Writing Challenge 11 - Story about space

The End

Death watched as the vast universe finally collapsed on itself. The universe that had contained all these vibrant life forms, unique cultures and great history accumulated throughout billion years of time. 

But every beginning has an end.

It was the Yass’rl that first felt something changing, something wrong and dangerous happening to their worlds and galaxies. The second were the Travelers of Sol, wanderers known as humans, that noticed how their so-called quantum laws were broken, their data predictions becoming less and less true. The realization dawned on everyone when the first fold happened in the universe, and galaxy M83 disappeared. 

It was inevitable, but they still struggled. Death observed from afar as all races united together to find a solution to stop the collapse of the universe. They tried many things but nothing worked. It was amusing, how these small insignificant beings fought until their last seconds, as space folded one last time and everything finally disappeared. 

No, not yet, thought Death, and the harbinger turned around. He reached out with his scythe and swung it in a swift motion. A hiss followed by an echoing scream of pain. Death struck out with his hand and grabbed hold of something incorporeal.  

"Even you must die," said Death with a cold and chilling voice. The echoing scream turned to whimpers, it pleaded for its life but Death swung the scythe once again and there was silence. 

"You too," said Death and raised the scythe once again. But this time a booming voice erupted in retort. 

“No, this wasn’t how it was planned. Good was the only one that would die. Not me. You promised me that it was only Good that would die!”

"I lied," responded Death and swung down for another kill. The booming voice was screaming something incoherent and got cut down mid-speech. 

Now it was void. Only nothingness and a single entity known as Death left. The entity dropped his scythe and the weapon dispersed into million fragments of light, quickly losing their glow and disappeared. Death searched in one of his pockets and pulled out a key of silver and stared at it for a long time. He knew what was going to happen next. But he had a choice. If he ever wanted to, he could stop here. Forever. He could be the last single remnant of this universe. He was Death after all, and he decided everyone’s end.

A single hesitation, but then Death continued with the process. He removed his cowl and revealed a white humanoid skull behind the clothes. He had many shapes and forms but the anthropomorphic personification was one of his most often used, since the humans thought of him the most out of all the sentient beings in the universe. 

On his right temple was a keyhole. Death inserted the silver key and turned.

A soft click was heard throughout the void and Death was slowly surrounded by a shimmering light.

Every beginning has an end.

The light enveloped Death, and the entity shone brighter than anything that has ever been. His dark robe glistened in multitudes of colors, a spectrum that joined together in pure white light. Small cracks started to appear on on Death’s skull, growing bigger for each moment. The Harbinger breathed out one last time.

And every end has a new beginning.

In the empty space, there was a big bang.

Writing Challenge 10 - Write a prequel to that Superhero. Pre-Superhero life. Maybe their childhood.

Another Writing Challenge? Why Error, why?!

Well...

The biggest reason is that the exercises I've been doing from Writing Excuses are implemented in my novel that I'm working on, and I'm still too shy to share it. Many of the exercises are turning a scene into another, changing perspective and genre etc. It's fun, but I'm too conscious of it to put parts of the stories on the internet when I'm not even done revising half of it. 

Regarding Inspirations from Reddit, I haven't visited the subreddit /Writingprompts for a long time, the regularity from before has gone due to work and other events. I occasionally visit to read some fun stories, but I haven't posted there at all for over two months. Hmm...

So what have I been doing? Writing Challenges, the first draft of my novel and some part-time jobs in the writing industry. I hope that the lack of my other texts doesn't upset you readers too much. 

Alright, time for some background on this challenge. It's a prequel to last weeks post, a story from the days Joseph was a child. Instead of writing the "incident" that made him into a superhero, I wanted to write a normal day in his childhood life, before life switched up a gear. Happy reading!

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Captain J - Childhood days

The city took a slow breath as it awakened to the sun peeking out of the horizon. The citizens, like automated machinery, rose up for a purpose and priorities. Some reaching for that morning coffee, some to take that ice cold shower, and others…

“Joseph! Wake up, you’re late for school!”

...to wake up their kids. 

Joseph gave out a slow groan of discomfort as he was pulled away from his sweet dreams of delight, much like the blanket that his mother threw on the ground. The little kid curled up into a ball, seeking warmth and hoping that he could meet Mister Sandman again. 

“Honey, must we do this every time?” sighed the mother. She crawled onto the bed and gave Joseph a kiss on the cheek before attacking him with tickles. Little Joseph squirmed for as long as he could but laughter was an undefeatable enemy and he had to succumb to its mighty force. He said a bubbly “Good morning, mom,” and kissed her on the cheek before waddling to the bathroom to prepare himself. He finished up quickly and continued to the kitchen where he was met with a plate of fruits, a sandwich and a tall glass of milk which he gladly devoured. 

“Honey, you’ve been to school now for a week. You should soon be able to wake up by yourself,” said his mother while rubbing his head lovingly. “The other kids might think you’re strange showing up late to school.”

“Naa,” said Joseph in between his mouthfuls. “That’s not what kids think of at all. I’m a kid and I know what they think of.”

The mother gave a kiss to Joseph’s forehead and asked curiously: “And what do kids think of, could you tell your mother?”

Joseph gave a beaming smile and said: “We think of sleeping!”. He finished up his plate of food and grabbed his backpack to leave home. 

“Be careful on your way to school, honey!” said his mother from the kitchen as she washed the dishes.

“I know mom,” said Joseph as he struggled with his shoes. “I’m going now. See you! Love you!”

The city was not a morning riser, but when it finally woke - life was bustling. Joseph and his mother were new in the city, but instead of feeling scared of the unknown Joseph preferred to be excited. Smiling wide, looking at everything around him and being swept away by the sounds and colors of the city was intoxicating. 

“Joseph, where are you going?”

It was the mailman that had shouted with an alarmed voice after the boy.

“Hi Mister Lewinsky!” said Joseph and waved eagerly. “I’m going to school!”

The energetic boy put a small smile on the mailman’s face. “You’re going the wrong way Joseph, your school is to the left.”

“Right you are. Have a nice day!” continued Joseph and turned left.

The school itself was a small building with even smaller groups, maybe ten to twelve students in each class. But that made it easier to befriend each other, and Joseph knew everyone in his class, even the teacher’s full name.

“Good morning everyone!” said Joseph as he opened the door with full force, interrupting everything in class.

“Good morning Joseph. You’re late so please don’t scream so loudly,” said the teacher while correcting his glasses. “Go to your seat silently.”

Joseph covered his mouth with both of his hands and tiptoed dramatically to his seat. This gave a few sniggers and laughter before the teacher grabbed everyone’s attention again with a smack on the chalkboard. Joseph sat in one of the corners of the room, away from the teacher but close to his friends and daydreams. As the teacher’s voice got less and less interesting his attention drifted off elsewhere. First to the window to look at the scenery, then to the classmates in front of him, and ended finally with him doodling in the textbook.

The class was soon over and as the teacher left, some friends gathered around Joseph to see what he had been doodling during class.

“Is that a fireman?” asked one of the classmates and pointed at the figure.

“Nope, it’s Superman!” said Joseph proudly and showed it to everyone. “Look at the ‘S’, and the cape!”

“Batman is much cooler,” insisted another classmate. This shocked Joseph to the core. How could someone not appreciate Superman?

“Superman can fly!” argued Joseph.

“Batman has lots of cool stuff like a car, a plane a…”

“Superman is strong!”

“Batman is rich!”

The arguments continued for a while until the teacher returned and once again grabbed everyone’s attention by smacking on the board. Just before everyone returned to their seats Joseph managed to get the last word in the argument. “Well, I’m going to be Superman in the future!” He then returned proudly back to his seat.

Many children have claimed to become something in the future. From becoming a doctor to a star, rich or happy. There were many things to strive for. There were, of course, many that dreamed of being a crime-fighter or a superhero. But the last one is usually the naivety of youth that spoke. The innocence before reality struck. Little did everyone in town know that this little kid named Joseph would in the future make that dream to reality.

Writing Challenge 9 - Create a superhero. Have he/she save the day.

Another week with another writing challenge, today it's all about creating a superhero.
I've always wondered how it would be a vigilante today. I, for example, is quite clumsy and not that observant. I don't even watch for cameras in a room, nor aware if there even are any at all. So if I ever tried to go undercover, my secret would probably spill out quite fast since I would change clothes in an alley and someone would accidentally spot me.

These ideas were the inspiration for today's story.

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#herooftheday

“Madam, I’m not really sure why you called for my help but surely, someone else can handle this problem?” said Joseph while pointing at the cat that was meowing from a tree branch, refusing to come down.

“It wouldn’t hurt you to do it right? I mean, it would only take you a few seconds, swoosh and you’re done!” insisted the round-faced lady wearing a hat pierced with feathers of lord-knows-what type of birds.

“No,” said Joseph sternly. “What I’m trying to say, is that you shouldn’t abuse a superhero's time for unnecessary problems.”

“Unnecessary?” said the lady with a higher pitch. “Are you discriminating me?”

The arguments dragged on and finally ended with Joseph, more known by his alias Captain J, saving the cat and fly away in search of crimes and other turbulences in town.

Being a superhero was really strange for him. The first was that no one fell for his disguise. Someone had noticed him changing in an alley, took a picture of it and uploaded it to Twitter. That was Joseph’s first day as a superhero.

The second thing was how the social media controlled everything. His awkward twitter-account gained millions of followers in a few weeks and if he didn’t tweet about his regular patrols people would whine and write mean comments on his feed.

Sure it was fun to be a social media star combined with being a hero, at least it was in the beginning. Especially when he could post a picture of eating a burger and people would shower him with praise and fun comments.

But of course, there was a dark side. For example regarding that burger picture. Not a week after there was a debate on prime time TV regarding Captain J’s diet, how it would affect his fans negatively, and accusations that Burger King was sponsoring him, “#captainsellout” was trending for that week… The whole media thing has scarred Joseph for life. He doesn’t even dare to read the comments anymore…

Suddenly the Captain caught wind of a sharp smell of smoke drifting in the air. He turned towards the direction of the source and saw a stripe of black fume erupting from a building. He flew towards the building only to almost lose balance by the force of exploding flames shattering the windows. The glass shards wasn’t that much of a problem for Joseph but the heat was on another level. He glanced down towards the ground to see fire trucks on their way and crowds gathering. It seemed like there weren't persons inside the building anymore, but he flew a couple of rounds around the building just in case, scanning for wounded civilians. His ears picked up the sound of a raspy “help” from inside the building and without a second to spare he dove through a window into the flames.

The insides were an inferno of red and orange with black smoke looming from the ceiling, forcing Joseph to stop flying or else swallowing the dangerous fumes. He ran from room to room while calling for the civilian but no responses were heard. As the buildings supporting-beams started to crackle and burst, Joseph noticed a hunched figure in the bathroom, seemingly covered in towels. As Captain J grabbed hold of the hunched figure he noticed it was an unconscious woman holding a child in her arms.

He picked the woman with the child up in bridal style and prepared to run for the nearest exit only to notice the ceiling collapsing on top of him. The Captain dodged it nimbly while still carrying the civilians but the exit was now blocked and the heat and smokes were turning critical. He turned towards a wall and gave it a mighty kick. As the wall crumbled, the colours of the blue sky outside spread across his vision and with a single leap he took to the clouds.

The aftermath was of the usual. The building collapsed and the fire brigade extinguished the last of the flames. Captain J was a hero whom everyone cheered for, wanting to get a photo or a selfie with him before he flew away. Joseph waved for a few pictures and signed some autographs but left before every fan was satisfied.

The fire was the main topics for the news the next day. The reporters talked about how it happened and how to avoid it in the future. Luckily, no one was badly injured, there were only five people that had inhaled too much smoke but they were recuperating fine at the hospital. There were of course discussion about Captain J. Sure, he saved two civilians, that’ should get praise but his “exit” damaged the neighbouring building, the owner demanded compensation. There were further discussions about how much collateral damage the hero is allowed to do and should the government really support such neglectful behaviour but Joseph turned off his TV before they reached a conclusion. 

He just sighed to no one at his home in his lonesome. Can’t watch TV or even surf the internet without seeing himself as a topic.

A ringing from the doorbell made Joseph stop thinking about unnecessary things. It was the mailman with a package to Captain J.

Joseph opened this box of curiosity to find a batch of chocolate cookies and a letter that read:

Thank you for saving me and mama. You are a good hero.

“Well...it can’t be all that bad,” he muttered to himself and took a bite of the treats.

No stories this week!

Welp, this is awkward. One day late and then comes this.

Can only say sorry, things came up.

Will post a story next Wednesday (10/1), see you then!