn't deign to address Paarthurnax. "Seven days. And if he fails, I'll be glad to not have to sacrifice you," he told Argo. She merely nodded.

As he took the wheel, Paarthurnax's eyes stayed on the horizon. I trust you, mother. You do not strengthen my arm or quicken my spear, but you never, ever fail me.

[removed]

Lovely, we’ll done.

Thank you :) glad you liked it

i really dont know what happened lmao. ill delete it and post it ok the right one