Hallway
by JessiLauren

Comment:
It grew closer, but so slowly. Oh so slowly.

An arm reached out, and tried once more, gripping the smooth and unforgiving floor as best it could, and pulled. A little more, and a body moved. Then the other arm, repeating the work of the first.

Again, and again, was it repeated, and closer and closer it came. The door. That magic door. The way to safety. To help. To life.

The arm came down again, and again it gripped, and it pulled.

Closer, closer.

It was the only thing he could think of now. The only thing that mattered. He was dying, the blood leaving him faster than he dared consider. His strength ebbing with every inch that he crawled. Yet on he went, finding some deep well of strength.

Closer.

Closer.

clo...

Which way to go?
by hajeka

Comment:
How many times had he parked his car in this garage? How many countless days and months and years since he had bought a small apartment in this building? It was many, he knew, and he'd never felt like this before.

He tried to laugh it off, and took another step towards the staircase that he had traversed so many times before, but he found that he simply couldn't do it. Couldn't take that step, because he was suddenly terrified.

He couldn't explain why, and he slapped himself and pinched himself and told himself that it was stupid and silly and moronic. Just get up the stairs and go home and grab a finger of brandy, and forget this already. Stop being a little girl!

Yet nothing he could say to himself, either out loud, or in his head, helped in the slightest. He was rooted to that spot, staring at the stairs and at that space underneath. A space he knew was empty because he had just approached from the other direction not a moment before.

But he knew that for some reason, it was different now. For some reason, as he had passed some kind of silent threshold, some kind of hidden barrier, that something had changed. That space wasn't empty now. He didn't know how he knew, but he knew.

Just then, a small whisper came from that place that he stared so intently at, his eyes now hurting from the strain, and that whisper caused his body to shiver violently, and his bladder released, and a tortured moan came from deep within his chest, yet still he stood there. He was beyond panic and flight. Beyond even attempting to tell himself that it was all just his mind, all just a silly anxiety attack.

As he moaned, a shadow fell, and it fell against the light (that isn't possible! a small, but dying, part of his brain shouted) and it began to advance, and the whisper grew louder and more intense, though it said nothing that he could understand. He began to cry now, and his legs threatened to give out from under him, yet still he stood.

The whisper then turned to a piercing shriek, and the shadow grew until it masked all the light around him and it came from under the stairs, and it was cold, and it was darker than the blackest night, and as it engulfed him entire, the last thing he saw, floating in the blackness, were two piercing points of sickly green light that wavered and dripped and were utterly evil.

Then, he knew no more.

And it fed.

abandoned bus
by GinaRothfels

Comment:
It didn't know how long it had sat there, gathering dust in that empty, abandoned, and dusty old garage. For years, perhaps, or decades. All it knew that at one time it had been loved and tended like no other. Used to ferry children to and from their schools, or to bring people to long imagined and much needed vacations across the state. It knew that once, it had been happy.

Now, after all these years, sitting here in this dark and dankness, for time uncounted, it had seethed in bitterness and despair. It had fed on its own anger and helplessness until its very heart had grown black.

So it was when one day, the dark and haunted gloom of the garage in which it rested was broken by a shaft of light. A door had been thrown open, and silhouetted against the painful glare of the forgotten sunlight was the figure of a man. From the darkest recesses of its memory, came a vision of the people of before. The people that had loved it, and then abandoned it here to an evil and lonely fate. The people that so resembled what stood in this doorway, which it knew now as a path to its renewal and revenge.

As the man in the door began to enter the garage, a red and angry light flashed to life on the fender of the seething evil that rested there, and an engine long forgotten flared in outrage and vengeance.

Building Blocks
by PennyStreet

Comment:
He had a headache when he awoke that morning, and tried to tip himself out of bed to go to the medicine cabinet for some aspirin, but as he tried to move his legs out from under the covers, he found that the muscles that he had grown so used to using, simply weren't there anymore.

Instead, an alien feeling rushed through his brain, and spoke to him of many limbs that he hadn't had before. It was then that he began to panic, and by some instinct or sheer force of will and luck, did then manage to fling himself from the sheets, and he fell flat on the floor.

He struggled there for a time, those alien impulse and feelings fighting with his desire to work only two sets of arms and legs, the idea of his humanity that had been with him for 30 some years fighting with this sudden and growing realization that something was very, very wrong with that idea.

Again, through some instinct, he managed to stumble upright, and opened his eyes. What he saw choked a strangled gargle from his throat. He would have screamed, but it seemed he no longer had the mechanics for such a thing anymore. In place of his mouth, were a pair of giant pincers, and what his eyes showed him, was a view of outside, from his window, but it was scattered and shattered into a grid of images that overwhelmed him completely. His first thought was that he had gone insane, or this was some kind of hallucination, perhaps brought on by aneurism or some other brain malfunction, but no. As he stood there unblinkingly (he had tried to do that as well, but there was physical ability to do so), it suddenly dawned on him in a final and horrific realization.

He wasn't human anymore.

And as his pincers clenched and his multiple legs began to twitch as the muscles within finally bridged the gap between his old memories, and his new sense of being, and his eyes saw only a multitude of broken images, his human mind finally snapped completely and was lost.

Some time later, in the streets below, came the screams as the giant beetle emerged from the apartment block in search of food, and loosed upon the world a vision of a Kafka Nightmare.

Old Made
by RKT

Comment:
My only 9. You tricked me about the overlay! (or lack thereof).

Truly, you were mightily robbed here.

I'm also almost shocked that this didn't get a Posthumous ribbon, considering his glowing comment. lol.

*edit* Also, for the record, I didn't submit a DQ request, AND I didn't see any kind of validation stamp of any kind when I commented.

Message edited by author 2009-03-16 01:38:42.

Seeking hope in the bottle
by redpanda

Comment:
Courvoisier has to be the single best damn Cognac on the entire planet.

Leaving home with Mr. Bear II
by Dirt_Diver

Comment:
What the limits of the human spirit are, and what it can endure before breaking utterly, few can guess or know. For everyone it may be a little different. A little less, a little more.

On one life-changing day in mid-July, little Kevin was to discover that sometimes the limits of the human spirit were practically endless. For on that day, a disaster struck the world, destroying much of the human population over-night. Kevin's parents were an unlucky statistic, succumbing to this tragedy in the wee hours of the morning.

However, despite all the ills and tragedies that could have fallen upon himself, when he found himself alone, he discovered something deep inside his young and fragile self. Something that took over, that persevered. Little Kevin survived.

So it was, in the days to come, that Kevin took up his favorite toy that had become a talisman to him, and started on the road, and there he was found some days later by a roving band of survivors and was adopted as one of their own.

In the years to follow, he would grow into a great and beloved leader of men, and his legend was born.

On Top of the World
by CorySmith

Comment:
Of all the nightmares and disasters and cataclysms and extinction level events that all of humanity could have devised in all of their many years on the earth, none of them, not one, could have prepared them for the true end, when it came.

For out of the deepest, darkest depths of the universe it came. It came without warning, and when it did, it spelled the end of us all.

Yet how could we have envisioned such an end? How could we have foreseen that when the human race was extinguished, it would be extinguished by the cutest damn giant duckling that ever was?

The Opportunist
by goc

Comment:
Little Jimmy was the eldest of his siblings, and as such found himself in the position of caring for them now and then. He would help feed them if his mother was too busy fighting a flock of crows. He would admonish them if they got into too much mischief. He would teach them all that he knew, and he would do everything that a bigger brother could, for he took his responsibility seriously.

Indeed, so it was that on cold dark nights when their mother was late coming home from hunting, he would even tuck them in, kiss them goodnight, and then begin a heartfelt singing of their favorite lullabye.

Guitar Player
by parkern7

Comment:
On a late afternoon he entered the room, and smiling at the one that lay there on her bed, he took a seat in a chair beside her.

The light through the window was waning, casting a soft glow on them, and a bird sang a little tune that was barely heard through the glass, but brightened that light just a little.

He listened to that bird, placing the guitar he had brought in his lap as he sat, and strummed a chord that echoed the song. He smiled down at her, the little girl, who had fallen ill so suddenly over the last few weeks and was now in danger of losing a battle with a sickness they could not defeat. Yet it was that she had strength enough to return his smile, and in a soft whisper asked if he would play her her favorite song.

So he tuned a little, and began to strum, and soon a wonderful and calming melody began to fill the room, and he joined his soft voice to it, and began a gentle chorus.

As the music filled the air, his voice and guitar lulled her into a gentle sleep, the pain in her face was eased, and while he played she passed to a kinder, gentler world on the wings of his final lullabye.