Vignettes

Originally started on June 10, 2025



Description: 

Diverse genres, Filipino, psychological realism, cinematic, observational, kinetic, sensory


Scene (#1)
Word count: 451
Genre: Cozy Fantasy, Slice of Life
Trigger warnings: None

Denver held a small mammal, his eyes catching a flash glinting off a distant watchtower, his roughened hands gripping intensely yet carefully, forming a dome around it, leaving as little gap as possible, his legs thumping against the staircase, panting. "You must be an animal." His voice lowered to a whisper. "You must be real." Sat on the sun-baked wood stairs, he took a long breath, the critter jittering within, its soft claws tickling. Next to him, a line of broadleaf trees ran down the sidewalk, flanking a wide dirt road. On the other end of the road stood a smithy, potion shop, an eatery, and a junction that led back to the main road. Sam needed his items, he thought. He pulled his legs in, his red trousers tight at the knees, and got up, his greaves clattering against the cobblestone sidewalk. He looked up and at the world around him. The lobed sunlight flecks filtering through greenery dappled the top of his head. The breeze blew against the sides of his hair, and his dark-brown flannel jacket billowed for a moment. He sighed in relief, beginning his gentle walk down the street, as he headed to Sam, sweat beading his forehead, a trickle dripping to the ground. 

He opened his hands. The creature looked up at him, deepened its smile, and made a bleat-like sound. He grinned, a warm smile forming. Then when his gaze absentmindedly flitted up and at the street ahead of him, he saw the torches at the city walls being lit one by one. A nearby puddle reflected oranges, reds, and deep purples. He covered the creature again, and his footsteps clacked faster. He fit his paces into each cobble square, creating an even flow.

A door whirred closed nearby. He continued. A handcart porter to his right stuffed things into a bag. Several boys slowly entered through a gate, and an older woman on the other end of the street flagged down a group of children running along, saying something to them, as they went inside.

Throngs of older men slowly filled the streets, smelling of dust and woodsmoke, turning off down the junctions, rushing.

He stopped by a familiar rice store, buying a sack of rice and laying it against his shoulder. He propped it with his hand, moving the creature to his other hand.

He went off along a junction, passed through a broad gate, and walked down a quieter street, entering a building at the end. "Sam!" He flumped down the sack, as he glimpsed a blue-garbed figure through the gaps of two doors, several rooms away. The creature leapt off his hand and onto the table, curling into a ball.


Scene (#2)
Word count: 314
Genre: Contemporary Drama, Psychological
Trigger warnings: None

Standing next to a chair, Raynold rested his interlocked hands palm-out against its armrest, leaning and thumping back and forth. "How're you?" he asked with a little hitch.

The man seated on the chair, Jeremy took a sip before placing it down on the coffee table in front of him, adjusting it next to his laptop, his eyes snapping to today's headline in The New Yorker. He looked for a while, then tilted his head up at the man. "Yes?" he said slowly with a quiver, tugging at his own shirt over his chest.

Raynold smiled as he sat down opposite him. "Well... you're doing fine, right? Got your morning breakfast." He lifted the plate behind the laptop toward him, eyes darting briefly at the waiter standing over a bustling table across the cafe.

"Yeah... So?" Jeremy raised his ice-blended dark mocha, his elbow pointing outward. *Venti* cup again, drinking a little longer this time. After eying Raynold's shirt collar, he looked out the window, a marching band strolling outside.

A glimpse of a wry smile forming on his face, Raynold rubbed both lateral sides of the table with both hands from corner to corner, as Jeremy planted the cup on the table, tilting his elbow inward and discreetly pressing it against the table.  

As soon as the door behind Jeremy screeched open and closed, he turned his head for a moment and then stood up, gathering his things and putting them in his laptop backpack. "I'm heading." Raynold's gaze fixed on the band members in the distance. 

Jeremy took a step outward, skirting the chair and grasping the edge of its backrest one last time. He walked over to the door, stopping halfway as a group exited. As they went out, he shot the counter menu a look. He then shouldered his way out the door. Inside, Raynold squinted slightly, his gaze averted.    


Scene (#3)
Word count: 283
Genre: Urban Fantasy, Action
Trigger warnings: Attempted Violence, Gun Violence

Hiking up her shorts, Jade stormed up the steps, her ankles wet with mud. Tossing her sandals, she hurried to the second floor, hands latched onto the railings, a blue stain secreting from her palms.

She stalked down the hallway and entered her room, squeezing it shut. Her feet thudding across the room, she leaned onto the window, peering at the street below.

She clenched her hands into fists, snapping open a crate she'd set by the window. She drew out the gun inside it. She rested it on the windowsill, eyes aligning with the scope.

Outside, on the street lined with food stalls, a man chuckled among a group of male friends, darting his eyes between the windows as his friends raised their hands, gestured, and laughed about some story.

She shot—a ghost of a shot, a concrete void hurtling through the air—reloading.

The man's laugh hitched, as the shot zipped past his cheek, disappearing before it hit the wall.

She shot again, reloading—her hands glowing yellow, bearing the heat of the gun.

The man quietly hurried his friends inside, scanning the streets on the way inside, pressing his back against the door.

She clicked her tongue, pulling the gun back. "Damn it," she muttered, wiping it with white cloth.

After placing the gun on a table next to her, she pushed back with her palms, getting on her feet. She swore repeatedly, opening the door, hurrying down the stairs and to the streets. She grabbed a blade and another pair of sandals on the way out.

"This time..." she said after wearing her sandals, the wind blowing against her face. 

Her feet clattered from under a stall awning, entering the sunlight.


Scene (#4)
Word count: 751
Genre: High Fantasy, Dark Fantasy
Trigger warnings: Body Horror, Animal Cruelty/Death, Violence

Below the strikingly white, sun-pressed tops of swelling clouds lying over their soft lavender-gray underbellies, a magical streak of light flashed up from the ground, blitzing through the air. It burst clouds open, and at its height, it exploded, vapor debris shooting down.

As more and more streaks entered the sky, in the broadleaf forest below, mages continued to chant. Whirling their arms in a series of gestures, they spoke in strange tongues, standing over magic circles forming. After releasing another streak into the air, they got it to strike the tower in the distance, breaking off a chunk of it. 

The chunk fell to the ground, landing near a group of swordsmen. As their eyes caught another flash, Helial one of them strode to the front. "Julie Jones..." he said, frowning. "I'd rather not ask this..."

For a moment, silence and frowns spread among the members, but Helial's eyes latched onto where she would appear.

Before one could ask, a figure shouldered her way through, barking at them to move out of her way. Pigs scuttled along behind her, and by the time she went out into the open, mud clung to her ankles. She dragged her pigs into the open, saying "Well?" With a wand, Julie pointed it at the man in front. "Thought you told me you'd never ask?"

"Well... the thing is that we're all just not that cut out for this, hah," said the group leader, smiling weakly. "So yeah, come on, you know? Just a little bit. Just please. Please do it. This time, you have to do it, because whatever happens next, let me handle the rest. Let me take it. Let me take it in its entirety and grip it." He gripped the air. "I'll bear the consequences—I'll carry your sins... Jul." 

"Sure!" she said, turning aside, raising the wand, her voice shrinking to a whisper. "*Pig Preparation*."

Her palm released trails of dust, each shooting to the pigs.

One moment, the pigs grunted and snuffed. The next, one of them started shivering, saliva pouring down its chin. Tiny balls of light repeatedly formed out of thin air, zapping at it, each hit grotesquely expanding the muscles. The muscles squeezed, pinching each other. 

The pig erupted in a cacophony of squeals and roars. 

Seeing it trembling restlessly, the men cringed as they watched.

As more and more debris fell, one of the men created a magic shield, suspending directly overhead. 

By the time the pig opened its eyes, the men stopped their shouting.

It turned around, staring. 

Its gaze eventually settled on the cowering men below. "Hmm—" it said, wincing and its breath hitching. It snapped its head aside, its expression crumbling. Its hands jerked over its face, for a moment, it was silent and still. 

But its arms began to quiver.

It slowly moved its hands off its face, shifting them outward. Once it saw both hands entirely, eyes flickering, its head jerked around, and it threw its hands, roaring, drowned out the rustling leaves, strained its neck, drawing out all its breath.

As it backstepped, it heard a crunch behind it, and it froze, tilting its chin down.

Its fellow pig's remains squelched and slurped underfoot.

Next to it, Julie opened her hand and placed it on its leg. "It's okay," she said. "We'll be okay."

The pig screamed, its hands in the air, the air trembling violently.

"Hey—" she said.

The beast stopped midswing, its bulging hand hanging just shy of her face, giving her a deathly stiff-lipped glare.

"This is not the time..." Her finger pointed up.

After a brief moment, the pig pulled back, watching the streak of light trailing across the sky.

It slammed against the tower, as more bricks broke off, some hurtling toward them

With the magic shield blinking away, gradually blinking faster and faster before it faded completely, the group and the beast retreated, the men settling a distance from the beast.

For a moment, the beast's gaze latched onto the sky..

Then it turned to Julie, who smiled at it, warmly.

Easing into a nod, it glanced at his hands again, slowly closing them.

Wide-eyed, she turned to the rest, briefly compressing her lips. "Let's go," she said, sharing a nod with the beast.

The two bolted, the pig tramping along, stomping over the packed earth.

The rest slowly turned to each other, their eyes meeting. With a shaky nod, they hurried after her, reaching out, shouting at them to wait for them.


Scene (#5)
Word count: 419
Genre: Slice of Life, Contemporary Fiction
Trigger warnings: None

Denzel held a small, crisp bat, placing it against the wall, pinching his shirt over his heart. Pausing for a moment, he looked around, his gaze continuous and flowing like a dance. When his head drifted back to what was right in front of him, his face slowly shifted and gradually transformed. An expression formed in his face—a strange, wry smile.

A figure behind him slammed him in the back with a bat, bursting a blast of white air through him, as Denzel gasped, buckling, dropping to his knees. “What a joke!” he said, straining.

The figure stared, standing over, stone-faced, an imperceptible smirk forming on the right corner of his mouth.

"Well?" the figure, John, said, craning his head.

He clasped Denzel's hand and pulled him up. "Let's try it again. This time, with style."

"Right," Denzel said, "just don't hit as hard this time."

"Right." John faked a swing, making Denzel flinch.

"Bro!" Denzel lowered the bat John was holding.

"Yeah, right."

The two broke, a shared chuckle forming, building between them, and exploding in a crow-like guffaw.

After getting off the stage and exiting the building, they joined the casual stroller on the city's tight backstreets, lined with sari-sari stores and a few others, including one Palawan Pawnshop, sauntering idly in the scattered filtered morning light. They paused to stare in curiosity at posters plastered on building walls and electricity poles advertising local political figures. Other posters read: "Room, Contact:" and phone numbers. They hurtled past expressionlessly and wandered on to peer into the windows of a bright fashion shop displaying dressed mannequins. 

Malapit sa kanila, sa loop ng jeep, may isang drayber na nagtanong: "Diretcho ba Pa ang Robinsons?" Sumagot ang taong nasa upuan ng pasahero, "Di ko kabisado."

The two turned off into a metal staircase, heading to the second floor, and climbing another, before reaching the final floor, passing the CCF banner hanging on the railing. They entered the church building one by one and walked through a hallway. After slipping inside the small chapel room, they quietly entered the last row at the back, coming from the wall side instead of the aisle. "Excuse me," they said as they squeezed past and around the legs of those already seated. Once they sat down, they looked over at the pastor, whose gaze settled on them for a moment as he was preaching. They took a breath and settled in, leaning back, as they eyed each other one last time, locking onto the speaker.


Scene (#6)
Word count: 295
Genre: Dark Fantasy, Action
Trigger warnings: Violence, Body Horror

Jared pattered over the sandbar's branched, tree-like channels, skittering in and out, as armored goblins rattled after him. 

One of them clacked out a crossbow, locking it at the target and snapping the bolt loose. 

It whizzed, striking him.

Jared gasped and fell to the ground. He lay and turned, his light cloak and trousers scuffing, his shoulders heaving as he panted. He hitched up to his knees and lugged himself to his feet, shuffling forward. 

His eyes caught a flash from behind him.

Glancing back at it, he bolted down the sandbank and whooshed into the forest. As his gaze flew over his back trail, he zipped around a few branches, his blood tapping onto the ground. Jaw wrenched shut, he wrested the whining branches against his body, rustling forward, down the squelching mud slopes, and over the sighing, sticky forest floor.

For a moment, he exhaled a foul breath. 

After he slowed to a halt, his arms froze, jaw dropped open, and spine arched. He blurted out a scream as the bolt in his body emitted a magical pulse, a throbbing swirl of dazzling, sloshing foam. Slamming the ground head-first, he reached out before he lashed at the earth, his face warping violently. His limbs twisted, straining around, as he let out guttural, strangled cries.
 
The sound of his screaming echoed away.

One by one, around him, humans softly thudded down short drops, boots damply crunching, cloaks gently swishing as some of them squatted, metal gear airily chinking and jingling.

One of them approached. 

"Jared, we're OK now," Michael said.

Jared's eyes bulged briefly, then softened before they closed, while Michael settled beside him and hung his green-glowing hand just shy of the wound, the shoulders of the group relaxing little by little. 


Scene (#7)
Word count: 498
Genre: Slice of Life, Contemporary Fiction
Trigger warnings: None

A young man stared and wrinkled his nose, sitting next to a lavender-whiffed maiden in an idle court, his eyes sweeping over the vicinity and pausing at every obscure-faced onlooker and bystander. He jerked up from his seat and clacked out the open gate, passing the lines of guards and rustling down the long flight of steps leading to the city square. He first put on the flat hat he had tucked under his arm and adjusted his band collar before settling next to a food cart. After purchasing a few morsels of tiny star bread, he plopped each in his mouth and chewed them all together, clattering the rest of his copper coins into his pocket.

As soon as he finished eating, he thumped on his hat, lowering it slightly, the wind already whistling and cooling his body. He clopped down a step, his sweat pattering over the stone. The way to the square loomed wide, and the drizzles of an oncoming rain cloaked the air, puffing a lingering earthy scent. He whooshed his way downward, his wooden shoes scuffing up to the road that turned off later to the main road and the square.

He flagged down and rode a *traysikel*, stiffening his rear as he nestled inside and wrenching his hands shut on the sidecar's right metal frame.

Upon arriving, he whizzed his head around briefly before swishing inside a café, his mustard-yellow cardigan and army-green cotton trousers brushing past the door. He grazed through a few thickly dressed customers, scanning the floor and stopping at an empty table with an embedded socket.

He sat down and produced from his backpack several dense books, piling them up. He then headed to the counter and ordered a large dark mocha, scanning his prepaid card. After returning, he took out his laptop, grabbed his mouse, keyboard, laptop charger, USB-C monitor cord, phone charger, and monitor, and then plugged them all in.

Once he sighed and planted his forearms on the table, over his keyboard, he gazed at the screen, showing him a browser tab of an email webpage.

He alt-tabbed to a text editor for coding and began typing, starting with the line "The world is cool and amazing" before ctrl-backspacing all of it.

After clicking the wifi and connecting it to his phone hotspot, he switched to his browser and typed on the search box "writing exercises". 

"Sam!" interrupted the man at the counter.

He grabbed his phone and scurried over and back, putting the coffee cup in front of his mouse before searching "prompt heaven" and clicking the Tumblr result. He clicked the hyperlinked "location" in the pinned post and leaned in closer as the loading icon spun. When the page loaded, he read the line "A cabin in the middle of nowhere" and then typed in his text editor "The cabin cage loomed wide." Chuckling softly, he continued tapping away, his coffee's scent wafting and the floor's ruck of customers chatting into the night.


Scene (#8)
Word count: 168
Genre: LitRPG, Action Fantasy
Trigger warnings: Fantasy Violence

He slashed clean a group of slimes, the blast of white air thundering down a path. Orbs of XP fell into his level bar, whizzing it up by 20. 

His eyes skittered across the holographic interface, skipping over a column of "Slime (Level 2) slain! 2 XP!" messages and stopping at "XP: 110/130".

He scuttled along the river.

A skeleton archer shot, piercing through his armor. He chugged a potion and swallowed it whole, tossing the bottle aside and raising his blade. He blocked the next bolt, clobbering a volley asunder. He whirled, slashed, crushed, tumbled, and heaved himself up. He demolished a skeleton line. XP orbs flew, filling up his bar and completing it, the interface ringing and throbbing at "130/130".

A whirlwind of magical energy burst out of him, splashing in a mist, as a magical circle remained around his figure on the ground. His interface read: "Level up! +2 Strength!"

He rotated his arm violently, smashing the ground in a sound like applause, driving forward.


Scene (#9)
Word count: 230
Genre: Psychological Fiction, Action Fantasy
Trigger warnings: Graphic Violence, Mental Health Themes, Depictions of Dissociation/Psychosis

A man pounded up the hill, dashing forward and clashing one by one, blade meeting hammer. He kicked and threw a goblin overhead, flying with his wings and drop-kicking any goblin mid-fight. 

In the distance, goblins screamed, one's face reflecting in a blade, as the man came over, skewered it, and hurled it down, stomping on it repeatedly.

Meanwhile, two other official-garbed humans watched, as several hooded mages cast spells in the form of phantom snake heads biting any goblins in their path until they fell before moving on to another.

Pointing his blade forward, the man let a long shout before closing his eyes.

Beneath his lids, colors swirled, gradually distorting the scene before burning it all away, revealing an office on the other side.

The office had two people, one doctor man and a boy.

The man's gaze rested on the boy. "So you're saying... That this is how you see yourself?"

"Yes..." the boy muttered.

Flashes of red and blue and green threatened to combine again before the doctor man snapped his finger. "Remember this. You have to keep it with you." He "handed" his finger snap gesture to the boy. "You'll need it when the 'colors' happen."

"Yes..."

The boy went home that day and fell asleep. That night, he saw someone's face staring at him through the window. He snapped his finger. It went away.


Scene (#10)
Word count: 190
Genre: Slice of Life, Contemporary Fiction
Trigger warnings: None

Ten minutes out of Vito Cruz, the morning train chugged along the Metro South Commuter line. It had passed through the roads, bridges, gravel, informal homes, foliage-blanketed poles, shirt-off teenagers, and dusty cement-painted basketball courts of Manila. But now, it was slowing along the chain-link fences, posing to stop at Pandacan. 

Once it did, Richard got off.

He strolled around, scanning the streets. His eyes lingered on numerous features, including a cart with a colored-umbrella, the PNB bank, and the yellow-and-black bollards.

He later turned off the street and into his mint-green home, sitting at his computer desk. As he sipped water, his gaze drifted out the wire mesh to his left, past the hanging *chichirya,* into the neighborhood street, where it drizzled.

After taking a shower, he turned on his computer and began listening to League of Legends's (LOL) song "Legends Never Die".

He opened the LOL game itself and queued up, banning the champion "Braum" and selecting "Lucian." At that exact moment, the track erupted into the grandeur of orchestral strings, percussion, and layered synthesizers.

Once he entered the match, his vision exploded in an array of colors. 


Scene (#11)
Word count: 290
Genre: Weird West, Cosmic Horror, Western
Trigger warnings: Violence, Sudden Character Death, Existential Dread

Beside the dull-colored horse, the cowboy in his red shirt could be seen standing upright in the open air, unshielded by any bandana or "wild rag," while at his feet the lawman crouched, shoveling gravel into the bags hung on the horse. Behind the blowing horse were three yellow-shirted first-class gunfighters, followed by seven green second-class buffalo hunters; and at the very end, a gray, bareheaded sheriff. In front of this large company of men sat the pucker-faced bartender Benti. "What then?" he asked, his voice a chop in the dust.

"It'll work," said the cowboy, before getting snapped at by the sheriff with a "You gotta be kidding me!" and a string of complaints about the weather and heat and how staying out here too long would get their heads melting after the hats.

"It should," said the lawman, shoveling another. "I hate to say it, but he's right. This is not a matter of if, but when. So let's get moving... Seriously, why am I the only one shoveling? Guys?"

The three gunfighters worked themselves over, their boots shedding against the dirt. They started helping him, as the clouds scudded across the sky.

A shadow. "What's that?" asked one of the seven buffalo hunters.

They looked again. A cloud.

They snapped their heads up. A forming of clouds.

"Yo! Guys! Get moving!" shouted the cowboy, as the sheriff ran his way to the horse, hands on head.

The clouds combined and squelched, billowing.

A thunder struck the ground near them. A signal.

Another fell, hitting the lawman who fell over. Dead.

An explosion in the sky.

A greater shadow emerged, enveloping them all.

The cowboy's eye reflected a great beast, his form a twinkle in its serpentine gaze.


Scene (#12)
Word count: 241
Genre: High Fantasy, Steampunk, Action
Trigger warnings: Gun Violence, War, Trapping

West of what finally became mainland Jolhelm there was originally only war, and turbulent war it was, for here a great campaign, the Crusades, met a 100-year conflict, the Marchen Wars, and dark gatherings signaled their meeting, a haunt of beast and man, of goblins that skimmed the tall trees of the forest capturing birds with sticky sap, and of the most terrifying creatures nature provided, the hairy red giant whose oval furrowed face looked almost exactly like that of some depictions of hell's gate. In these wars, too, tramped the land creature that would ultimately lay waste to Jolhelm, the treant, whose feats left fire in its wake.

In one rainforest of Jolhelm's Midwest, that same treant struck the foliage, creating a gap. Before raising an outsized tarnished-bronze clockwork-pistol, it checked its whirring similarly large brass-plated watch and then snap-fired through the gap. Upon its reload, the cases slammed the ground. It tut-tutted as it watched the lonely figure running through a field of corpses, into the fort.

Steam releasing from the sides of its head, it pushed back from its knees and settled on the ground. It switched the pistol with its steam-rifle and got its elbows back in place. With a shot, a gasp of flames, a proboscis of steam and magic, lashed out.

Explosion. Hell.

It got up and closed the clumsily open bag beside it before swaggering on its way, in the opposite direction. 

It glared.


Scene (#13)
Word count: 203
Genre: Literary Steampunk, Historical Fantasy
Trigger warnings: None

An airship cleaved through the sky. Within, a man with a bolted watch gazed out into the cloud expanse, the wind swirling and whistling, swishing against the wooden railings. As he went inside, he pinched the watch, twisted its knob, and watched it hiss back into a whir.

"Good day, Sir," said the unresolved figure of a steward, the smile nicked into her face. She turned and backstepped, moving her leg pouch aside as he walked past. He slowly put on his pince-nez, glancing at her now in crisp detail, seeing the eyes' corner crinkles. Before those eyes could lock with him, he trailed off, turning a corner.

Steps quietly thudding, he eyed the paintings, maps, and books, threading through the crowd standing bareheaded across the hallway. 

Upon reaching a shoe rack and a double door, he inserted his shoes among the rest and entered.

He first heard the crashing and the clanging accompanying the childish voices raised in hymn to the long drawn-out doxology on the Stonefell carpeted wood where, as he caught sight of the singing throngs, he waved his hat aside and, slipping into the congregation himself, recited along—it was clear that the service had swept Luke off his feet.


Scene (#14)
Word count: 291
Genre: Literary Fiction, Contemporary Filipino Fiction
Trigger warnings: None

The woman waved her hand aside with a slow turn of the wrist, the shoulder fins of her terno stabbing skyward and bulking over the crowd before her.

"Yes?" she asked, turning before balking at the open palace gate. After peering at an ash tray on an ornate sideboard within, she tapped her pumps inside. 

Her eyes grazed past smock-dressed servants before pausing at a hand peeking at a remove from behind an ajar door and gripping its side. Around it were spread layered figures, set gazes, arms planted over knees, heads, and shoulders, and hands twirled at the wrist and fingers coiled above and beside each other—a resolving house tableau.

She clattered to her room, inside which she rested. The next morning, she got up, straddling the stool and fixing herself up. After a short trip to the SUV, she hitched herself up and flumped down at the back. As the car wheels rolled over the rain-soaked Muntinlupa tarmac, she tucked at the hems of her blouse as she flicked to the tinted windows, her reflected features slowly resolving. Outside, she caught a glimpse of a list of things: a parked bicycle, a green cart with three kinds of peanuts in a glass display, plastic-wrapped Hello Kitty phone cases hanging on a gridwall stall, shirts, shorts, and denim pants.

Settling back, she let out a long sigh, drawing her chauffeur's glance, the world droning into cacophony.

When the car arrived, she stepped over the flecks of rock, trail of water, and cement-pinched grasses below her, working her way outside before hammering up the grooved ramp leading to the plaza, her blouse brushing through KFC's door.

She slumped onto an empty table, her arm collapsing over, wrist lamely settled, phone gripped.


Scene (#15)
Word count: 316
Genre: Military Fiction, Historical Fiction (Fictionalized)
Trigger warnings: Depictions of war's aftermath, post-traumatic stress, mild language

Then he plowed out the door, and the crowd fell back, and we tailed after him. He got in a tent, hitching his low-slung canvas chair up closer and lighting a cigarette, flumping down, as a woman in a chintz-covered petticoat stood nearby, a drab glow in her cupped hands. He scooted his cuffed-sleeved hands beneath him to the back of his knees, eying us, cocking his head back down, blinking as the smoke got in his eyes, tossing the cigarette, and then looking up at us again. He got up and hitched the split-bottom chair from the table behind the woman, placing it in place of the canvas chair, which he tossed aside. He slung a rag over his shoulder, most of it lying over his dark sweat patch. He slewed and stretched his hands at the wrist and rippled his fingers, encircling his wrist with two fingers and rubbing palm and back together, clasping hands together and rubbing into the ball of the thumb, interlocking fingers and rubbing at the base of the fingers. He cycled through these motions as his gaze rested dully on the walls.

He pounded his big feet outside again, over the sun-baked mud and past the stripped-down houses lying at a remove, several of which still threw up flames.

"The hell are we doing, Grant?" he uttered croakingly with what strength was left in him after the battle at Fort Medyo. "Have we already forgot the facts? Is this 'waste time' time? Or w-what?" He opened his mouth and stopped midway, head affixed. After a quick turn, he jerked his hand back creakily and threw them a look and a flurry of gestures. "Go back to brass and tell 'em we're already done here!" A cold grip went all the way down in our stomachs. We dawdled a step forward, firm and strong-footed.

The glitter was in our eyes.


Scene (#16)
Word count: 206
Genre: High Fantasy, Comedic Fantasy
Trigger warnings: None

Sunlight glistening on its towering spires, rain dotting over shavings of woodland, the city of Sepulchre swept out as far as its western boundary in the mountains of Horos. Within, in one of its jungles, the round head of a goblin bent down over a law book as finches around it snapped through the trees, chattering about.

"Oy, oy!" chirped the finch Sentur, his face looking like that of a roguish old man. "Those old bastards running their mouths again. Let's getta chance here, we've got the Mason spellbooks, now don't we?"

"Right, right, time to teach them a lesson!" added the finch Jishiki. "Strike those stiff lips off those arrogant mouths!"

"Come on now," stated the goblin Masterdon, with a hushing tone, a priestliness to his piled robes. "Let us not lay waste within our land, which Providence Himself bestowed unto us." He eased his eyes closed, holding them still for a moment as he drew the birds' curious leaning looks. "Now... what is your plan? I'll join you, but let me pray for mine enemies first." 

The birds erupted into cheer as he stood up, the hems of his robes brightly and magically burning away their mud. 

He covered his mouth.

A grin concealed.


Scene (#17)
Word count: 278
Genre: Contemporary Fiction, Slice of Life
Trigger warnings: Depictions of consensual fighting/sparring

Jethro slapped Levi. Levi jounced his hand against Jethro. Jethro rubbed his own face, then snapped his knee against Levi. Levi threw his hand over Jethro, grabbed him, and, with a string held between his hands, plopped his wrists around Jethro's head. He began to choke him. Jethro hammered up Levi's chin and drilled him with a rattle of blows. Levi hitched his hands out the more Jethro drove his fists. Levi fell. Jethro stooped down and clapped Levi's face. 

"Try again," Jethro said.

The gym clattered with metal plates and thudded with boxing bags.

"But why?" Levi said. Silas unbuttoned his own coat and went toward him. 

"Well, you know," Silas said. "It's part of it."

Jethro gave a nod and shook his hands and clapped Silas's shoulder. 

"How are you?" he said.

Silas smiled. "I've been training."

"Really?"

Levi stood up. "Guys, wait for me, I'll go to the CR," he said.

Silas said, "Yep."

Jethro said, "You sure you haven't been dating girls?"

Silas winced. "Come on, I don't date girls. I've never been able to."

Jethro chuckled and clapped his shoulder again. "Yeah, yeah, OK, see ya." 

He jolted toward Felix and skittered behind him and wrapped himself over his shoulders from under the arms. Felix jerked out.

"Can't," Felix said.

"Dang it," Jethro said. "Thought I'd get you."

"Haha," Felix said. "Try again." Jude and Tobias went toward them. 

"Hello," Jude said with a wave.

"Hello," Tobias said in his pockets.

"How is it?" said Jethro.

"They're doing alright. Was wondering if you'd like to join us on our hike."

"Yeah, yeah, try hiking," Jude said.

Tobias nodded his large head.

Jethro chuckled.


Scene (#18)
Word count: 523
Genre: Fantasy, Psychological Horror
Trigger warnings: Depictions of panic attacks, intense sensory overload, forced transportation

He got up, and he encountered a strange sensation, that of the world falling apart and collapsing in on him, and he nevertheless concluded that this was simply the way that it was and that any other event would simply resolve itself by the end of the day, or at least one day eventually. In the end, he lived his life according to that notion, and he rarely dawdled out of it, always acting only according to what he had been given and to what orders he had been placed under. As such, his life was, in a description, monotonous and routine, even amid the momentary flashes and spells of interesting or intense feeling or sensation.

When he witnessed a portal that could only come out of novels and movies forming, he immediately raised his hand and attempted to swat it away, to swipe it off this room, off this planet. This very thing invited his appraisal firstly, but at this pressing moment, it only threatened the safety and stability upon which his life had been built. Usually, anything unordinary was matched with a relevant solution of his own creation, and he implemented them from a strongpoint and piecemeal. But now, the portal resisted his solution for it, expanding.

He chose his battles and ran out of his room, hoping that it eventually faded, but it didn't and kept growing until it became a visible semi-transparent sphere that passed through objects, threatening to include him within it to the potential effect of having his life either taken away or transported.

He screamed for help, but the sphere zipped too fast. It swallowed him up, and he found himself in pitch-black darkness, collapsing, vision fading.

The entirety of the world screamed at him, visions of the sphere screeching and clawing its way toward him. Roaring thunder struck at him, eroding him bit by bit. He let out a ghastly yell.

The moment cut short, and in front of him, he saw the relentless, soaking rain and the towering stalks of trees fading into a pale, misty celadon-green, before he cocked his head to the grass below him, the undersides of his arms intensely scuffing against it. He stood up, eyes darting from corner to corner, stopping at anything not leaf or bark.

His feet smudged against the squishy mud and the damp air zoomed around him, his shirt billowing, a percussive dance of droplets drumming the ground nearby after rattling through the canopy, the droning rain flooding his ears and soaking his hair, fingertips growing both clammy and nettled as he squelched through the rainforest, his smarting eyes repeatedly blinking hard, face slick with moisture.

He briefly clasped a tree beside him, its wood shavings sticking to his hands and arms, blurring through the vines, trees, and shrubs. "Where am I?" he uttered croakingly with what strength he had left.

A chuckle burst out of him. He covered his mouth, eyes wide. "What happened to me?"

"What's happening to me?" He looked at his arms and legs and then back at the sky through the gaps in the trees. 

He stared.

Rageful rain roared.


Scene (#19)
Word count: 241
Genre: Contemporary Fantasy, Mystery, YA (Young Adult)
Trigger warnings: Mild profanity, sudden perilous events

A honeyed scent tickled his nose. Caleb levered himself up and out the door, striding by patches of green moss and dark surfaces slick with rain, his steps *thocking*. Above hung the lantern by the door and, farther up, the broad, heavy leaves. He passed the gentle glow on the wooden porch, glancing at the array of potted plants on the left side. As he breathed with the constant hiss and patter of the rain, the water on the road in front of him rippled and swayed. 

He looked up at the sound of a car chugging to a stop before the engine switched off, the door swinging open and thudding. His younger brother, Asher, hurried up, a rolled-up jacket over his shoulder, clutching three books of different sizes.

"Hey," Asher said.

"Hey," Caleb said.

As they walked toward their family house, they heard what sounded like a soaring plane. They glanced before eying each other, barreling back out into the open air, the rain streaking down their faces.

In the distance, a meteor cut across the sky. They gasped.

"What's that!?" Caleb said.

"The hell!" Asher said.

For a moment, it slipped beneath the trees, and all was quiet.

Then the roar of its impact hit, ripping through the forest before falling quiet.

Banks of clouds rolled along, the hiss of the rain returning.

As they whisked back inside, an ancient-garbed star-eyed man hovered above, watching them from the sky.


Scene (#20)
Word count: 238
Genre: Pastoral Fiction, Literary Fiction, Slice of Life
Trigger warnings: None

I opened my eyes. Sight of rich pastures and wild-fowl, scent of saffron, cooked buttered corns on a plate, clay and loam soils in rice bags, dairies of cows numbered on a nearby log book. Wagons steadily rolled nearby, containing 900 weight each, drawn with six horses only, and the road corkscrewed toward the nearest throughfare and market-town, carrying piles of wheat, barley, malt, and all sorts of grain. On the carts and tables lay a bone lace and straw-hats, which were eventually plucked off. In the distance lay pleasant wood and fine streams, and in the fields stood graziers, and on the ground shavings and cuttings of paper lay about. And as the sweet healthful air flowed through the corn-fields and meadows, seated near flecks of rock, I made some resounding back cracks. Below my face, sunlight glistened on my dainty knees and lower legs, and waves of water in a basin played about my submerged feet. Overhead, clouds passed, and they would eventually pass over the earth dam at Osbourne River. The land heartily nestled among rivers and hills; deer, boar, and hunting game abounded in the forests across the earth. As I sat and ate corns, I caught sight of groups of cargo-packed travelers sashayed about the land since it connected two trails, but only a few left precipitously and headed far out where the mountains dropped steeply.

I thought it was a nice day.


Scene (#21)
Word count: 397
Genre: Psychological Horror, Literary Fiction
Trigger warnings: Graphic violence, child abuse (physical, psychological, and emotional), domestic abuse, gaslighting and extreme mental manipulation, depictions of severe trauma and generational trauma, gun violence, disturbing psychological themes, nihilism, and homicidal ideation

*The singular thing that I am, I weaponize, put it together to form this epitome of a thing, and I recognize that it isn't that simple, because there are thousands of ways to be, really. It really is that kind of thing, that thing that it is, and surely, it is about trying to make sure that things don't easily fall apart.* Pa pulled himself up off the chair and rained down blows on the boy, striking him and breaking him apart, reducing him to a plop on the floor, boxing his ear with the heel of his palm. 

"There! Surely you know the epitome of grace!" Pa said. 

Sweat dribbled down the face of the boy, who lowered his head like dumb beasts do in the storm.

Pa smiled, cocked his ear to the quiet neighborhood street outside, and said, "The world is a beautiful place, simply it is. That thing that it is, the monstrous thing that must be committed to memory, I transfer over to you. Become one with the entirety of a person." 

He then went and hugged the boy, crying, a deep grief and compassion suffusing his breaking voice: "This is for your own good. This is what it means to live in this world. To be born and to die. To live and to act accordingly. Understand?" 

The boy stiffened his upper lip.

*You must be the epitome of grace and beauty, Son. As I have. We shall be free.*

Pa sobbed before looking aside, saying offhand: "I don't need you to love me or to like me. I need you to be free."

The boy's brows lifted for a moment, opening his mouth to speak.

Not a single noise complaint.

Teacher's eyes narrowed at the boy.

Pastor's nose wrinkled at the boy.

The boy hurried his typing. His eyes reflected his computer screen.

His message popped up. 

It never moved up. 

A smile fell on his lips.

Twenty years later, the boy stared, rain streaming down his face, standing in the streets. "I must become... I must become... Whatever I must. For that purpose for which I have been ordained and placed. I am the epitome, the singular thing, the divine attributor."

He held a shotgun and blasted the door, opening a gaping hole on earth.

"I shall be free from every single thing!" 


Scene (#22)
Word count: 535
Genre: Literary Fiction, Contemporary Realism, Slice of Life
Trigger warnings: Graphic violence (contextualized)

He shot, a piercing bullet striking through, vanishing into the bodies of his oppressors. Rage burst from his seams, ejecta and slag tossing around. He slashed and crushed a nearby oppressor, battering his head with hammering fists.

Beyond the battle, behind an auto-playing screen, a man drank a cup of ice-blended coffee from a nearby cafe. "This is pretty good. How much it cost?" he said.

"Seven, six dollars," the shop staff said.

"On Steam?" the man said.

"Yes," the staff said, imperceptibly knitting his brows as he glanced at the game packages neatly arranged in shelves all around him.

"Alright, thank you," the man said before leaving.

The staff tilted away with a twitching at the corner of his lips.

"So where did Mom say we were going?" said the man's younger brother, who just appeared on his side after sighting him in the distance and running over to him.

While they skirted a kiosk, the older brother, Samuel said, "Lola Cecille's and then dinner at Italliani's with relatives."

"Tita Maris?" Mickey, the younger brother, said. "Or Dad's?"

"Tita Maris," Samuel said.

They walked on for a moment, Samuel sipping.

"It's crazy that Trundle doesn't have a counter," Mickey said. "I mean, he's like the easiest champ, or among the easiest champ, and he doesn't get countered. You just split-push every game, and you just win. Just int Trundle."

Samuel glanced and nodded, taking another sip before opening his mouth. "Well," he said. "Trundle's pretty strong. He's like Yorick and Sion, but the difference is that his entire kit is for 1v1-ing, so there is no issue at all for like how he goes from base to top to enemy base. It's like a pretty linear route through and through."

"Yup!" Mickey said. "I mean, I even tried using Phase Rush, and it wasn't good. Lethal tempo talaga. It's the only one that works. How about Hail of Blades? Did you try it?"

"No. You never get Hail of Blades if your champion is either smash your opponent to death or just die right there on the spot."

"But did you try it? Was it good? I saw a video of TrundleTop playing it."

"It must have just been an experiment."

"He said it's good against certain match-ups, like Fiora."

"How?"

"He said that you get better trades."

"That doesn't make sense."

"Well..."

"How about Lethal Tempo, then go full tank? I tried it, and it sucked! I tested it ARAM, it was good, but ranked, it sucked."

"I mean. His entire kit is based on hitting hard. Why would you not go just full pushing and Sheen?"

"I mean, Mundo's kit is so strong."

"Well, that's Mundo."

'I know, but it can work. Just need the right teammates. They just throw before I can test it out late game."

"Mundo. Just go Mundo if that's the case."

The brother in between Mickey and Samuel in age appeared. "Hey guys, Mom's telling you to come back," he said. "We're leaving na."

"OK, we were just walking around," Samuel said.


Scene (#23)
Word count: 548
Genre: Literary Fiction, Contemporary Realism, Slice of Life
Trigger warnings: None

With a fine felt hat in hand, he sat down, jerking his legs under the seat. His eyes went over to the men on the stage, where they waved and danced with their legs kicked up and about. They then moved the hands they had kept so still in front of their faces and, as if scattering war pamphlets, they made a flurry of hand gestures, having them slice through the air and past and around each other, while their footsteps strutted in turn. Then, being unfinished, they clasped the air and slid their arms in the air and made circles upon circles and flourished their headbands' waving tails along their bodies' motion, which they sped up with the increasing claps per second heard from behind the stage curtains until they stopped in the middle of swinging at a trumpeting voice calling out ("Over!") and rushed from the stage to the back, where their footsteps could be heard drumming away. A man came in from the back and raised his hand, greeting the crowd and expressing his thanks for their attendance, and the felt-hatted man stood up inconspicuously and began walking along the aisle and, with many others, streamed out the theatre door.

The man, with a rough, cold face, tramped across the road and started up a Barney Auto Lines bus. He took a seat at the back on the right two-seat row in front of the last row, next to the window, and he raised his bag in front of him and rotated it so that it matched him vertically and set it on his lap. With a quick curious outside look that ran across the street, he pressed back against the chair and, so that his face scrunched comfortably against it, hugged the bag tight until the traffic ended and the bus began to move again. 

The sound of the bus honked and squeaked when it almost collided with a jaywalker. Before it could return to normal speed, the felt-hatted man pulled himself up, and, before calling for the bus to stop, clutched the bar. He then wrestled himself to the staircase, then thumped down the steps onto the road. After a brief turn-around and rubbing of his sweaty forehead, he walked toward his apartment and carried his bag all the way.

In front of the apartment, he raised his bag and climbed up the steps inside, where he put down his things. He put one hand under the hem of his shirt and dragged it up as he edged toward the bathroom. 

Inside, he stood naked. He twisted the knob and turned his ear to the sudden driving rain outside, and he looked at the water-dribbled tile patterns that travelled asymmetrically to the walls and corners. He sighed and murmured, "How long's it been since I watched?" 

In the room, while drying himself, he said, "Haven't gone anywhere in a while."

He put on his clothes.

At the computer, he sat down and placed his hand on the nearest book. "I hope this ends." 

He typed his password and logged into his user account. "Don't want to go outside again."

He opened Reddit.

His fingers tugged down the sides of his mouth. "But this is worse..."


Scene (#24)
Word count: 332
Genre: Grimdark Fantasy, Military, Psychological Horror
Trigger warnings: War, mass casualty, violence, disturbing themes, graphic imagery

Down the dirt road appeared a moving wall of carriages and carts, and, with it, thousands of goblin infantry, as they edged toward the south.

Inside the convoy, Bonecut, a middle-aged goblin with an oval face and a silver-hemmed tunic, turned back to go to his carriage. Finally, he sat down next to Griznak, one of the twelve commanders. 

"How's the new tea?" Bonecut said.

"Good," Griznak said. "Did your men get this from Asalam?"

"No, no, we actually had Mr. Filli get it from the spirit dimension of Asalam. So this should be exquisite at least."

"Well..." Griznak said, taking a sip. "It is excellent."

Hour after hour Bonecut looked out the window, and he continued listening to the aide-de-camp beside the carriage.

Upon the eighth hour, Bonecut settled back and stopped looking outside, and he and Griznak started discussing their younger years.

"Remember when we still fought that creature?"

"Yeah. It's been a while."

"What was its name again?"

"Shadow...something."

"Yeah. It's been a long while. Kinda miss when they were a threat, but hehe, of course it's better this way."

Outside, the goblins started to chat as well, their faces loosening up.

"How's Witchman been doing, Peter?"

"He's already left the group I heard."

"Really—"

The sound of young voices rang out from the distance. 

They came from human children in a large magical circle on the ground following wherever they went. Their arms were linked, and they slowly walked toward the goblins, chanting continuously with a rare, unearthly beauty. 

As soon as Bonecut heard it, he choked, clutching his chest. He then saw Griznak use a healing spell on himself, and as its green light was flickering, Bonecut cocked his head toward the window.

Outside, across the convoy, goblins began to drop to the ground, and their eyes and faces were pale. Their bodies shook, and they gasped or screamed. Green domes, most small, a few gigantic, appeared, and those within them slowly regained their color and stood.


Scene (#25)
Word count: 297
Genre: Grimdark Fantasy, Tragedy, Military Fantasy
Trigger warnings: Graphic Violence, Parental Death, Mass Casualty, Depiction of Grief

In a large bird-swirled island, as soon as a footsore red-garbed burly man slumped forward around a seaward wall, a cloth-wrapped silver-wand jutted out from the bushes. 

Five firebolts, fired from less than a metre range, all into the back of the head and neck.

The man's wand-searching hands yanked against his taut muscles as he fell to the ground, while the ejected mana refuse trickled against the cloth.

As his body slithered downhill, the silver-wand vanished in a rustle.

A group of hooded mages ran from the bushes and dashed around the wall, aiming their wands at the tops of the towers, striking down the guards one by one.

A brown-clothed man inside the fort set down his book and fumbled for his wand.

He edged out his room door as a blast burned him in hellfire. "Arghh!" he screamed.

He fell, as more and more men hurried into the fort.

The fort went up in flames.

Far off, across the sea, past the retreating hills, at a common town, a slim boy with a bony face, two quick brown eyes, and rumpled black hair that drooped low above his eyes, was sitting on a rambling wooden porch. He wore a flat hard straw hat on the back of his head and a short tunic featuring stripes of purple and yellow and seashells along its hem. He still held the sprig of jasmine, his eyes aglimmer in the soft air and pale light, watching over the large shrubs and lush grasses and mosses.

His eyes travelled far out as the horizon slowly lightened. "Father?" he said.

For a moment, his face was still.

But it twisted, crumpling.

He hefted his lame hand up, bursting. 

"Father!" he yelled.


Scene (#26)
Word count: 504
Genre: Slice of Life, Contemporary Literary Fiction
Trigger warnings: None

A sunlight-steeped dark-jowled male in a thin synthetic polo shirt padded down the green-studded street. Across the street loitered another, wearing tank-top and a *capiz*-shelled necklace. In between the two males, a crowd—after lifting their arms, zipping them diagonally to the side, and whirling them around—pressed their shirtsleeves against their sweat-slicked foreheads. They then recollected on the side of the road as the horizon was lightening and the stream of passersby thickened. The people clumped at the middle, turning off into an LED-lit church—a sea of limbs whopping by.

Inside the filling high-ceilinged, windowed lobby—a kaleidoscope of crowd-reflecting oranges—beside a wide staircase that led to the bleachers, a boy with bruised-blue trousers, soft-brown skin and prickly black hair was hunkered down against the brick-red wall, a band of filtered sunlight across his torso from right shoulder to left hip, clutching a bowl of hot *ginataan*. Dark pouches below his eyes, he unevenly got up while steadying his bowl-gripping hand. He then prowled through the crowd, passing one of  two double doors adjoining the chapel, settling at the back of the ranked split-bottom chairs, behind a chuckling bag-hugging, t-shirted, denim-trousered group of two men and a woman. 

Squinting for a moment, the boy cocked his ear around. The faint rush of the air conditioner filtered through the scuffing clothes, patter of bag rummaging, and whispered back-and-forths. The gigantic screen above the stage shot a cinema-like glare, diffusing among the blouses, polo shirts, darkness, shadowy chairs, and carpeted walls.

After fiddling with his bag, the boy produced his glasses and wore it. The group of three in front of him resolved into stark silhouettes against the silent timer on the screen.

"Yeah, but that's like why he didn't do it, noh?" Elijah, the woman, said. 

"Wait guys, did you guys forget charging cable?" David said.

"No," said Mark. "It's here." He pressed his elbow against the backrest to prop his body while he opened his black-leather bag. After putting several items aside, he raised and angled his bag at the other two, indicating the cable.

"But noh, noh?" Elijah said. "He wouldn't have been the one to sacrifice so early if it wasn't for the time loop." 

"Maybe? Thing is that Marlock didn't really have it until after the 'Noch' scene, so..."

"Guess so." Elijah shook her ice-blended coffee cup at the wrist, her gaze drifting aside as another group of attendees began to pour from the aisle into the empty seats on her and the other two's row.

Behind them, the boy rocked gently back and forth. His head hung below his phone screen, the hitched-up top of his shirt covering his mouth, his right index finger making wide sliding gestures on the screen. The mobile game he was playing featured repeating levels of running, hiding, and preparing for raids.


Scene (#27)
Word count: 524
Genre: Slice of Life, Contemporary Commercial Fiction
Trigger warnings: None

Robyn pressed his blue cotton jacket sleeve against his damp forehead, putting his thick-rimmed glasses on again. From his vantage point at the edge of an intersection adjoining the city square, his eyes grazed the entire square in front of him. He brushed his green drawstring trousers pocket, fingertips rolling over the shapes inside before stopping at a pen. He holstered his right hand and gripped the top, exposing it for a moment before sliding it out, sunlight glinting off the pentip. He set it in his closed palm, then looked out toward a store. As he started to thud across the rainwater-dribbled concrete, his fingers rippled over the pen's surface. 

The clacking of his shoes stopped at a banner with the name "Palawan Pawnshop" in round-ended lettering. As he turned back around toward the bus stop that flanked the road a little before the intersection, his head wandered aside. 

He stopped, sighting a figure, his brows knitting imperceptibly before shooting up. "C-Clowey?" he asked, taking a backstep, then a sidestep, then a slow turn of the head, as the woman with a light cotton H&M shirt, ring-studded fingers, and a hair band across her head approached, a strong perfume scent trailing off her that ran down to Batangas Bay.

They quietly entered a nearby cafe.

"Dark mocha?" Clowey said.

"Yeah," Robyn said.

"Dark mocha venti, please," Clowey said, holding her branded prepaid card in front of the red scanner lights. "And one caramel macchiato. Venti as well."

They sat down in silence until they got the drinks.

"What are you doing nowadays?" Clowey asked.

"Fishing," Robyn said, chuckling alone.

The sides of her mouth rose, but her eyes kept still.

"No, seriously," she said.

"I got a job as a coder just this March."

"Two months ago? That's not that long ago."

"Yeah."

When he did not add anything else, she said, "Hm."

"Great then!" she said.

Her phone rung.

"Sorry, I have to take this," she said.

As she stood up to leave, he offered her his pen. "I still write," he said.

She stopped, tapping the call away. "What?" she said.

"I thought you stopped," she muttered.

"I didn't." Robyn smiled. "I never did.

"Did you?"

"I stopped drawing," she said, zipping through those words, darting her eyes aside.

He thumped tissue over the table to her, moved his ice-blended coffee next to it, and planted his pen on the tissue.

"T-that's not the right coffee." She jerked out a breathy laugh. "And I can't do tissue art with a ballpen."

"Oh... whoops." He made a small smile.

After returning his pen and cup, she started painting on the tissue with her coffee, showing it to him.

"How do you even do that?" he said as soon as she drew a recognizable detailed figure.

"Well, practice. Lots of it."

"So you still...?"

"No, no. I mean, kinda. I like to draw on the walls when I'm bored, but no, I don't, officially."

The two watched the drawing form to include a male figure.

"Is that...?"

"Yup."


Scene (#28)
Word count: 537
Genre: High Fantasy, Sword and Sorcery
Trigger warnings: Fantasy Violence, Intimidation

From under a lily-sown awning hanging in mid-air—the air still quivering around it as javelins, rocks, and colorful blasts of magic disappeared off it—Lei wandered out. 

She wore a black, sleek smock and a black-feathered tall flat hat and held a long spear tipped at the end and along the sides with sharp bits of shimmering gemstone. 

She met the gaze of twenty-four figures, who each wore an outfit of a different style—like a glaringly sharp collar, a daintily thin hem, and invitingly rounded pockets—and color combination—including quirky azure-mustard, rich lavender-gold, and fiery emerald-crimson. 

Their expressions and stances also varied: one wide-eyed and baring his teeth with his arms stretched out and fists flashing with magical flames, another hovering cross-legged above the ground with a dull gaze and floating balls swirling around her.  

"Hmph, you guys never get it, do you?" Lei said. "I can do this again and again. Just stop already. Save yourselves. You're throwing your lives away for nothing!

A man with red-striped blue breeches, a black cloak, and a butterfly flitting across the surface of his eyes, Makki stepped forward. "We want to work under you," he said.

"W-what?" Lei said.

The twenty-four watched her pacing and her face jerking around.

The dust wafted forward.

Lei slammed the ground. "If you want that," she said, "then... you're going to have to go through something... A test... I will throw my strongest attack, and I will stop it at the last moment, so that it's just a blast of wind. If you don't flinch, then... you're in."

Makki's butterfly had frozen. 

He looked back at the others who started exchanging glances, throwing his gaze aside, his eyes settling in the distance.

The sun edged downward.

"So?" Lei said.

Makki advanced. "OK. All twenty-four of us will do it."

The floating dust eventually aligned with the sun rays.

Makki fell to the ground right after she blasted him, his butterfly trembling.

"Out!" Lei said.

Makki flinched again, got up, hobbled through the crowd, and ran off. 

She smirked. 

"Next!"

A woman with a thick, mottled, rust-textured mask, a red coat, and a purple tunic, Joyce stumbled over. "Me next," she said.

Blasting her, Lei took a deep breath, then looked up. 

Joyce raised her hands palm-up, her feet in the same position.

Lei started nodding. "Good," she muttered. "You passed!"

A man with two long strips across his torso, Andrei went. 

Lei blasted him before he could stop.

Andrei gazed expressionlessly at her.

"You passed!" Lei said.

The man Aidan burst from the crowd, swaggering forward, thundering toward her. "Come at me!" he said.

Lei frowned, then smiled. "OK!" She curved her hand, blasting him from the side.

Aidan's eyes flickered. "Thank you!" he said, shaking her hand.

Lei went along with it. "You passed..."

The remaining twenty similarly passed the test.

Eying the orange hues on the horizon, Lei grinned.

"Welcome!" she said, clapping.

She pointed. "We're going to Califa." 

*Damn if this works out...*  she thought.

Her eyes softened, and she tightened her grip on her spear. Her hat tilted backward as her chin lifted, the hem of her smock flapping in the breeze. The twenty-three's heads followed her spear gemstones' trailing light.


Scene (#29)
Word count: 701
Genre: Literary Psychological Fiction, Contemporary Character Study
Trigger warnings: Graphic Depiction of Panic/Anxiety Attack, Seizure-like Episode, Themes of Anxiety, Paranoia, and Social Phobia, Dissociation / Depersonalization, Medical Distress

Puncturations along Enzo's ribs. Air thudding against an invisible ceiling between his jaw and his throat. 

His legs jerked, stopping at a mid point; then he fell, spindly knees twanging against the applause-rippled floor. 

His air hitched midway, then hitched again mid-journey back. 

His jowls became defined, his lips a vacuum that rolled through a series of snags.

His Adam's apple jolted like a chugging engine before air started jetting through his body again. 

He promptly got up and smiled to the audience, a cough of ejecta-like phlegm threatening to erupt.

After scuttling off the stage, he immediately burst out of the building and into the back parking lot, a wide stretch of gravel with a sparse diffusion of cars. 

Upon entering his car, he tooled it forward and across the lot, skirting the building and leaving at the side, where a few cars waited in line to pay for the ticket that only had a 15-minute grace period.

After heading home to his condo, he flumped down on the russet-brown carpeted floor on all fours, staggering toward the window.

His head barely peeked out above the thin windowsill, and his eyes were already darting across the streets around the block in front and between the three large skyscrapers forming a triangle.

The sun outside slowly rose.

He eventually pushed back from his knees and sat his bottom on the floor.

As he lay there, the streets rushed with an influx of vehicles heading to work.

Eventually, Enzo peeked out the window again, sighting a familiar man with a branded polo shirt standing in front of a crossing.

It was his friend John.

One of the cars slammed the horn close to John.

*Please spare Enzo, Lord,* he thought.

After seeing the pedestrian light turn green, John thudded across—glancing to his right where cars were leaving the parking lot left one by one—before entering through the main doors of the building.

He slipped across a lobby, rode one of four lifts, and strode out onto the 9th floor and to a glassy door to the left at the end of the hallway. 

He waved at the blurry figures filtering through it and slowly opened it, eying the clock inside that said it was 9 AM, letting the door close by itself behind him.

He passed several staff across the hallway and a naturally lit glass-walled room to the right with children and two water dispensers beside each other. 

He then reached the service room.

The congregation in front of him were casually exiting their seats one by one, walking over to the back, where they each grabbed a free plastic container with food from a wide table, some getting for friends. Several padded past John and toward the bathroom outside, and others still started filling transparent plastic cups and personal bottles via the dispensers in the glass room from earlier.

"Where's Enzo?" someone asked another. 

John raised his brows at the question before knitting them, turning his body toward the door leading back to the elevator lobby, his gaze affixed.

The buzz of traffic quieted as rush hour ended.

Back in the condo, Enzo took his last deep breath and stood up simply.

He got out, walked into the lift, got off at the first floor, slid onto the sidewalk, and ghosted up toward a cafe, bypassing the crossing. 

Inside, he waited in line.

At the counter, he loaded his prepaid card with cash, scanned, ordered, scanned again, waited, and then got it at the serving part of the counter. 

After sitting down alone at an eight-seater dining table, he brought out his laptop and cables and connected them all. He then snatched up his ice-blended coffee, leaning in as his lips met the straw.

He watched the coffee's surface inside the plastic cup—a moony sea.

As the cafe bar stirred as more and more people entered at 10 AM, he glanced at the metal chairs beaded with dew outside the window, as aircon unit breeze misted on his skin, chill burning his bare hands. 

In his laptop screen, he journaled, "Happened again today. In church."


Scene (#30)
Word count: 237
Genre: Literary Psychological Fiction, Philosophical Character Study
Trigger warnings: Violent and Disturbing Ideation, Themes of Extreme Alienation and Megalomania

His fingertips rubbed the floor, his palm planted on its seamless surface despite its mottled appearance. Headphones over his ears, he plugged his phone charger prongs into the cafe socket fixed into the long wall-couch bottom side. He then settled at the table hanging above the socket, one of four socket-paired tables evenly spaced along the wall-couch's length. The table, like the other three, was made of a round flat wooden surface connected to a straight thick rod that ended in a 90-degree turn into the wall-couch wood side below the cushion.

He mounted his wrists on the table side as he started typing on his laptop. *My arrogance knows no limits...* he thought. 

He followed by writing, "Because I know I will die at any moment."

If he had a blade, he would cut down every single human being here, not out of hatred, but out of a sense of powerlessness.

He would create the world anew and break open this entire faux world. He would rebuild a new one in his image.

He would not literally do it, but there was this compulsion in his soul that wanted to destroy and irreversibly damn them all to hell, maybe in a creative way, in a way as visceral as literally killing them, in a way that only art could. 

He started rapping on the keyboard, forging entire worlds, massacring thousands.


Scene (#31)
Word count: 296
Genre: Hard-boiled Crime Thriller, Noir Fiction
Trigger warnings: Graphic Violence, Gun Violence, Major Death

Several men stood in front, two others at the back.

A finger raised, thumping it up and down, Angelo mouthed numbers.

When the men began stalking forward, he pressed his right hand's fingertips together, palm up, eyes traveling between his nails. As soon as they entered the L300, he got up, strolling parallel to them along the sidewalk.

"What? Really? Wasn't they supposed to win last fight? They were 0-10 in scrims, seriously how!?" a nearby passerby said to his two brothers beside him, his arms slung over their shoulders.

After passing them, Angelo stopped and stared as they strolled down the street.

The L300 whirred around a corner.

He turned back and kicked forward, sprinting to the L300.

The L300 door slid open, and he strode inside.

As the L300 started moving again, he steadied himself with his hand over a tarpaulin blanket. He cast a look out the window, narrowing his eyes over the yellow lettering "China Bank".

Cars coasted by, the traffic branching from the intersection. 

The L300 turned toward the yellow, moving steadily.

As the lettering got bigger, the L300 slowed to a crawl.

A man with a phone over his ear on the sidewalk laughed.

"Yeah, yeah—I can bring it later—sure, sure."

To his left, several men dragged the door open and hurried out, the tarpaulin removed, guns revealed.

They set down a plume with smoke grenades, skirting it and eying the corners where heads would peek, slamming magazines into their guns and aiming. 

Bystanders heard a fusillade of pistol shots.

The heist-men dropped one by one.

A group of national soldiers crept into the scene. 

They shot a few more.

Angelo's glassy eyes met theirs, blood leaking down his mouth. He lay jerking.


Scene (#32)
Word count: 229
Genre: Atmospheric Fiction, Observational Slice of Life
Trigger warnings: None

In a cafe, bruised spires of light reflected off the ground from outside, pillars of shadow in between, as sun-nicked leaves on barked posts filtered through the glass walls. Smooth-wood open cabinet-like shelves displaying cups shone faintly on the floor, blending with the diffused mottled mass of green.

A man entered, dispersing the colors, a shadow upon the surface. He sat down and looked around before heading around to the counter and stating his coffee order. Another man went in, drifting within shadow, sliding to a corner table. The eyes of both locked for a moment before their heads reverted.

Two thick-bloused, neck-laced, bag-shouldering women arrived, hovering across the reflections, settling at the first table.

The man at the counter made a little march over to his seat and did a look around, happening upon the women. He squinted before unhitching.

Corner-table man rolled over his phone, rapping over its surface, the sound effect enabled.

The women's gazes lifted before they snaked between tables toward the counter, crunching upon the seats there.

A group of ten bustled in, jetting to their tables, a burst of shadow. 

"Hey guys," one of the ten, Jericho said. "Food, food, food."

"Why aren't you guys trying the new update?" Linus said. "Is it really that bad? You guys didn't say anything about it."


Scene (#33)
Word count: 179
Genre: Psychological Realism, Character Study Vignette
Trigger warnings: Themes of Severe Social Anxiety, Self-Loathing, and Extreme Alienation

"Excuse me, are you busy?" the person in front of her said. "If I'm bothering you, just tell me. I'll just return to my seat."

"Hmm?" Angela said. "Oh, uh, whaaat?"

"Are you busy?"

"Why?"

"Well, I was wondering if you'd like a conversation. Fine with that?"

"Uh... not really, no."

"OK."

He did it again the next day in another cafe.

"...to my seat," he said.

"Uh, sorryyy, I'm busy, thank you for asking," Laura said.

He returned home, stumbling to the ground, tears dribbling down his eyes. "Fuck, I'm so weak," he creaked. "I'm never doing that again."

The next day, in his room, he looked toward the singing birds from behind the black-out curtain.

"This is what it means," he said.

The next day, he sat down in a cafe, drinking and tapping on his keyboard.

Two women from different tables glanced at him several times, one over fifteen minutes, the other over forty-five.

Their faces remained blurs until they left.

"I feel so weird when women keep looking at me," he wrote. "It bothers me."


Scene (#34)
Word count: 260
Genre: Psychological Character Study, Minimalist Fiction
Trigger warnings: Themes of Extreme Alienation, Dissociation, and Sensory Overload

She sat down. In front of her was a grayish brown, black-mottled metal object shaped like a very wide U. Two metal stalks projected vertically from U-bottom, the first sprouting from the second quarter and the second from the third quarter of top of the U-bottom. The two stalks ended in curves projecting horizontally into the U-middle, which terminated in a horizontal bar that formed a thick-edged hollowed-out circle. On top of the circle was a white ceramic pot-shaped cup with a handle and a flat, circular bottom that steeply narrowed in diameter at the beginning of the cup and widened as it reached the top. Additionally, filling the U-middle on the U-outline floor was a steel gray metal with rows of same-sized holes and alternating zigzag columns forming a hatch-work. Below the right horizontal circle was a wide-bottom upside-down-pot-shaped transparent glass cup made of four round-bumped or plump sides. Its size tapered upward but suddenly widened gradually at the top with a pouring lip or beak.

"Excuse me," a voice said from her right rear. She turned her head, chin resting on her palm. Eyes traveling up and down, she registered a man.

"What," she stated, not asked.

"Just wondering if you'd like to have a conversation," he said.

"Sorry," she said. "I can't."

She stood up, passing him, drawing his sorry. She went out and walked to her car, getting inside and driving home. 

The street lights overhead flashed across her torso from waist to face repeatedly through the windshield.

She jerked her left cheek aside, stretching it.


Scene (#35)
Word count: 411
Genre: Surrealist Philosophical Fiction, Existential Character Study
Trigger warnings: Themes of Existential Dread, Sensory Overload, and Dissociation/Depersonalization

He woke up, and nothing else existed besides the plain day, with everything in it falling away. He got off his bed and stumbled toward the door, looking out and seeing whales flying in the distance. He returned to his bed and closed his eyes. *I am merely as much as I am, beyond which I am nothing,* he thought before heading out. There, outside, he looked around and visualized the world that was so full yet so limiting. He desired to be one with it, but each moment carried itself to the next unwittingly. In that sense did he stroll about, seeing gigantic trains taller than 10-story buildings and dogs walking about upside-down with their feet padding the air where their heads should be. He wondered if he could do a single thing, so he punched the air, which created a portal, before slipping inside.

He saw goblins upon goblins, and there was little else to perceive save for a mass of green, because he could not bear to look at the sun-pierced trees and how they seemed to glare at him and force his eyes to burn. It was a strange sensory response, but he maintained his pace and clattered along the road in front of him as the portal behind him dissipated into thin air.

He walked through what felt like distinct plump blob-like layers of air, and each created a swishing sound upon entering and exiting, creating the sense of "throbbing" through the air.

As he was traveling, his eyes happened upon a small assortment of red-tiled buildings with blue walls and rainbow festoons. Around it huddled hundreds of goblins, each with a blue flame streaking harmlessly from their left eye.

He skirted this phenomenon of a place and padded toward the absurdly large jungle trees bulking at the edge of his vision like domes of sand.

His brown-trousered, blue-jacketed, wooden-sandaled body with rumpled black hair waded through, the sun-speared tops of the forest around him contrasting its dark-green undersides, where grasses, ferns, and shrubs and other understory features flourished. Sweat dribbling down his face, as his nose twitched in a twist-like motion at the profusion of fragrances wafting past and against him. His skin prickled at each scrape against a passing vine.

He fell to his knees, imagining a protective sphere around him, the wind stopping on it. "Where am I?" he said. "I feel that I have lost my senses or sense of self.

"Hello?"


Scene (#36)
Word count: 1006
Genre: Existential Dark Fantasy, Psychological Fiction
Trigger warnings: Gun violence, graphic violence, suicidal ideation, self-harm

He aimed—his shot slammed into the wall. "I have nothing else to say," he said. "I am merely a person. Have nothing else but that. I really am only as much as I am."

He tilted his eyes to the right, an empty void of silence. He tilted his eyes to the left, the fluttering and singing of birds. A dam in his right ear where the roaring of a sky should have been.

He looked in the mirror—jagged teeth. Super sweet orange juice given to him during a week of fever without brushing teeth back in 2020.

"I am only as much as I am," he said, a grotesque smile festooning his face.

He fell into a world of goblins and adventurers.

He racked his Beretta's slide.

Above the ruck he would rise into the racking clouds.

He shot a green-gob, downing it. "I have desires and wishes and emotions. I am a human being. You, a callous dog incapable of premeditation, an awareness of one's decisions and what one is doing and why one is doing it. Can you blame a dog for its limitations? No. Same goes for you." The gobber lay jerking and screaming.

"Gobite, what you gonna do now? If I were in your position, I'd be alive for the first time—a face to face privilege with death and a true measure of one's capacity to be, at all, in this world of things. To be only as much as one is, whether by loss of hearing or by its void of silence, or by crooked teeth and the consequences of ignorant help. That is what it means to live."

He handed her a red potion, and once she drank it all and healed back to full health, he said, "Get it now? Stand up. I still have hopes for you. For you to become a human being, not a literal one, but a being capable of pre-thought. I wish only for you to be a person. I must give people a voice. I must bestow the honor and dignity of a person upon all of us. For I am only as much as I am."

He offered her clothes and all kinds of "personable" things. "Choose. Don't choose. Either way, everyone deserves a voice." He turned and left.

The goblin ran before she stopped midway, her feet that should have been treading away finding themselves skirting the puddles and mud along the way back to him.

"I am a person," he said as she came to his side. "You, an equal."

She wore a purple-yellow tunic out of a list of options, merely to display her personhood. After feeling it out with her hands, she then removed it, realizing her own was hers and that any foreign object would only prove difficult to intermarriage lest there was a collaborative compromise rather than one of imposition. So she wore her usual clothes, those from before he even came.

"Yes," she slurred, unable to speak human language yet. Then she repeated it in goblin language: "Komak."

"Good." He offered her a shake of the hand.

She slapped it away. "You deserve to die."

"I do," he said with a sincere tone, his face cracking briefly before re-summoning itself as his mouth moved clearly again: "I am only as much as I am."

She knitted her brows. "I will kill you."

"Do so. Whatever gives you your right to live. You deserve to be you, to be given agency." His voice cracked with the truth of the matter.

When he saw her struggling to speak, he looked up. *But come, look! The daring sky!* he thought.

She struck him. 

"Hehe. Hehaha-heha!" He loved the pain.

"Why're you like this?" she said in her goblin language.

"I am only as much as I am. Death is a thing of things." He got back on his feet, his hands trembling. "S-so, want to see what the world is like?" His expression was twitching between an absurd variety of emotions.

She gave an ugly grimace. "You... what is wrong with you?" she said in her native.

"I am merely—"

She slapped him. 

"I—"

She slapped him again. 

"You—"

She kicked him and beat him. "You despicable creature!" she said.

"Grah—"

She continued to rack him.

At the end of a hundred blows, he lay dull-eyed, jerking, and struggling to breathe.

She panted, her shoulders heaving. "W-what is it with you?" she asked in her native.

His eyes remained still, but his chest continued to go up and down.

After a long quiet, she said, "Get up. Go and get away. From me. From everything. Go die where I can't see." She strode away.

She came back the next day to see him near death.

She swore, suddenly jumping to his aid and starting the process of bringing him back to full health.

"Why?" she said. "Why're you like this!"

He stared at her, stone-faced, neutral, and letting her do whatever she wanted with him, without so much as a word.

"Please... kill me already." Tears dribbled down his face. "I know what I am. I should have died a long time ago. I'm sorry."

"W-what?" she said. "What the hell is happening?!"

He shook his head, wiping his tears. "S-sorry. I just wanted to do the right thing.

"Thank you."

She froze mid-wipe, her hands gripping steadily onto the rag she brought to clean him and prevent his wounds from "succulating."

"I..." She stood up and ran.

He laughed to himself, his voice bursting out throughout the forest, following her wherever she went. She covered her ears until it ended.

Eventually, he stood up, removing the rags. "I am only as much as I am." He dug his Beretta into his pocket and strode off toward the world.

"I will heal the weak and bring hope to the lost.

"I must do the right thing.

"Even if it means dying."

He melted between the trees, leaving the place, and she never tried to find him again.


Scene (#37)
Word count: 545
Genre: Cyberpunk, Psychological Fiction, Dystopian Slice of Life
Trigger warnings: Themes of mental anguish and despair, dissociation, existential ennui

She lodged the node into the system, watching the scudding Filipino chat messages in her circular monitor. After tossing her milk carton behind her into its dedicated pile, she got off her stool and whipped to the door, setting her left ear against it, hearing a clattering heading in her direction. She produced a ball from her pocket and opened it like one would with an apple—with both hands. It flashed blue, a holographic scanning projection enveloping her body, as she dissipated, re-appearing elsewhere in another tech-midden of a room.

She strode up to the window, sealing it against the racks of smoke outside before wafting the air into her nose with one cupped hand, sniffing it. Squinting, she thudded next to a large metallic chair with cables and wheels for legs. She closed her eyes as she brought the visor attached to the chair over her eyes, the black screen opening up into a digital world of blue background and white text.

After mentally clicking enter, the blue turned first into a blur of azure skies and crocodile-green grass, then resolved into a mosaic of naturalistic shades—a 3D hyperrealistic virtual world.

She stepped with her own toes and gripped the earth with her soles, feeling the friction and traction and the rubbing and scuffing against her feet, as if they would score and gall any moment now. Wading into the sunlight against the southerly breeze, she held up her hands and made a wide drawing motion, letting the air settle in her chest before exhaling just as slowly.

She swept the air with her hand, whizzing it all away—the clogging pain in her throat, the pulling tension in her rope of a spine. Replacing them were the cauliflower-like bursts, canyons, and billows of the clouded world.

A blob-like creature materialized in front of her. She smiled and, in her smock, offered it a flower. "How are you, Winnie207?" she said.

"SuperEvilZombee?" Winnie207 said, grabbing it with a slime-like tendril and mentally placing it in his inventory, which caused it to dematerialize with a small brief flash and rustle. "How's you?"

"Well, been a while hasnt it? How's Gobozer-Maiden?"

"Haha, still serious about that? I was just saying that."

She tilted down, pausing to play with the grasses with her hands. "I wanted to help you, you know."

"Yeah, so? What you on about?"

"No, sorry. Just... I don't know." Twitching, she dematerialized a blade of grass she picked up and turned back to him. "How've you been?"

"Fine, I said I was."

"You didn't."

"Or I mean that I am fine. I am, I am really."

"You sure?"

"Dunno. But enough that I can live. You know what it's like."

"I do, but that don't mean it's OK-OK, you know?"

"Well... I mean... we're all hanging out here. All of us."

"Yeah, but you know that's not what I mean."

"I do know what you mean, but you know?"

"I do."

"Really?"

"Yes."

"But seriously, what was that about? Why're you still asking me about it? I thought we agreed?"

"No we didn't."

"I mean no explicit say, but we did kinda."

"Yeah, in a way. But how've you been? Want to do anything?"

"Let's just walk as per."

"The usual? Sure."

"'Kay then."


Scene (#38)
Word count: 574
Genre: Literary Realism, Sociological Fiction, Urban Slice of Life
Trigger warnings: None

With a breath, she snipped the snag off her white sweater knitted with primary colors.

She clattered the green-handled scissors on the colorless folding table beside her. Sliding off the plastic stacking stool, she, with a blue pole, hooked down a yellow hanger with a torn shirt off an indoor clothesline. 

Passing by a stack of study papers, she laid the panda shirt flat on a sewing machine before starting. 

When she finished sewing, she paused mid-walk at a pronounced rustling of the trees outside. 

Her eyes travelled the olive walls and stopped at the jalousie window, where she leaned over on the second floor to see the mountainous clouds forming over her city.

She climbed down the narrow staircase with its thin but steep steps—where a large body meant an impasse.

On the first floor, she glanced around, stopping at her brother's room.

After staring at the household objects in the darkness, she strode up the ray of sunlight cleaving across the floor to its source, the windows, setting her head against them, her left hand leaning against the bare concrete walls.

After a look at a turn on the left corner of the house-strewn street, she padded to the kitchen-dining room.

Her feet found their way across the wallpaper-covered floor, where rubbing into certain parts would fold it upwards and she had to nudge it back down with her foot. 

Under the night light of a cord-strung low-hanging ceiling lightbulb, she sat at the table on a large, heavy, ornate wooden chair and rested her arms on the transparent plastic tablecloth, as a rooster's crow outside resounded through the walls.

Her gaze resting on the refrigerator, a door opened to her right, where someone's feet were shuffling.

Her brother had gotten up, his form peeking out the door. As he dragged the knob to a close, he gave the stuffed toy–covered mattress a look, watching the door banging frustratedly against its plump edge. With his foot, he nudged the mattress's bear-sewn cover off the door frame, kicking the tight-fitting bed inside. After the bed kept slumping back down, he held it up in place with his foot, making its edge curve inwards. He then gave the door one more pass, releasing his foot and pulling it shut quietly. 

He glanced around, then sighted her, squinting at her with his slight slouch. Slipping into the slippers beside his room door, he waded down a two-step staircase. It connected him directly to the kitchen-dining room. 

"What you doing?" he said, squinting sleepily. He stretched. "Why're you up so early?"

"Studying?" he answered for himself after seeing the papers on the table.

"Yeah."

"Subdivisions, main road, side roads, malls, businesses, restaurants, street stalls and stores, churches, plazas, and office buildings."

"I even wrote a description. Want me to read?"

"No." Grabbing a coffee maker, he slipped inside a pack and placed a mug under the dispenser. "Teka, what's it about? I'm bored. Go ahead."

"A highly urbanized place where poor and rich lived variably together, though not without nuance and contradiction in part due to the rapid installment of elevated highways and other transporation infrastructure, which formed dark and dense urban areas not only in business districts (the primary urban pocket of activity), but up to the edge of the region as well, and which subdivided wealthy life across the privileged spots of the cities in the region, in work, life, visit, stay, and play."


Scene (#39)
Word count: 1121
Genre: Psychological Fiction, Literary Realism, Coming-of-Age, Filipino Fiction, Grit Lit
Trigger warnings: Graphic Violence, Gun Violence, Depictions of Death, Mutilation, Body Horror

In the darkness, the rain slammed. A boy and his mother entered through a clanging gate with a large barrel bolt, and they padded down this narrow passage with canals on both sides. It led them to a white-lit bare concrete apartment front with jalousie windows. A chubby woman got down the one large step that connected the door to the cement ground, looked at them, and waved, telling them to enter. They joined her inside, encountering the two other members—another mother and son—who were there first. The other members came after. Once they arrived, they began their weekly prayer gathering. While the chubby woman was the one who lived here and allowed this place to be used as a venue, she was not the leader. Someone else, a woman with a ponytail, presided over it, a great speaker who spoke at district events and orchestrated meetings with heads across the denomination. She spoke as passionately tonight as she did in all the different venues, places, and events she had attended.

Devotional verses were shared, two being from Proverbs.

Their reading for today was the entire Proverbs Chapter 1, one for beginners rather than a culmination of having gone from Genesis to Psalm and then to Proverbs. But they already did the Five Books of Moses and The Gospels in previous sessions.

The first boy, being the youngest, could only watch and listen, but his eyes flickered and darted at just the right moments. His mother, being the leader, brought him everywhere she went, exposing him to everything.

After they ended with a prayer, the boy and his mother went home, riding a jeepney across the main road under the orange lights. They dropped after his mother told the driver something along the lines of "Pakitabi po sa kanto."

They went home, and in the living room, the boy booted up the family computer since he had spent the entire day outside, using his two-hour turn now. He opened up Roblox Studio and resumed making a soldier that could repair buildings, typing the code he assembled from many other scripts and objects called "models". Afterwards, he saved his progress by saving the game itself, or "place" in Roblox terms, rewriting the local file. He went local for two reasons. One, the engine took a long time when saving it online, and it tended to crash a lot in the process. Two, the auto-saving did not produce consistent results, often overlooking tiny changes he made. By saving it locally, he could do it instantly with a keyboard shortcut and not lose any progress. Then he could save it online only after enough small updates had accumulated to form what felt like a new version of the game, which looked like an up-tick from "0.0.1" to "0.0.2" in the title next to the place name. The slow internet and the bugginess of Roblox Studio explained this reliance on local file storage and his long family history with data loss. He could not watch Twitch even at the lowest settings, so Youtube videos set at "360p" resolution were normal to him. 

After an hour and a half, he got too sleepy. So he lay down on one of the mats arranged on the marble-imitating ceramic tiled floor, scooting next to his mother and brothers, and he fell asleep, leaving the soldier's building repairing code unfinished for his tomorrow self to pick again, as per usual. 

Tomorrow, he woke up to food on the table and someone taking a shower. It was Sunday, and the whole family was preparing for church. While Sunday was church and "computer shop" day, Saturdays were for prayer meetings, and the rest of the week were for morning devotionals.

The service started with the key passage Ecclesiastes 3: 1 - 9. It showed in a slideshow on a screen on a white left wall through a projector. Beside the projector was a laptop and a seated woman with her finger over the arrow keys, which she pressed to switch between slides. Each slide showed a portion of the passage. 

As soon as the service ended, a large pot of arroz caldo waited for the attendees, and everyone ate.

Afterwards, three brothers, including the first boy, went up to their mother and asked if they could go to the "computer shop," or internet cafe.

She handed them 20 pesos each to play 2 hours. The brothers joined 4 other friends, and they went past the open black church gates.

After exiting their subdivision, they headed to the *kanto* again and walked along the sidewalk to an unairconditioned computer shop at the end of a staircase and an exterior corridor. Inside, at least 10 people around their age were playing.

They paid, booted up, and played League of Legends, Crossfire, and Minecraft.

Afterwards, they walked home.

Some days later, the boy rode a L300 as the church went on a trip to a sports fest, bringing water containers and all kinds of equipment. Food was shared liberally throughout the journey there.

When they arrived, the boy scanned his environment, but he could only stare even as he maintained a walking pace with the rest of his church group, which included his mother and older half-sister.

A few clouds drifted overhead across the glaring blue sky, leaving no billows or oranges or reds.

The stickiness of sweat made him clammy.

He sat on the grass beside his church friends and the things they brought, watching a concrete volleyball court with players from his church and those from another church. It was surrounded by a connected field of undulating grass that stretched up to the VCT-floored, concrete-paved venue buildings a distance away. 

It was a lovely, gusty morning for the people here: some exercise, communal food, and time spent meditating on a life free from society's expectations and responsibilities. For a moment, this was all there was, and to the boy, being too young to understand the stressors and potential trauma accompanying adulthood, it really was all there was.

Even then, his eyes continued to flicker at just the right beats of the sermons, group prayers, and in-group discussions between his church members, never missing one. It was all there was, and that allowed him to see everything.

That same flickering occurred thirteen years later in a room with a strange scent.

The scent of death wafted over the floor, as emasculated bodies were tumbled all over it. 

He shot.

The whistle of a breath. The singular mishmash of thoughts lodged and dislodged in his brain.

He could only fester it for so long.

He shot.

The blanks.

The rageful silences that followed the echoes. They revealed the presence of a figure.

A person.


Scene (#40)
Word count: 390
Genre: Literary Realism, Coming-of-Age, Philosophical Fiction
Trigger warnings: None

Emmanuel took a long sip from his soft drink bottle as he said in a gravelly, thick moneyed Englishero accent: "Aye, I'm afraid that's just life when you happen to be born female." 

"Yeah, but why, why does life have to be this way?" the child with a cotton shirt and denim pants, Shyla said in her native English. 

*13 years old, still having a tough time transitioning from home schooling, and looking for any advice from anyone willing to listen,* he thought, rubbing his soft graphic t-shirt against his mouth. *Reminds me of myself.*

Shyla was sitting next to Emmanuel and another man, both in their later twenties, at around 8 PM in a campus being used as a venue for a three-day Christian conference all three were attending.

"It simply is," said Emmanuel, raising his arms and lacing his fingers behind his head, setting one hairy leg over the other, his double-knit polyester shorts absorbing the friction. "People are afraid of taking accountability. They would rather pretend it all away, even if it means engaging in socially acceptable 'cruelty'."

"Seriously?" Shyla said, eying the other man, Gil, who looked about to speak. 

"I wouldn't say that," Gil said in an essay English–taught accent, lifting his hips before squeezing himself back against his seat. He wore dark-gray denim pants and a lighter gray non-plaid flannel shirt.

Emmanuel showed no tension or offense.

"It isn't an 'it is what it is' situation," Gil continued, spreading his legs apart and resting his hands on the edge of his stool. "Change is possible. Everyone has a choice, and their decision to let such things happen is a choice. Perhaps, they have reasons, but I would still say that people have a choice." 

Eventually the conversation ended, and Shyla returned to her room, checking her bag inside. She fetched her phone from underneath a pile of clothes that were just folded a day ago: one plaid flannel, one hoodie for the Baguio cold but also in case she ran out, and three different synthetic t-shirts. Her phone was a 2,299-peso Cherry Mobile Topaz, and, along with it, she took out wired earphones to listen to Christian songs: multiple grainy-quality Planetshakers songs like the classic *The Anthem* and one Chris Tomlin song *How Great Is Our God*.

She then listened as she fell asleep.


Scene (#41)
Word count: 388
Genre: Social Realism, Coming-of-Age, Slice of Life
Trigger warnings: None

"Wow, you have Cowhead?" Loren said.

"W-what? Why?" said his cousin Tianna. They stood in the kitchen in a large house, with its exotic plethora of scents.

"I've never drank Cowhead before."

"What do you mean? I've seen you drinking milk."

"But that's powder. We've never bought Cowhead."

"Okkaay. Well, wanna go check ATC?"

"OK. Are your friends coming?"

"Teresa and Rachel? Yeah. But let's just wait for our driver. He's still bringing my mom. Wanna order pizza first?"

"You can just order pizza?"

"Yeah, whhy?"

"We've never done that."

Later, Loren tripped and dropped the popcorn bowl as he entered the console room.

When he got on his knees and started picking each popcorn up by hand, Tianna glanced at her older brother, Aron, who was already knitting his brows.

"Just let the maid do it," Aron said frustratedly.

Loren misunderstood and thought Aron wanted him to work faster.

Aron repeated himself with more anger.

Loren nodded and stood up, watching awkwardly as the older maid entered the room and Tianna continued playing with the Xbox console controller in silence.

Loren excitedly played each new console game right before they had to leave, whereas Tianna smiled knowing she had someone to play with.

As soon as the driver brought them to ATC, Loren bit his lip every time he heard Tianna swore in English with Rachel, but he loved being in a rich mall. Tianna spent the 1000 pesos she was given for today liberally, buying Loren some random expensive candy.

When they returned to Tianna's house, Loren passed by Tianna's older sister's room, seeing a book inside. *Wow cool book!* he thought, getting Tianna's permission to look at the book. It was Rick Yancey's *The 5th Wave*, and its cover was so "high-tech." When he scanned the room, he was in awe at how personalized it was, only seeing this in CDs and the cinema. 

After getting back to Tianna, he asked her if they could swim, but she told him he didn't want to. He then pressured her, to which she said that she could stay at the shaded table next to the pool and watch him swim.

As he swam, she told him about that one time that Aron jumped off the balcony in front of his friends into the pool as a stunt.


Scene (#42)
Word count: 403
Genre: Slice of Life, Coming-of-Age, Christian Fiction
Trigger warnings: None

Fernando snapped the shorts once, hard. The creased legs flew open.

A light drizzle trickled down bands of leaves overhead, faintly tapping him.

He and several others entered their room in slippers with towels, toiletries, and old clothes, shower water dribbling down their bodies.

After placing the shorts and other items inside his bag, he changed clothes and left his room, hurrying across campus. He went down 5 resin-bound gravel steps and then angled his guitar past the double doors of the chapel as the assigned praise and worship team were making their first testing sounds. *God, please help me not be afraid,* he thought.

He put down his bag, took out his guitar from its case, and strummed alongside them on the left front pew, following the acoustic guitarist's chords. 

On the stage were 6 people. 

The lead guitarist confidently shifted his weight from one leg to the other, nodding to the beat as he plucked and picked the strings. 

The lead singer to his left, who was holding the mic with a phone on her other hand, waited for the musicians to set up. 

The pianist to her left held sustained chords as ambience. 

The bald acoustic guitarist in front of the singer glanced at seven district camp attendees chuckling outside and three on one of the back pews. His gaze rested on the other musicians from behind his thick-rimmed glasses, his head leaning over the music sheet with its chords and lyrics. 

The eyes of the bassist behind the lead guitarist, drifted boredly about. 

The drummer to his right rested her drumstick-holding forearms on her hips.

After the drummer's failed attempt at mouthing a question and getting an answer from Fernando, she motioned him to his side. She then asked, "Are you going to sing? Or do you want to play guitar?"

Fernando shook his head. "I'll play guitar."

"You don't want to sing?" the drummer, Princess said. "You said you wanted to when we practiced?"

"I do, but I'm still new."

"OK, let's start," interjected the acoustic guitarist, initiating a nod with the others.

The lead guitarist plugged in Fernando's Christmas-gifted acoustic guitar and had him get on stage next to the bassist.

Forty-five minutes later, the pews were filled with chattering and rustling attendees, some using the large electric fans to dry their damp or wet hair, and the stage was empty. The service was about to start.


Scene (#43)
Word count: 776
Genre: Psychological Drama, Coming-of-Age, Slice of Life
Trigger warnings: None

"The thing is that it doesn't really matter, does it?" Elijah said. "We've seen what it's like. It's all fucked."

"Real," Faith said.

They walked toward the trophy. Elijah snickered, grabbing it and lifting it up. Then after a long cheer from the crowd, he lowered it and handed it to Faith. "Now, go, you deserve this too."

Faith tried to smirk, raising and shouting.

Elijah walked away, leaving Faith and the rest of the team on stage.

When the cheering finally died down and the team returned to their building, Faith went to Elijah's door and asked, "Elijah, why aren't you with the rest?"

Twiddling his team-issued gaming keyboard, Elijah laughed and said, "Why're you asking? You know me."

"What do you mean?" Faith said, walking inside. "Tell me."

"I've seen what this world has to offer, and... it ain't for me," Elijah said.

"What? What are you saying? Is this something serious? Should I call anyone? Your mom?"

"Haha, no, no. That's not it. I'm just changing is all. We all do. But yeah, Faith, that's my question. What are you up to? What are you going to do next? Now that we've won back-to-back. What is your next step?"

Faith froze.
 
"I don't need any of this. At least not anymore. So what? What's next? What's on your mind? Tell me Faith."

Faith apologized and stumbled out of the room, returning to hers. *You're the one who inspired me and recommended my name to this tier 1 team after we played together in the tier 4 league years ago,* she thought. *Why're you like this!*

"Dad," she called on Messenger.

"Anak, how are you?"

"I'm going home."

"Yeah, you told me. Why? Is anything wrong?"

"I-I don't know. I'll tell you later."

Two weeks later, Faith saw it—some random user's post of Elijah's quitting rumor that got many likes.

If this was before, she wouldn't feel anything as usual, having seen these kinds of rumors many times. But now, she slammed the keys on her pseudonymous account: "The fuck is wrong with you! Disgusting piece of shit!"

After she did some laundry for her father, she grabbed her phone again, went to his name, and called. 

"Eli," she said. "Can you talk to me?"

His voice laughed into her right ear. "Well... sure. I don't really care anymore. But if you want to talk, that's fine. I'm sorry for dealing with things this way. But I personally can't do it anymore—"

"What are you saying? I didn't even say anything. Let's talk! Go to..."

When she arrived, he was waiting for her, waving with his same grin.

"Eli, the fuck," she whispered, sitting down.

"What?" he said, genuinely surprised before he looked at her being all dressed up and chuckled to himself. "I ordered your drink, and there's also the salmon dill."

"OK, but that's not what I'm here."

"What do you mean? You don't want food."

"No, I want to talk. How're you? Anything going on?"

"Haha, what do you mean? You're asking me this. Seriously? You've never been this..."

"Yeah, what?"

"I don't know. Actually, I should be the one saying sorry. But yeah, I'm doing alright. Nothing happened."

"Nothing? I heard you were going to quit the team."

"No, I'm not. I am not. Why?"

"I saw."

"Saw what? Another rumor. Come on, Faith, you're better than this. I told you months ago that they were just rumors."

"Yeah, things are different now."

"What's different?"

"W-wha? W-what you said after we won?"

"Yeah, what about it?"

"Are you serious? You're pretending this ain't serious?"

"I mean, I was just a little emotional, sorry 'bout that."

"You gotta be joking with me."

"I was. Or I mean, I was serious—"

"Anyway, the food's here," she interrupted him, placing her bag down and striding to the counter, saying thank you with a polite nod and walk before heading back.

"What?"

"What do you mean 'what'?"

"I mean, I've never seen you this..."

"This what? Say it."

"No..."

She sighed. "Sorry."

He raised his brows. "Seriously, what's going on with you lately?"

"I mean, I'm scared OK. I don't want you leaving, OK?"

"Of course not. I don't want to..." His head started making a tight, shuddering "no" shake. 

"You... don't deserve that," he said with a deep compassionate twinge in his voice. He then cleared his throat and looked out, covering his mouth as he grabbed his utensils again before sipping from his ice-blended coffee.

She compressed her lips, looking at the salmon dill on the plate in front of her, letting him regain his composure, her lower lip trembling with empathy.


Scene (#44)
Word count: 346
Genre: Political Drama, Military Fiction, Fantasy
Trigger warnings: None

In a pavilion, fifty-two men huddled along the sides of five tables. Its open sides gave way to a bank to the east, a road north, and vast fields to the west.

In his clanking, thumping cuirass, Metelton jabbed his finger into the air. "Here is the matter, my friend. I have obtained all the equites necessary, so this shall all proceed efficaciously. Now, come. Let us take down this goliath."

Hogarth slammed the table, hissing, "I don't like it."

Prince Richard IV gave his aide-de-camp a soft raise of the hand, drawing a nod from him. "Heavens! Have you no patience?" Richard said. "Let us take what each of us has already proposed and locate a throughline between them that we might accomplish this operation without any hiccups." He then carefully eyed the four leaders each occupying a table: Metelton, Hogarth, Royce, and Jude. "Any argument or debate would better be majority-decided, and if there be any briberies or indecision, this plan will not succeed. We need to finish this together, so that we can get out of this unscathed." 

Hogarth noticed Richard glancing at him. 

Richard continued, "I wouldn't like another repeat of the coup that my father himself sacrificed his life to reveal."

Before Metelton and Hogarth could react, Jude raised his arms and turned all around, bringing everyone's attention to him. "Nevertheless, I am of the conviction that Hogarth should be the one leading. He has proven through his achievements at Fort Calluss that he is of the requisite competence to spearhead the Aspen front."

Richard paused before his eyes settled on Royce. He prompted him to speak.

Royce rubbed his collar before puffing his chest and cocking his head at the other leaders. "I think that we should head home for now. It is getting late."

Hogarth eyed Metelton, who eyed Richard, who eyed his aide-de-camp, who eyed Jude.

"Royce," Jude said, "what have you been doing this last...52 days?"

"Hmm?" Royce stopped and cleared his throat. "Why?"

"Royce, you've been harboring enemies of the state, have you not?"

Royce froze.


Scene (#45)
Word count: 295
Genre: Dark Fantasy, Horror
Trigger warnings: Violence, Torture, Creature Cruelty

"Goblin works with you. It reveals itself. But you must strike it right. Goblin does not resent the blade. It is not being violated. Its nature is to change. Each goblin has its own character. It must be understood. Handle it carefully, or it will shatter. Never let goblin destroy itself.

"Goblin gives itself to skill and to love."

The protégé struck the goblin, its blood streaking into the air.

"Carefully. It will shatter."

The protégé struck it again, drawing a nose bleed.

"Good job. But tone it down a little more."

The goblin screeched.

"OK, forgot to do this." The mentor cast a spell that caused his hand to let out a burst of blue flame, slamming his hand onto the goblin's mouth. He then released it inside.

When the goblin tried to screech again, it couldn't.

"There," the mentor said. "Now, go again."

The striking continued.

By the end, the mentor clapped his hands. "Good job. That was 15 strikes this time. Try to increase this next time. Shattering is a no-no."

"OK, now, let's try." Green flames burst from both the mentor's hands, and he injected them into the goblin.

The goblin gradually stood up, standing languidly before falling back down.

"See, we need at least 20 for this to work."

When the protégé finally got 20, the mentor shouted, "Alright! Now, let's see how it goes." 

The mentor ordered the goblin to start walking forward.

"Great, great."

It kept walking, but it started to stumble.

"Uh-oh!"

It fell back down.

"Well, that's right about how long it takes to fall at 20. Now, let's do 30 next time, okay?"

The protégé nodded silently.

He turned around toward the hundreds of his mentor's "raised" goblins dawdling about as the two started home.


Scene (#46)
Word count: 554
Genre: Slice of Life, Psychological Drama, Coming-of-Age
Trigger warnings: Themes of Childhood Neglect

"By the time that I've got this over with," Candy said, "we can have a few ice creams. But you can't eat it all too fast. And brush teeth right after." 

"OK Mama," Minnie said, hugging her pink school bag, sitting beside Candy, taking the bus window seat.

Holding a phone horizontally, Candy turned to her friend, who was on another seat. "I'd want to have it all completed by this Tuesday. How about you Johnny?"

Johnny chuckled, holding a phone too, sound effects rattling from it. "Me too. But yeah, if we're going to get this done, you're going to have to sell the token already. It's gonna be expense-pensive!"

Candy chortled, bumping into Minnie as the bus started down the road. "Das true."

Minnie kept her posture straight, her upper back against the seat, leaning away from her mother's moving elbow.

"Any manner," she said as soon as the bus came to a stop. "See you tom." She and Minnie went down, leaving Johnny on the bus.

"Right, keep the tokens till we meet. I should Mishack on board as well. He said he wanted to try."

The bus rolled away.

Candy handed Minnie her phone when they returned home.

As she started cleaning up the kitchen, she glanced at Minnie's phone while passing. "Min, don't watch that!"

Minnie was staring at a man with a horse mask dancing vertically.

"What is this?"

Minnie gazed in silence.

"OK, it's not bad. You can watch. Just make sure you don't watch anything bad, OK?"

Minnie nodded.

"OK, I'll be fetching Isaiah. Go to Dad if you need anything."

Another nod.

"Any manner..." She let the screen door screech shut.

Dad sat down at the PC upstairs, playing older text RPGs.

She went to him and watched him.

"Want anything?" he said.

"I want chicken."

"OK. I'll buy."

She stood there.

"Why? Anything else?"

She stared for a moment. 

"No."

She went downstairs and walked outside, seeing the other street kids playing from her porch from behind the gate and walls and listening with a squint.

The phone returned in front of her.

When Candy returned home by nighttime, she heard her laughing, but when she came through the gate to look at her, Minnie sat down expressionless, her eyes glued to the phone.

"What were you watching?" she asked with an amused half-smile.

Minnie compressed her lips. "Robulux."

"Oh, OK, OK." She patted Minnie before heading inside. 

Isaiah appeared at the gate, carrying his bag, sweaty and tramping. "Min, how are you?"

Min tried to smile.

"I have pasalubong. You want?"

Min twiddled with her fingers and rotated her torso around. "What is it?"

"Hamburger! Like that?"

"Yes!"

"OK, how about going to the mall tomorrow morning? Like that."

She gave several ponderous nods. "Will Ate Jen be coming?"

"Oh, she will, but she won't be there until 3 PM. Is that OK?"

The same nods.

"OK then. Do you need anything?"

She shook her head. 

"Hmm... How about this? I ask if Jen's brother can come? How 'bout that?"

She nodded, though with a vague expression. 

"OK then," Isaiah said. "Good night."

He collapsed as soon as he went inside his room.

The next day, Minnie got up early, watching Isaiah head inside the shower from on top of the couch armrest.


Scene (#47)
Word count: 511
Genre: Psychological Drama, Experimental Fiction, Stream of Consciousness
Trigger warnings: Depictions of Mental Health Crisis, Dissociation

So I looked round and danced till my body twinged, and I lay down for hours, and when I woke up, I was already making my way upstairs and turning on the computer. And I went to search "youtube" and pressed the first video in the recommended, and it was a playlist of rock music, and it danced in my ear so good, and I was standing and dancing across the room and my mouth was shut tight. I slapped the walls, and my feet jerked, and my hands scooted up and down till I was frowning and already facing the ground. Then I lay down, and when the moon was up, I went out and dashed under the rain, and went barefoot.

I ran my bony fingers against the barks of trees, and I embraced one of them and ran as soon as a person saw me, and I went down the road toward the distant peaks, rolling ridges, villas, trees, stone terraces, planted vineyards, and olive orchards, and then I stopped at a small vase where I cocked my ear, and when it stayed quiet, I started back to my house.

And then I slept and upon waking padded down the road and darted my eyes at the trees and the windows and met eye to eye with several tight-laced girls with colorful coverings on their hair, billowing long-sleeved gowns, and high-crowned hats. And I waved and my gaze was affixed. Then the traffic beeped loudly, and my view of them was obstructed so I left down the road and sat down in front of a stall and watched the street-goers and tried to wave at one of them. But their faces were still, and their gazes piercing.

And when I went home and wore clothes after trying out different colors, and I scudded in front of Kabayan Hotel but I was shooed away by a man dressed like a nutcracker, and I headed in front of a *municipio* and when I found a blue-uniformed woman, asked if they had a car that I could use. But they told me no and shoved me when I came closer. So I ran home and watched the Eurasian tree sparrow on the resin-bound gravel in my garage and took a picture with my phone and when it flew away, I climbed to the second floor balcony and took a photo of it in the branches of the tree planted in the dirt of my neighbor and hung from the railing to get a better look and then pulled myself back.

With the photos, I posted them on Facebook and wrote down the specific positions of the birds in proportion to the rest of the tree in the caption and when no one liked or commented, I searched "post likes and comments", but I then knitted my brows at the search results and put down my phone and pattered to the bathroom, where I murmured the lyrics of Radiohead's *Everything In Its Right Place* and my voice echoed against the tiled walls. 


Scene (#48)
Word count: 400
Genre: Manila Noir, Street-Level Crime Drama
Content Warnings: Violence, Grief & Trauma, Untranslated Dialogue

Fiolo closed his fingers around a short-barreled H&K machine-pistol. He then wore his sando over his sweat-stained body, and, with a grunt of effort, he got on a motorcycle, turning it on. 

It made a two-stroke whine before roaring forward.

Passing some yips and throaty woofs, he travelled along the pitted concrete of the busy main road. Beside him, the rust and paint-bare patches of the weathered metal sides of the trucks whooshed by. 

After entering through a toll gate, he turned off down a junction, zooming through water-trailed Maganda Street.

After making several turns, he slowed to a halt in front of a neglected house. Getting off, he stepped over flecks of granite and scuffed in his slippers toward the house. He saw the hibiscus growing in front. 

Tramping past the dirt smudges trailing down the window ledge to the door, he squeezed and twisted the knob gently and pressed inside.

Inside was a midden room with several feather-plumed chairs, various household items, and a man tearing cloth. After wrapping it around his bleeding arm, he lifted his gaze at Fiolo.

Fiolo walked past him, heading down the hallway leading further inside.

Climbing down a few steps, he reached a closed room, his slapping slippers stopping at the door. From here, he opened and saw a starched-shirted woman in a wheelchair inside.

"Saan ka nanaman pumunta—" she asked, making a sharp gasp of pain before coughing again.

"Nangyari sa inyo ate? Kala ko OK na kayo ni Vicki? Sinabi diba nila na ngayon na lang yung payment? Bakit ini-istorbo ka?"

"Ewan ko."

"Porket nakakuha ng gobernment permit, hindi na marunong rumespeto."

"Eh, wag mo naman... Anong gagawin mo?"

"Papatayin ko. Simple lang."

"Eh? Seryoso ka? Alam mo nang anong nangyari kay Sotto. Bakit naman nating uulitin."

"Anong gusto mong gawin ko? Intayan nalang nating mawala sila? Babalik yan, alam mo yon."

"Eh, anong gusto mo? Tangallin na natin lahat, wag lang ang buhay. Nakaka-irita makita na ganun din gagawin mo. Pinatay na nila ang kapatid mo, tapos ipaggagawa mo naman ulit. Patayan na naman. Alam bang gaano kapagod yun?"

"Kahit ano nalang. Yan ba ang gusto mo?"

"Syempre hindi! Ano bang kala mo sakin! Natural na ayaw ko ang ginagawa nila! Tagalang gusto kong ikulong sila! Pero anong ine-ekspek mo! Gusto mo nalang patay na tayo bukas? O gusto mo na pocus nalang tayo sa kung anong kaya natin?"


Scene (#49)
Word count: 430
Genre: Filipino Slice-of-Life, Provincial Realism
Trigger warnings: None

Mounted on a ladder made of slender tree stalks, Bia jumped one meter down to the ground, dropping beside a surrounding welter of logs and rocks. She immediately traipsed toward a shack 200 meters away. 

From a desk inside it, she grabbed a green broadcloth polo shirt, disrobed, and wore it, padding down the packed earth road to a waiting truck a kilometer away. After taking a look at the rust-edged red corrugated metal sides, she pulled herself into the passenger seat, setting her head beside the grain-textured window with white strokes. 

As the driver climbed to his seat and started the engine, she turned right toward the mosaics of shades of green lying on top of the distant marches. They started moving.

The shack in the side mirror gradually shrunk to a dot. The truck plunged through the deep green of the forest and then out across watery marshes. Suddenly she heard the wheels echo hollowly on a bridge and before her appeared the quiet waters of the Pampanga River.

A cherishable smile played on her lips, and she rested back against the seat, the wind soaring beside her outside her window, and the world singing to her in the form of the trees and the rush of the river. *Kahit ganito nalang,* she thought. 

As soon as the truck drew up beside a church on the edge of the city, Bia settled past concrete posts and in front of the double doors, reciprocating the waving of the children playing patintero along a nearby byway.

She sat down on a bench in front.

Some minutes later, a damp-haired church member with a t-shirt and white-lined gray-blue PE trousers, Joy marched from outside the gate into the church, calling for someone else inside.

She later went out, carrying Sunday school supplies in a large plastic box with a branded sticker.

"Anong 'yari kay Popoy?" Bia said.

"Ewan ko," Joy said. "Kala ko ikaw may alam."

"Eh, bat naman ako ang pinaghuhusgahan dito. Kala ko kayo yung may alam kung anong nangyari sa kanya kahapon."

"Pumunta daw siya sa Robinson's, pero hindi na nakabalik. Sinabi mama niya."

"Hmm, parang nag-komputer shop siya. Patanong naman kung may itlog mama niya."

"OK. Nangyari sa boat projekt mo?"

"Hindi na tumuloy."

"Bakit?"

"Siya kasi eh. Sinabi na pwede daw tayo mag-una, pero ewan ko. May nagsisigarilyo daw, tapos hindi nalang daw ipapafirst yung huling group dahil don."

"Eh? Di ko gets."

"I-eksplain ko nalang mamaya." Bia got up as more members came inside. 

Pastor Rovi was laughing already with some of the church members.


Scene (#50)
Word count: 437
Genre: Political Fantasy, Military Fantasy
Trigger warnings: None

Along a long road, hundreds of men and women stood erect.

In front of them was a platform slab levitating over the marsh and overlooking the crowd.

On it, in his swishing, soughing dress coat, Matthew's eyes swept over the crowd, his hands resting on his hips. The longer he looked, the more intensely his smile reached his eyes. "Let us begin our last discussion of the plan."

He began thudding around the platform. "Now, I understand that you all have had your concerns over the recent transition of leadership, particularly that of Maestro and me. But I assure you that any and all previous discussions of the plan remain relevant as I attended and played an essential role in its progression up to the final drafts, being one of Maestro's closer adjutants." 

As he spoke, drafts that blew along the road rattled the gowns and shirts of the listeners.

"With that said, I will be—as Maestro intended—continuing with the three-part course of who gets nominated, which will be *naturally* spearheaded by Maestro's original three-person committee, Saes, Elfuria, and Millfruen."

Cheers erupted across the crowd.

As soon as Matthew finished his pronouncements, his adjutant, Alfleck sought his coming to the tent. 

"What is it?" Matthew said very softly as he stepped inside, inclining his head down under the drapes. He saw first the dress coats and knee breeches below breast height and lifted his head to see the four generals. 

Hosemite, the first, nodded ponderously with an amused expression, his hands slipping to his sides. Mercant narrowed his eyes briefly as he looked toward the sound of the soldiers walking outside. Urfrick eyed Hosemite with a slight raise of the lip corners before his crow's feet crinkled. And the last, Almon laced his fingers together and gave a bow.

Matthew gave a still-eyed smile. "OK, what do we got?" he said in a muffled voice, glancing aside as he twiddled with his hands at waist height.

"Haver, 3 and a half leagues north, it's already a blast," Hosemite said with a playful smirk across his afce.

"Do we got any more? I'm tired of good news." Matthew chuckled sheepishly, still twirling his fingers.

Urfrick shot his hand out suddenly, showing Matthew and the others a metallic ball with a soft flickering glow.

"We have it," said Hosemite.

"Marvelous," said Matthew. "Do you know what we should do with it? Also, why here?"

"Mages said it was safe. They already contained the magic."

"Hidden magic exists."

"Yes, yes, I recognize that."

"Regardless, put it away."

Matthew sent for one of his adjutants and had him take it away.


Scene (#51)
Word count: 383
Genre: Isekai, Military Fantasy, Sci-Fi Fantasy
Trigger warnings: None

Chapter 1

Arriving in Utantu very early in the wet season, goblin Rhine passed lance-shaped leaves, daisy-like flower heads on stalks, and orange trumpet-shaped flowers.

It was when he was circling the herbs and rubbing them that he caught a figure in the corner of his right eye.

The figure—a human—jabbed his finger into the air. "You... You... The fuck!"

Rhine stared at him, rubbing his chin. "Eh?" 

Chapter 2

Julius heard the faint sounds above, but little appeared save for that same rhythmic beat. He attempted to word things and assemble them like one would do with pulse-rifles, but his mouth ran empty. And the tears that came into his eyes dripped and plopped. He broke into a coughing fit, swallowing down a Astrosurfer-sized lump, his face crumpling, the wrinkles of his face portals to the abyss. He choked, rubbing his throat, a fullness threatening to burst his lips. 

Last night, he was Julius Osmosis, an up-and-coming senior officer in the 54th Blackstar Regiment and on his way to becoming one of the first 10,000 humans to step foot in a galaxy a million light years from Earth. 

He had just been lying in his quarters a little later than usual—not enough to invite any karmic correction. 

But upon waking up, he found himself on the green grass of what looked like a pre-WW1 Earth, under a purple sky instead of the blue he had seen in the picture books as a child.

And now, he was staring at something he could not comprehend—a green, ugly thing that came straight from the stories of the 20th and 21st century. 

Goblin.

He strode up with a fist raised at breast height and threw it. 

The goblin weaved away.

He cursed and threw again, using two fists this time.

The goblin swept left and right and, once Julius tried a sweeping attack, backward.

"Damn it!" Julius said, panting.

His eyes darting where the goblin would go next, he charged. "Come 'ere Ostroloid!"

The goblin snickered, holding a green pulsing flame-like energy over his raised palm.

Julius grabbed a rock and aimed. 

The goblin clasped his hands together, squeezing the flame before pinching opposite ends and stretching it out, forming a circular magic shield.

Paling for a moment. Julius clicked his tongue and stormed off.


Scene (#52)
Word count: 411
Genre: Psychological Thriller, Urban Fantasy, Isekai
Trigger warnings: Gun violence, murder, character death, depiction of depression and suicidal ideation.

He thumped her head against his cobalt-blue fleece jacket sleeve. "I..." His face crumpled as his voice creaked out.

Angela looked up from her chair. "Don't... You'll do it again." 

She brushed herself off him and got up and out.

He set his hands over his eyes. "Thank you."

Later, at the park, his shadow fell across the water.

He smiled. "I'm just like my father."

He sat down and smiled at a passing child hand-held by her mother before taking a long breath of silence. "I can't hold anything."

He chuckled, holding a phone he had turned on and left on the home screen to mask the reason for his laughter. "Everyone goes away."

His head tilted to his hands. "And I..."

For a moment, he looked up and saw something.

Then, he looked down again.

"Excuses? I don't need that." He got up and walked home, clutching his hands to hide the jitter.

He fell on his couch, turning on his phone and scrolling to his favorite video creators. He chuckled as the slanting rays outside his window slowly left and the room around him grew dimmer.

He stood up, staring at the mirror. He held up his hand, rotating it around like a video game character at the customization screen.

"Haha... Looks like I really am what I am." His hands jittered.

He opened the drawer and grabbed his heart from inside, slipping it inside his pocket.

His hands dug in, he walked across his apartment and jostled outside. 

He went to the crowds in the city and their grand lights. He bit his lip, eyes flickering, lower lip trembling.

"I am what they say I am."

The half-broken street lamp jittered one last time.

He smiled wryly.

The aircon unit drip threatened to drop.

He brought out his his silenced 9mm automatic pistol. Three shots, fired from a three meter range. The lanky man in front of him sunk forward and slammed against the concrete, lifeless.

He rotated his gripping hand across the world.

A truck slammed him, killing him instantly.

He woke up. The green earth searched for him, opening him up and turning him against the rest of the forest, absorbing him and filling him with the entirety of a world.

He saw around him a place that wasn't grimy urban. It was a wilderness instead.

"W-where am I?" he said, checking his hand. 

Empty.

He looked around and saw birds flying. "W-what is this?"


Scene (#53)
Word count: 1137
Genre: Modernist Isekai, Experimental Fiction, Psychological Fantasy
Style: Defamiliarization
Trigger warnings: Graphic Description of Animal Butchery, Existential Dread, Depersonalization/Derealization

It was almost always quiet, and there was not a single time that I felt that I could really tear into it something that could grant me something that could really throw things out of proportion for my benefit. Never was it that so easy. Every single time that it came, it never did. Always a dream mixed with all the complications of it. Only for all of it just to break apart and turn into another sequence of surrealist scenes.

That was how I came to the particular point where my mind intersected so easily and it came so quickly and I never really had anything else but that, because whatever else that I had just dissipated like the rest of everything that I've known and trusted and then realized the futility of. That was how easily it all slid down and how quickly it all drifted apart.

It began something like that, so when I got up this morning, I got up with the weight of a thousand years, but really, I didn't feel anything. In my chest was a cold thing that beat so coldly against the wind and the horizon chaffing at it. And nothing, neither erosion or anger, could ever make it into something that it wasn't. And that was all it truly needed, because wherever else I could have taken it disappeared with the rest of them. This was a perfectly syrupy thought and so perfectly arranged.

That was how I came to be and how the morning started to make its sounds and how it started to feel more than just a string of events and start to feel like something fundamentally unstable, something that had to be checked and balanced around common images and concepts for it not to feel like stooping at the water's edge. It is a terrifying thing to see myself scrambling up the bank toward my house and to see my hands scuffing across the squelching mud. I am afraid of the lacerations, the sun burnings, and the crustiness and the split lips and the red eyes and the bruises of exhaustion. I am afraid of feeling my body flit apart.

That was how I came to be.

So yeah, what you want me to do, I can't do. I can only stare.

That was why I was so still when I came to this new world. The sky, the azure-blue hateful sky, the goblins, and the jungle trees. Things of that nature. That was spectacular-like.

A goblin, 4 feet with a strange skull, and with the way that they move, it was like they did not have hands because they hid them always behind their backs and kept their feet on tiptoe and bare. I did not understand, but I knew well from the way that their figures protruded in the distance that they were merely people of their own kind and of that nature with the green skin and all that. It mattered not whatever else they were, because I was merely a being of myself and anything beyond that subscribed to that same idle notion of entity-ness.

I couldn't care less.

So when I was motioned to join them in a hunt, I applied my learnings as a naturalist and made sure to bring my flint-knapped knife. Upon being handed a four-legged animal, I edged it up the belly and ripped along the ribcage. Then I went to the front legs, scoring across the chest, starting from one knee to the other. I repeated for the back legs, and with the skin removed from the flanks, I had the goblins suspend the animal to remove the rest.

So I was.

I marched across the wet grass along the trail, carrying a bone-filled bag and chunking onto the very rough and knobby road that dipped rapidly to the east. To my left, trees wound among rocks covered the mountain, and below ran the river, murmuring through the glen.

I laughed at the joke a goblin made. It was a nice day. A perfect place for a being like me, always so close to the reality of the moment and the fleeting-ness of a being-thing that is necessarily self-detached.

The midafternoon rays faintly glittered in his eye. He chuckled, passing the undersides of dusty-green banana leaves and patches of herbs, one of which had large spear-shaped leaves.

I ran my light-olive hand through jet-black hair as the group of goblins finally stepped onto the edge of town. Around me abounded the sights and sounds of the streets. It being lunchtime, rows of goblin laborers in white tunics swarmed the eateries. Meats were cooked by the edge of the Mensa River. Along it lay myriad little shops selling herb and spices, gold and jewels and the shopkeepers with their brightly colored robes.

I kept traveling, passing as gravel quivered on the undersides of approaching bullcarts.

My group came abreast of what was called the Antiro Mountain. The valley darted out ledges from its high, rocky sides. I rubbed fingertips over tired eyes, rose and walked to the hill edge, sighting the deep green tea slopes and the wild ravined range of hills, passing by a place half underground—half wood and stone above, where a goblin inside brought out bags one by one. Bright, whirling shapes of blue magic rose in the distance, and clouds scudded above, as we plunged through the green blur of flower trees, crossing the sun slants on the broad grass, our feet gripping step by step onto the damp earth. Smiles suffused the group's faces with color. Mosquito red bites and mud flecked our legs and sides. When we snagged on banana leaves, we ran them with our hand-hewn spears, each egress drawing air.

Treading along a pond, we looked toward the blustery elements besieging the jungle masses, as we climbed over elevations and depressions of mud and skirted arches from winding branches.

When night came, our legs that had stayed strong for so long crumbled. Our dainty fingers tugged at the hems of our drenched loinclothes to fix them so that they were spread out evenly across our nether regions, pushing into a thicket edge and sleeping there, our petal-like eyelids closing like a child's, sprawled on the banana-leaf-padded ground, dirt, grass seeds, and tiny wooden bits sticking to our slick fingers.

My eyes stung with tears as I slumped to sleep, covering my eyes, brushing the hanging leaves off me, my prodding fingers limping across my chest like a flogged animal and stopping at my chin's edge.

Clouds' shadows fell across the sleeping group, some hovering, others flitting. They repeatedly passed over and left throughout our sleep, alternating between fulgor and dim embrace.

In eight hours, our craggy faces slowly flickered awake. 

Leaf drip streamed down my hoary cheek.


Scene (#54)
Word count: 306
Genre: High Fantasy, Progression, Action
Trigger warnings: Violence, Blood, Creature Death

He shot his hand-cut javelin. It flew, slowly, before landing helplessly against the ground. "Damn it." *Why did I fail again? After all this time? I thought I'd make it, but I didn't—*

"Sam! Wake up! Get him under!" shouted his closest friend, Chloe, who was already on the way to stitching together a glowing, transparent web that she then stretched out. She turned it into a shield before heaving it upward toward the coming attack.

The sweeping trunk banged against it, and immediately, Chloe was sent flying.

"Chloe!" Sam shouted as the rest of the group passed him. 

They all headed toward the behemoth that hit Chloe. 

One bolted and jumped, catching her flying body. Another began burning away at its tusk with flames unleashed from his open palms. A third threw a worn-smooth pickaxe, which thudded against the behemoth's temple, falling to the ground. Its thrower, Golmn guffawed and set his hands over his eyes, raising his chin. Three more jogged in three directions, breaking away from the group's flank. They made multiple prongs and scuffed under it, rapidly jabbing its underbelly. Their spears had fire-hardened tips, piercing deep and drawing profusions of blood.

The behemoth cried and ponderously waved its head in the air, hot air and blood bursting from its mouth, while the loin-clothed group gathered, huddling toward it from all directions. 

Its seizing body fell into the dirt road, its column legs crumbling, arching backward toward the earth, against the mud mounds and gorges, brown film collecting around its legs and sides.

"Good work," said Chloe, smiling weakly as two shouldered her up. 

Another woman nodded. "I've already seen it as well," she said. "We're getting close."

Smiles spread over the group, as three headed toward the behemoth body.

Sam sat down, sheepishly chuckling as Chloe patted him on the shoulder.


Scene (#55)
Word count: 446
Genre: Slice of Life, School Life, Contemporary Drama
Trigger warnings: None

A girl in light mint green blouse with green plaid trim on the collar and a matching pleated plaid skirt sharpened her pencil at the bin, listening to the rotating creak. 

A boy, twice her size, with a short-sleeved polo shirt same color as her blouse, watched her from behind. "Yo, you done yet, Missy?" he said in a joshing tone. As she finished, they came scuffing in their black school shoes toward their neighboring desks. 

"Anong sabi ni Raven?" she asked him, twiddling with her newly sharpened pencil as she tiredly laid it flat over her module textbook, stuck on page 26.

"No speaking, especially in Tagalog," announced the lavender-bloused teacher in her dark bottoms, the colossal tower of authority.

Later, in lunchtime, the students streamed out, and the girl gave the room a look behind her as she exited the room.

The school room was a compartment of cement with a blue-green finish. The way outside was a gust of cold air out. Every student knew this. The teacher, some older student, or the staff or guard would always say, "Hoy! Isarado nyo ang pinto lalabas yung aircon."

She headed down the two steps into the portico and walked across a stretch of ribbed cement to her right, waking over the painted basketball court lines. At the end of the stretch, she got up a raised unribbed cement slab with a corrugated steel roof. She sat on one of many brown tablet-arm chairs spread in rows along two walls. 

The slab connected a large one-room classroom building to the left, the first wall, and another brownish room to the right, the second wall. The roof of the slab linked to the right, but not to the left, leaving a gap. Through this gap, rain trickled on the chairs, so they were often wet and had to be moved further into the middle.

As she settled down, she opened her lunch box, grabbed her plastic container out of the silver film, and set it down. She unhitched it on all four sides lying vertically and then made it horizontal as she picked up her steel spoon and fork. It was *tortang talong* with ketchup-topped Jasmine rice. She diligently cut the *torta* into smaller portions and delicately placed them in her mouth, careful not to get ketchup on her mouth.

Her boy classmate from earlier sat on the chair beside her. She wiped her damp bangs aside and pressed her hand against her mouth as she swallowed. 

She raised her brows obviously.

"Sabi Raven na ano, ayaw mo daw pansin siya? Bakit?" he said.

She furrowed her brows, looking toward the ground, eyes affixed in thought.


Scene (#56)
Word count: 393
Genre: Military Fantasy, Dark Fantasy, War
Trigger warnings: Graphic Violence, Massacre, Dehumanization of Enemies

Squadrons of goblins swept along the road, saturated with the clang of hardened steel and murmuring of ruffled silk war-skirts. 

At a remove, they sighted a pack of human hunters in their hidden abode, a cache of spears, swords, and steel armor.

With a signal, they launched their volley, striking down the first two projecting individuals supposed to be scouting the area. But because of the goblins' superior familiarity, they got them from an advantageous angle anyway. Then, they headed west, encircling invisibly, melting between the trees before slithering down along the cliff edge and ramming along the cliff side of the camp where the humans were not looking. They caught, stunned, and chopped down every human, fielding any attempt at shutting down their rapidity.

After burning the camp, they blustered toward the wrecked smoke-wafted gate in the distance. It used to belong to a human city, but it was recently razed, and this place turned into a ongoing battlefield, even if only a peripheral one unlinked to any mass deployment. Clammoring with the rest of the war-goblins who had settled in remnants of fortifications scattered aroung the area, they eventually rested and, on the next day, headed out again. Their mission still was to pick off the stragglers. So they left as soon as they arrived.

During their trip across the ravined land along the Sontem River, they camped multiple times at junctions right before or after narrow valleys flanked by steep hillsides that spread far out in flat plateaus.

Eventually, arriving in the city Utantu during the Kalingag tree's flowering, because the road had yet to be fully operational for travel in the western parts of the goblin kingdom, they made an expedition into Malthus. Accordingly, they boarded a coasting vessel, and in twenty-four hours arrived in Songraitu, the capital, where Lord E. Joliath lodged them among his own men after learning of their business.

They were on a mission to catch the remaining soldiers still hiding deep in the jungle along the main path connecting the capital to the closest human city.

Tomorow, everything being ready for their departure, at five o'clock A.M., on the 22nd of April, they exchanged their previous comforts for the confusion of a dirty lizard ride. It conveyed them to the next station, on their journey to Sementrek Town in Ukyando City, 60 kilometers away.


Scene (#57)
Word count: 487
Genre: Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction, Slice of Life
Trigger warnings: None

Copses of trees lay about. A heavily built man with close-cropped hair in looking-glasses and a richly-laced coat walked about, wading to and fro. He later took a seat at a window that opened to the sea, awaiting a summons to the steam-packet that was to waft him over to Hotenheim.

Before he left, he wrote: "I still have yet to understand what it is this place is, but what I have long understood is that I am no longer at home. And these years have gone by splendidly, in grief and in war, happiness and pleasure. To this day I wonder still how I have arrived to this world, and whether to forsake all and go, and whither."

Arriving in Hotenheim early in the wet season, he passed under the drizzles along the whim-whams of the metropollis. He fribbled his legs about in tandem with the workings of the dizzying, winding streets. "To retreat into a quiet, little nook slightly tucked away from the main foot-path traffic! How I even desire to befriend the friendly neighborhood Brownie!" he wrote soon after finding lodging.

When he went to meet a very old friend, he came shuffling along in black shoes, white silk stockings, and a brown dress coat, placing his umbrella into a rack and, upon ingress, dinging the door chimes that hung overhead. To his right, stout cups wound among genteel hands that clasped and slithered across the table edge. The customers made gestures, greetings, and raisings of their cups as forms of address.

He sat down in the corner by a window and set his eyes upon the men and women corkscrewing about from the counter back to their seats. He went to describe it as "a breezy web of movement." Then, as he finished writing, the head of his friend, Magdalene, was popped inside the double door, causing a chime. As she turned to close it, he saw first her black-flecked scarlet red hair and how her considered smile bounded toward him and settled over unlike deluges of rain which often fell on this city.

"Come up hither," interjected a low voice. She looked round the cafe and came to learn that the voice belonged to him.

Coming up to the seat opposite of his, she, as if losing her way, flumped down with her head turned away. When she finally received him, she had moved so carefully that it was as if it was already early next morning and they had stayed all night.

"I've been desirous of acquainting myself with your presence for so long a time," she said in an assumed gentle voice so as not to disturb the man who seemed to be writing his novel.

Assuming a thoughtful air, he nodded quietly, looking aside. The little chairs, tables, and furniture admitted an ample view of the cafe inside. Around them he could also hear the susurrus of social communion.


Scene (#58)
Word count: 300
Genre: Post-Apocalyptic, Psychological Horror, GameLit
Trigger warnings: Depictions of illness and injury, body horror, psychological distress and disorientation

A sour, metallic tang coated the back of the throat. He coughed. Blood came out. He lay down. "Where am I going?" he said, clutching his head. Time was ticking. He looked up. Flashes of sun. He blinked hard. Only darkness. He was hallucinating again. He stood up and staggered toward a door, ramming it open, sweeping toward a chair and flumping his head against its back. He coughed into the fabric, the mushy damp musty smell invading his nostrils. He coughed again, the phlegm like an endless deluge. He voicelessly cried, wheezing airily. He came to fall asleep where he lay.

In that endless slumber, he came to his senses several times, and at each, he cried out.

In the distance, a resounding twang echoed flatly into the night, never losing volume.

To any traveler passing outside, a long line of houses rose apparently out of the murky garbage-filled water, and if they were lucky, they would hear the man in his frequent murmurings and sometimes his loud groanings.

One day, the man raised his arms and ripped out a screech, as he stumbled out the door.

A thick, cloying smell fielded his movements, breaking him down till he was on the ground, only barely trembling, his eyes dulling.

The muffled noises of the background dimmed into a piercing hollow.

Some time later, he got up, darting his eyes across like a busy pen. "What is going on?" he said.

"Where's Jen?

"James?

"Helen?"

He padded toward a park with a house tilted toward the water. "Anyone here?" he said, skirting the puddles, trash, and any unstable surface. 

Toward evening he passed Picnic and Office, two "Survive the Disaster" maps, and saw many native "Building tools" player creations, which seemed like toys beneath the lofty walls of dirty forest.


Scene (#59)
Word count: 1415
Genre: Fantasy, Isekai, Surrealism, Literary Fiction
Trigger warnings: Existential Dread, Profanity, Surreal Violence

The rain dropped.

A shadow skitted past.

Its owner, an olive, jaunty man in a red loose-fitting fleece jacket walked through the streets of a low-rise part of the city, with a single main road lined with junctions to subdivisions. His feet striking the concrete, he skirted about, hopping over the wide puddles covering the sidewalk dips. In the dreary drizzling stone-gray weather, his eyes travelled around, across paths, and along utility poles and their wires. While broad-shouldered, he deftly weaved through the line of passersby. He climbed down two oversized staircase steps. He stopped by a store front lodged into the wall. He waved his hand at the storekeeper, nodded, and called out in a bluff, cheery voice.

"Good late afternoon."

"Siopao again?" answered the storekeeper in her grounded Filipino accent, looking down with a dullness in her black eyes. She went under the counter, sitting on her haunches. Her hand grazed the sides of the shelves and a bandolier of twelve "3-in-1" coffee sachets. She took out a plastic eight-siopao pack from a cooler on a dust-mired shelf close to her feet. After exchanging it with the paper bill he offered, she pulled out a money-filled drawer and thumped him the change, a single ten-peso coin.

After bringing home the siopao to his "stay-at-home" wife, he sat down on a monobloc stool in the middle of the living room.

His thoughts began to whir into motion.

He looked at the painting a church friend gifted them back in 2015 or so. 

In the painting, two figures in dark clothing warmly walked side by side on the surface of a sloshing body of water that extended beyond the frame. They shared a single umbrella, and above stood a Goliathan wave. Brights crowded the colors. The flat shadows locked the volume out, and the dramatic ones had gone on vacation.

This reminded him of what it meant to be a person. So as he went and gazed at the fine brushstrokes forming the two full-clothed figures, he delicately hewed a reflection:

*Life as a person is notoriously challenging, and anything that allows me any rest often comes up with a hidden cost, or some complication that doesn't linearly apply as it would in a game theory context where rules can be defined or some graspable agreed-upon "setting" can be discriminated and materialized in a perfect framework so as to preclude wasteful controversy and focus instead on the most relevant aspects of a recourse so that I could optimize for continuity from there.*

He lowered his pink-cheeked face. The sun beat down outside.

He stood up and asked his wife Sofia where she was going, since she often went outside and far away. She shook her head, saying she wasn't going today.

After getting several hours of remote work done, he went outside for a stroll in the evening.

As he was walking, he noticed the moon flashing brighter than usual. "Huh, that's weird."

It fell and smashed him.

"The fuck!" he shouted as soon as he came to his senses. Looking around, he saw a pitch-black room.

"W-what... what is this?

"Sophia?"

He waited.

The silence began yelling at him.

Sure he'd die if he edged an inch, he'd frozen his body.

For a moment, there was still flat black. Then a figure appeared before him. "Hello," the figure said. It had no face and no features, only a white smooth humanoid body.

He stared. "What the hell..."

The slight shiver in his voice immediately after his calm statement betrayed his inward trembling.

The figure tilted its head. "Do you desire an audience?" A female voice had come out of it.

His eyes locked with its face.

The quiet stung.

"Hehe..." He shrugged.

*Why is this creature here? When did this happen? What happened to the moon? Where is everyone? Where did I go? Where am I now? How did I get here? Did I die? Did the creature kill me? Is it going to kill me? What is this? What am I? Where am I? Who am I? What is going on?*

He smiled. The figure looked away, as if observing a forested land with distant peaks and a lofty cloud bulking beyond the trees. But there was only darkness.

"What do you want?" it said. "Besides returning of course."

"W-what?" he said.

"Answer. You have time, and it's very limited. Right now."

"Uh, I don't know. I don't know what's happening. I-I-I can't... I can't think. I want to go home. I wanna... I don't..."

The figure slightly lifted its chin and straightened its human body, as if smiling and making a decision. "OK then. I will send you now."

He slowly dematerialized. "What? What? What's going on!? Hey! Wait! Help! Please! No!"

He opened his eyes. Green.

A literal jungle.

His eyes grazed around. "This is not... This is weird. Where..."

He wrested himself out of his delirium and shot out his foot. He began walking, footing a kilometer into the jungle surrounding him.

"I can't... stop now..."

For hours, a blur of different shades of green occupied his vision. He was shaking, falling apart.

He grinned. A guffaw broke out along his cheeks, drawing his mouth and the middle of his face into a puckering scrunch. "What the fuck am I doing in here! In this fucked-up place! Am I being punished! Am I a wrong-doer who fucking deserves to die! Am I fucking disgusting! Do I deserve all the fucking..." He stopped, snorting at himself.

"What am I doing? When was I this... juvenile."

"These thoughts. I'm losing..."

"I'm losing a sense."

"I'm losing something."

As if having just been pulled out of his world, he said again, "Where am I?" He was in between multiple different states of mind. He deliberately reached out and grabbed them: the drizzly streets, the reflections he hewed, and his sudden displacement into the "nothing" room. He had stayed in there for hours, but it felt like minutes, or seconds even.

And now, he was here. A sardonic smile festooned his lips. *Why?*

He gradually lowered his body to the ground and lay flat. He widened his eyes.

His eye corners crinkled.

"Well, it was a nice life."

Hours later, his body was placed onto a carriage. 

A group of adventurers had arrived, conversing already about his extraction.

Knowing the general direction, they drove along a trail with soft, springy turf, leaving the lee of the jungle behind, and ahead and all around was just a vast, flat, and empty lea. It was still too early in the year for deer and boar to appear, when the Kalingag and Ulayan tree would be flowering and blooming. They met a few teams burdened with mixed produce for the city and sometimes a yoke, merely one carabao harnessed to a dray.

When they got back to Somentrot via a filtering through a gate and an adjacent wicket, a man remarked to them, "I guess you didn't see much worth looking at; there's a great deal more scenery wanted in this country, ain't there?"

They took the body to a clinic. When he woke up, he thanked them and shared his name: "Marshall."

After they said their goodbyes and left the building, his eyes were left to himself. He stared at the walls. 

For a minute or two, he remained calm as a green wall. He had noticed the towel wrapped around his midriff, but he left it on there and began wearing his t-shirt.

As soon as the sleeves settled around his shoulders again, he let out a breath he'd long held. "What the hell," he blurted.

In ten minutes, he began breathing audibly. At the end of thirty, he let out a long exasperated sigh.

In the end, he went outside on his own, winding up among the street-folk.

*This is weird,* he thought in a breezy inward voice, taking a bold step forward.

His eyes dimmed as a huge shadow stretched across the street. He stiffened in place.

A giant the size of a building lumbered past, carrying a stack of crates labeled "Sampaguita Ale". Its arms outsized a human, and its legs could stomp out the strength of ten men. The resting weight of its foot would crush a crate. And no one reacted. Neither dressed men and women handling their affairs, nor merchants hurrying their customers, nor children racing each other underfoot. In their eyes, it practically wafted along the whole street.