December 26, 2022 0 comments

12 Days of Xmas: Running On Empty

RUNNING ON EMPTY

Staying in the motel was becoming a real hardship. Not because the room was especially terrible in itself, but because the neighbors on either side were the sort that believed being loud was a right and not a rudeness.

The couple on one side loudly made love all night every night, while the couple on the other side screamed at each other and threatened violence at such volume their every word was clearly audible. Both pairs were risking their lives without knowing it.

She wrapped the pillow tighter around her head and clenched her jaw tightly to keep from screaming at them to "SHUT UP!"

Her body trembled with the effort of holding herself still. She could feel the madness growing inside her. The need to unleash terrible violence on the inconsiderate aholes.

She was exhausted. She hadn’t had more than a few minutes of sleep for the last two weeks. If she could have left the motel room she would have, but she had promised to stay inside and wait for him to return, so here she was. Suffering from cabin fever and maybe malnutrition from only having delivery food to eat, which in this town had meant food from the pizza place every day.

She’d promised she would stay in the room, but it was becoming harder and harder. It was only her absolute terror of Them that kept her inside.

He’d lined the motel room with paper charms and hung up carved wooden rune squares. As long as she remained inside she was invisible to the monsters chasing her. The monsters he had gone off to kill.

The moans on one side were growing louder, the fervent filth they called out growing louder and LOUDER while the couple on the other side screamed such vitriol at each other that she thought she could feel her soul curdling inside her body. Both couples were so LOUD, screaming and panting and groaning and the thump-thump-THUMP of a headboard slamming against the too-thin wall.

She pressed the pillow tighter around her head, mashing it against her ears. The pain was growing in her brain, the headache having grown so much worse over the last two hours. To the point that she’d begun to fantasize about going to the door and stepping outside.

There would be the howling screams and They would appear. She would be torn apart, she knew it, her blood and viscera splashed so far and wide and horrifying that it would be near to impossible to clean up. The motel owners would have to use bleach and paint to wipe away the mess, and even then the cement would be stained forever.

But those assholes… They would kill her, yes, but they would also kill everyone else staying in this section of the motel. They would kill her, but that would not slate their bloodlust, the need for violence and murder.

Assaulted by the loudness of her neighbors, the continuous torment of their screaming and their lust and the THUMP-THUMP-THUMP of that damned headboard… She was tempted.

All she had to do was open the door and step outside.

=END=

~Harper Kingsley
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December 25, 2022 0 comments

12 Days of Xmas: A Once Mighty Wind

A ONCE MIGHTY WIND

He’d felt like a god once. He’d walked the earth and been able to imagine it tremble beneath his boots. His voice had shaken the air and everyone had shown him nothing but awe.

He was old now and feeling older everyday. His once mighty voice had been diminished to a whisper, easily ignored by the children that surrounded him.

Everyone seemed like a child to him now. He was older than he’d ever wanted to be. And with every passing day he only grew older, weaker and more bowed by time, his body failing him while on the inside he felt the same as he’d always been.

He’d felt like a god once, but now his health was failing him. Time was catching him up and he could no longer outrun the sunset he felt closing around him. The tiny aches and pains that had added together to become a dragging misery.

The bones he’d broken and treated carelessly as they healed were now a deep throbbing agony when the weather turned cold. The scars that had slashed his flesh now stood out against skin gone paper thin and they twisted tight and sometimes felt as though they would tear themselves open again.

He’d grown older than he’d ever wanted to be. Some part of him had somehow assumed that he’d reach a comfortable age and time would cease to bother him. Yet here he was, an old old man, long retired with no more battles to fight. Not because he’d won the war, but because the war had moved beyond him. Taken out of his hands by the young heroes that had taken his place.

He hated that he had become defunct. He’d lived the most when he’d had an enemy to fight, but now he’d lived so long that his body had failed him. Had lived so long that he’d outlived his ability to fight.

He could still feel the power within him, that well that waited to be drawn upon. But his lungs had failed him—too many cigarettes back when he had smoked—and now the doctors warned that using his metability would likely kill him. His body was too weak.

He thought about damning the consequences and the solicitous advice. Imagined sometimes opening his mouth wide, drawing in a deep breath, and BLOWING as he once had done.

That mighty wind that could topple buildings and push the weather where he willed. He could still feel it deep inside, but his body was weak and broken by time.

He imagined drawing on that power one more time. Fantasized about showing everyone that he was still here, still existing, still a god amongst men.

But time had taught him fear. Time had taught him dread of encroaching death. Time had made him greedy; miserly over the few short years of life he had left.

He wasn’t just tired of the pain he felt. He dreaded adding hurts to the accumulation he was already forced to carry.

Time had bowed him down. Time had brought him a humility he had never thought to know. Had knocked him from his pedestal and made him merely human.

He’d felt like a god once. A long time ago.

=END =

December 6, 2022 0 comments

SHOWER THOUGHTS: The Prince That Was Promised

I haven’t watched Game of Thrones, and I don’t have any interest in watching it. (I’m not into watching a bunch of bad sex.) But I have read a lot of fics the fandom has produced, and so I have a general idea of the plot and all the little things about it.

I have seen the final battle scene from the show, so, spoiler alert, I know that Arya is pretty much the main character.

So with all my fandom knowledge and that ending scene in mind…

What if the whole "Prince That Was Promised" prophecy was about Arya?

"But she’s not a Targaryen!" Of course she’s not. BUT if Rhaegar hadn’t run off with Lyanna, there wouldn’t have been a rebellion leading to Robert taking the throne and Cersei becoming queen.

If Rhaegar had done what he was supposed to at the Tourney of Harrenhal and met with his lords to overthrow his father, the Mad King wouldn’t have burned Rickard and Brandon alive. And therefore, Catelyn wouldn’t have married Eddard and Arya wouldn’t have been born. // Brandon had to die to ensure the birth of Arya.
Without Joffrey becoming king, Eddard Stark wouldn’t have been executed, leading to Arya apprenticing with the Nameless Men. She wouldn’t have learned her fighting techniques that she used in the final battle.
The Valaryian dagger Arya used came into play because of the attempted assassination of Bran.

At the end of the day, the most important character was Arya. And the prophecy was used to bring about her birth.

So like, if I was writing a GoT fanfic… that’s the angle I would take. And maybe I’d add a smidge of the Children of the Forest hating the dragonriders of Valyria and the Andals for ruining the faith of the Old Gods which resulted in the destruction of the weirwood tree groves, thus severing the connections that allowed them to view and effect everything across Westeros.

Controlling the dissemination of the prophecy through Aemon to Rhaegar via Brandon Rivers would have been their greatest revenge on the interlopers that had nearly ruined everything.

It would be even funnier if the mixing of fire and ice was about the blending of Catelyn and Ned.

Redheads are considered to be "touched by fire." And the big reason Hoster Tully and Rickard Stark wanted an alliance was to act against the Mad King.

If they hadn’t been so worried about the ever worsening madness of Aerys, Catelyn likely would have been married to someone in the south.

Rhaegar was obsessed with creating the dragon with three heads because of the prophecy. He ruined his marriage and destroyed the Targaryen legacy because of seeing Lyanna and conflating her with his prophecy.
"The Prince That Was Promised" could be Arya because the Starks were the Kings of Winter. Once her brother Robb declared himself King of the North… Arya would be in the line of succession for the Northern crown. // Who says that "prince" is a gendered term? Especially in a prophecy that was translated from another language a long time ago?

If everything was intended to lead to the birth of Arya and to having her be at the place of confrontation… That would be hilarious.

December 6, 2022 0 comments

Weird dream about a movie I haven’t seen.

I dreamt I was in the Matrix.

Maybe I was an update patch?

It started with my dream self thinking that I wanted to watch the newest Matrix movie, which I haven’t seen yet. And the movie started… then I was in it.

There was a desert and any people that appeared were hungry and thirsty. Desperate to survive.

And there was a desk in front of a ruined shack, with inky blackness welling out from beneath it. Tempting and dangerous, an apple sat on top of the desk as a lure to the unwary and the weak of will.

The dream cut to a scene on what seemed to be a skyscraper under construction. It was the stronghold of a group of powerful people that kind of dressed like goths in the Mad Max world. So, you know.

And Dumbledore and Snape and a couple of their followers were there to see those powerful people. They were looking for their savior, their chosen one, but they were denied in a mocking manner.

With a single shove, Snape was thrown through a window and Dumbledore and his followers apparated away.

Meanwhile, Neo was back in the Matrix as a little girl. At some point, she changed to become adult Keanu.

And back at the desk, the ripe red apple gleamed temptingly, and a starving wanderer from the desert reached out to take it, only to be consumed by the inky darkness. She was pulled, screaming, underneath the desk.

Trying to remember the dream, it seems somewhat nonsensical. But while I was sleeping, it seemed to play in linear order. Everything made sense, and now, my waking mind struggles to explain the things that I saw. Because that’s the power of dreams: It was all visual, arrayed in ways that mere words cannot explain.

Color and darkness. The sense of looming threat and burgeoning hope. The thoughts I had in the moment that explained things I glimpsed without really seeing.

I woke up, and I didn’t want to wake up because I wanted to know what was going to happen next. I wanted to see the story through to the end, but I couldn’t, even though my mind tells me things I didn’t have a chance to dream.

In my dream, there was something wrong in the Matrix. All these different stories and worlds were converging, and that’s why an update patch? was needed to fix things.

Everyone was waiting for a savior, and there was disappointment that the ones they had weren’t the ones they expected to see. Not realizing that appearances mean nothing, it’s what’s inside that matters.

And now? I have to look up how I can watch the new Matrix movie because I’m kind of curious what it’s about. Plus, it’s always nice to watch Keanu in a movie.

P.S. Was I the inky blackness? The trap made to consume the unwary? To pull them into the depth of shadows where anything can be, and it’s only supposition that it was death inside and not the start of something new.

Dreams are weird.