#ThursThreads Week 594 : You’ve Got It All Worked Out

“You’ve got it all worked out, don’t you? A regular daily schedule. You scheduled time to do dishes, laundry, your workout, even to get a shower, and take a nap.” I put my wallet and keys on the computer table. “A schedule that gets you through the day.” I took off my jacket and hung it on the back of the chair in front of the table.

This was the hardest part of the workout. Getting started. It sucked. And it sucked the life right out of me. I wandered to the top of the stairs and stared down at the stationary bike. “It’s only 30 minutes.”

30 minutes of sweat, and pain, and pushing my body. 30 minutes in which I’d ride that bike, according to its computer, over 8 miles.

“Why do you do this to yourself? You know that no one cares. You could get fat and die, and no one would really care.”

I went down the stairs, found my athletic shoes and put them on. “And I’m tired of hurting. You know that. Doing this just damn hurts.” I turned on the TV set, set it to stream music videos, then got on the stationary bike. I plugged in the computer on the bike and waited for it to complete its startup sequence.

“I don’t do this for them. I do this for me.”

30 minutes later I stopped. 8.23 miles according to the computer.

“This is how I survive.”

246 Words
@mysoulstears.bksy.social

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This is week 594 of #ThursThreads, hosted by Siobhan Muir. Please go read all the stories in this week’s #ThursThreads. Some gifted writers write for #ThursThreads every week. The stories are fun to read.

#ThursThreads Week 592 : What If I Don’t Do It?

I stood in the kitchen. It was dark outside. Everyone in the house had gone to bed. Except me. I stood there, and looked at the kitchen sink. That sink was the perfect description of life to me. It never ended. It never let up. I never got to rest. I never got a break. I had to clear the dishes, the pots, the pans, the silverware, the glasses, and all the rest, from the kitchen sink every night.

Every night.

“What if I don’t do it?”

I don’t know how many nights I’d thought that. Or how many times I’d thought that on any single night. But there the thought was, again.

“What if I leave the dishes where they are?”

And that damned voice in my head answered me, “Then there will be more dishes to deal with tomorrow. And if you don’t deal with them tomorrow, there will be even more dishes on the day after tomorrow.”

I stared at the damned dishes. I wanted to go to bed. To lie down and cover myself under the blankets, and get warm, and sleep. I wanted to hide from everything. And sleep for a week. Or more. To sleep until I felt better about everything.

“The longer you let them sit, the worse it will get.”

I hated the voice in my head sometimes. That night, as I forced myself to wash the dishes for the millionth time, I wished I could shut that voice up forever.

249 Words
@mysoulstears.bksy.social

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This is week 592 of #ThursThreads, hosted by Siobhan Muir. Please go read all the stories in this week’s #ThursThreads. Some gifted writers write for #ThursThreads every week. The stories are fun to read.

#ThursThreads Week 583 : Try Not To Look So Threatening

The following two days were much the same. She flew over the mountains and headed toward the ocean. She spent the nights on the ground, on a wooden platform the machines made for her.

The third day brought her to the ocean, and when she headed along the coastline, the mountains faded away, and the sand of the beach returned.

On the fourth day, Sunshine found something different. Something new. A fishing boat, with a few men on it. She flew over the boat, and watched as the men on the boat panicked, grabbed bows and arrows, and shot at her.

“What the heck did I do to set them off?” she wondered.

The machines answered, “You scared them. They’ve never seen a fairy before.”

“They’ve never seen a fairy?”

“We haven’t changed everyone.”

“Oh.” She flew out of arrow range, “Those are original human descendants?”

“Yes.”

“How can I talk to them?”

“Try not to look so threatening.”

Sunshine landed on the beach, still within sight of the boat, and the men. She stared into her reflection on the surface of the water, distorted as it was. “It’s the wings, isn’t it? They’re scared of my wings.”

There was no way to hide her wings. She simply looked different from the men, and she guessed from their women. A winged demon, flying at their boat. She’d have to figure out how to not scare them to be able to talk to them. If they spoke the same language.

249 Words
@mysoulstears.bksy.social

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This is week 583 of #ThursThreads, hosted by Siobhan Muir. Please go read all the stories in this week’s #ThursThreads. Some gifted writers write for #ThursThreads every week. The stories are fun to read.

#ThursThreads Week 582 : So What Do I Do Now?

Sunshine woke as the sun rose, the voice of Merlin the dragon echoed in her mind, “You will never find what you seek outside.” She shook her head to clear the voice from her thoughts, and once more asked herself, “So what do I do next?”

Her stomach growled at her. “Oh.”

There had been a time when she would not have asked the wild magic to make food for her to eat. But also, there had been a time when she believed the wild magic was wild magic and not a zillion invisible, tiny machines that manipulated matter at the atomic and even subatomic level.

Hell, she still didn’t even know what that meant. “Someday I’ll have to ask them to explain.”

The weather where she was had become noticeably warmer than the weather in the northern forest, where she lived with Mystica, and her adopted daughters. She decided she wanted something to drink, and some fruit to eat. As a joke, she waved her hands, and said, “Mumbo, jumbo, apple, banana, and a glass of water, Kazam!”

She thought she heard the machines laughing, but an apple, a banana, and a glass of water all appeared on a flat spot on the ground.

“Wild magic, right?”

“Wild magic,” the machines answered.

“Some day I will ask you how you do this.”

“Some day we will try to answer.”

After her light meal, Sunshine took to the sky. She flew southward, out of the mountains.

246 Words
@mysoulstears.bksy.social

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This is week 582 of #ThursThreads, hosted by Siobhan Muir. Please go read all the stories in this week’s #ThursThreads. Some gifted writers write for #ThursThreads every week. The stories are fun to read.

Miranda Kate’s Mid-Week Challenge : Week 308 (2023_10_14)

Day 12 of 30. I was still there. Stuck. On top of that damn skinny mountain. Part of the ultimate game show. Take 30 people, stick them on the top of these manufactured mountains, and keep them there for 30 days. The objective was to get down from the top to the ground below.

Of course, you couldn’t see the ground. It was down there. Somewhere. Hundreds of feed below. Maybe thousands.

It would have been one thing if they gave you miles of rope, and piles of pitons and hammers, so you could make a path down the side of the mountain. Nope. They didn’t. They gave you a parachute. And a bunch of chalk. They dropped meals on the mountain tops once a day.

No bathroom. No shower. No kitchen. Nothing.

There were handholds down the mountain. That was it. You could climb down. At least that was the theory. If you did manage to climb down, you won the game. If you tried climbing down and wound up taking a long dive down the mountain, well. You lost.

If you stayed at the top of the mountain for the whole 30 days, you didn’t win, but you did get picked up, and taken back to civilization, where you got 30 days’ pay like you’d been at work the whole time. And you got a really good, long overdue shower, and a night in a good hotel room.

No one knew what happened to those who tried climbing down and didn’t make it. For all we knew, there were dead bodies down there. Mangled by striking the ground after long falls.

There was the story of two people who had won the game. You won the game, you got fabulously rich. And no one ever heard from you again. You vanished into that wealth, for all we knew.

I sat at the top of my little mountain, and made countless circles around it, trying to find the way down. You try not taking a bath or a shower for 30 days. After the first week, I was crying from having to smell myself.

What I missed most was, I think, the toilet. Face it. On top of these mountains, on these little plateaus, there were no toilets. No trees. No bushes. No rocks. Nothing. You had to go you had two options. Pick a place on the top, and go, and hope you could stand the smell for 30 days. Or hang over the edge and let it rip, and hope you didn’t slip.

Even worse. What if you let it rip right down the path you had to take to get off the mountain?

I’d have given anything for a little private toilet. One of those portable ones like in the parks, and at festivals. Everyone knew what they were, and what you were doing when you went in. But at least no one could watch.

But, there we were. Stuck on our little mountain-top plateaus. Wondering what to do next.

Some of us formed groups. We managed to communicate with each other by screaming. Most of the groups decided, “We’re staying put for 30 days.”

30 days alone. On top of a mountain. With nothing but a daily supply of food. No TV. No music. No books. Nothing.

By day 12, I was thinking it wouldn’t be so bad to fall off the side of the mountain. At least I’d escape the silence. The isolation. The sound of my own thoughts.

See. That was the thing. After enough days, you went crazy and started trying to get down. Because you’d do anything to escape. Anything.

Including falling however far you had to fall to end up dead on the ground at the bottom of the mountain. Because. At least you’d have escaped the top.

It was day 12 of 30 days on the top of that mountain. The idea of climbing down that sucker wasn’t nearly as bad as it had been 12 days ago. And I’ll be honest. I was wondering if I could survive another 18 days on that sucker. Without even a tent.

Maybe I’d go to sleep one night, roll-off, and not have to make a decision.

Two people had made it down. That’s what everyone said.

A bunch of words
@mysoulstears.bsky.social

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Written for Week 308 of Miranda Kate‘s Mid-Week Challenge. You can learn about Miranda’s challenge here. The stories people share for the weekly challenge are always little works of art, crafted with words, meant to be shared, and enjoyed. Please go read them.

#ThursThreads Week 581 : Where are you going?

The machines, ubiquitous as they were on Cylinders, made a small hut for Sunshine to sleep inside, on a mattress, as opposed to outside on the hard ground. Being curious, they asked her, “Where are you going?”

“I don’t know.” She sat on the mattress and thought about where to go next. “I’ve reached the limit of the flooding. I didn’t find any towns or villages. Everyone is safe that I can tell. So what do I do next?”

The machines didn’t answer her. They left the question open, for her to answer.

“I’ll return to following the ocean along the coast.” It meant she would have to backtrack for the first day, to reach the ocean, where the earthquake had happened.

The machines finally spoke, “Head south as you head back. It will bring you to the ocean, south of the mountains.”

She smiled. “South of the volcanic zone, yes?”

“Yes.”

“I wonder. Does Mystica know what the world looks like?” There was no answer. “I know Merlin knows.” She wondered why Merlin had told her to see the world. “What does Merlin think I will find?”

As she slept that night, she had a dream of searching for something. Something she could not find, no matter where she looked. As she searched, she heard Merlin talking, “You will never find what you seek outside. It does not exist in the world.”

233 Words
@mysoulstears.bksy.social

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This is week 581 of #ThursThreads, hosted by Siobhan Muir. Please go read all the stories in this week’s #ThursThreads. Some gifted writers write for #ThursThreads every week. The stories are fun to read.

Miranda Kate’s Mid-Week Challenge : Week 307 (2023/10/08)

Jordan had heard all the stories about portals how they were openings in space and time that connected one place to another, or one dimension to another. It was one of his favorite topics on the TV show he watched. The one he thought was so funny. The one where the cast always said, “It was aliens!”

He knew the stories well, and he’d never believed one of them. “There’s always an explanation. We just don’t know enough yet to explain it.” That was his standard response to portals, unidentified aerial phenomena, missing people, and alien kidnapping stories. “There’s always an explanation.”

Some of his imagined explanations were pure evil, too. Like the alien kidnapping stories being government kidnapping stories in reality. He knew the government was kidnapping people and experimenting on them. He knew it was such a secret that no one in the government actually knew it was happening.

“Aliens, my ass,” was always his mantra.

Jordan never expected to be out bass fishing one Saturday morning at stupid o’clock when he found out portals were real,  and not something to laugh about.

The morning had started normally. His alarm had gone off at 2 that morning. “The early bird gets the best bass.” He had hooked the boat trailer and boat to his truck the previous day. He’d packed all his gear in the truck. Jordan was ready. “Fishing time!”

There had been no flashing lights in the sky as he drove to the boat ramp at the lake. No light shows for him to watch. No strange creatures along the side of the road. Nothing. It was a quiet morning. Just the way Jordan liked his fishing mornings.

The water of the lake was still. He could hear crickets, frogs, and all the usual bugs and animals. The loudest thing he heard was his boat as he put it in the water. He parked his truck got in his boat, and headed out on the lake. There were no lights in the sky. No helicopters, jets, ultralights. Nothing. The sky was empty.

The lake was dark. There were no lights shining in it, or on it.

Jordan took his boat to the center of the lake first. “No guts, no glory. We’ll try for a big one.”

He made his first cast into the lake at about 0345 hours. “It’s going to be a good morning. I just know it.” He didn’t even care if he caught anything. Just getting out on the lake in his little boat, fishing, was more than enough. It blew away the mowing of the lawn, the shopping for the groceries, the taking of the wife to dinner.

Just him, his tiny boat, his fishing rod, his gear, and the silence of the hours before dawn.

Jordan loved it.

Until the light showed up under his boat. It was a light he couldn’t have missed unless he was blind. A light that put the moon to shame.

Jordan reeled in his line and set the rod on the bottom of the boat. “What the fuck is that?”

The light got brighter and bigger. It moved ahead of the boat. The mirror-flat surface of the lake turned into a churning nightmare of waves. The light breached the water’s surface.

Jordan watched as the light pulled water after it, that water made a tunnel that wrapped around the light. And his boat headed toward the light, all by itself.

That’s all he remembered of the portal. That’s all he could tell people when they found him in the woods on the north side of the lake three days later.

A bunch of words
@mysoulstears.bsky.social

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Written for Week 307 of Miranda Kate‘s Mid-Week Challenge. You can learn about Miranda’s challenge here. The stories people share for the weekly challenge are always little works of art, crafted with words, meant to be shared, and enjoyed. Please go read them.

#ThursThreads Week 580 : She had never been there.

Sunshine extended her wings and took to the sky. She followed the water inland. “I would see how far the water travels inland and where it goes.”

She was in a new part of the world for her. She had never been there. But, having watched the earthquake and the ensuing tsunami, she found herself wondering if any villages or towns were flooded by the waves.

She flew inland, over the flooded landscape. It took time. Sunshine was a strong flyer but she was no white magic yielder like Mystica. She had a top speed but she couldn’t maintain that for long. She had to settle for moving slower so she could cover a longer distance.

As she flew she saw no signs of villages or towns, only flooded mountain land, with trees and brush. All of it was flooded. She continued inland until she finally reached the end of the flooding. She’d seen no signs of people. That alleviated her fears. “That is the most destructive thing I’ve ever seen.”

The machines spoke to her then, “There will be aftershocks.”

“Aftershocks?”

“And they will cause more flooding.”

“How much?”

“We don’t know.”

She kept flying until the sun finally began to set. “I’m going to need a place to stay for the night.”

She found a small cluster of trees on the side of a mountain. “This looks safe. It has been  a while since I reached the edge of the flooding.” She landed and prepared to rest.

249 Words
@mysoulstears.bsky.social

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This is week 580 of #ThursThreads, hosted by Siobhan Muir. Please go read all the stories in this week’s #ThursThreads. Some gifted writers write for #ThursThreads every week. The stories are fun to read.

Lost Knowledge

Big rocks standing up, sticking out of the ground, were always a problem to explain. How did people without machines lift those big rocks, and move them around? How did they stand them on end? How did they dig holes deep enough into the ground to stand them on end? How many of them got crushed while moving the big rocks around?

The list of questions was endless.

Jake walked between the monolithic stones. “What do they weigh? 50 tons? 100 tons? How do you move something like that?”

It wasn’t like they could put hydraulic jacks under one end of a rock, and jack it up. They didn’t have hydraulic jacks 4500 years ago. Hell, 4500 years ago they didn’t even have gasoline.

“Well. I can certainly see the appeal of saying, ‘Aliens did it!’ It makes it a lot easier to explain.”

How did you get enough hands on any of those rocks to lift an end of it? You could get what, maybe 10 men in a line on one end. 10 men couldn’t lift 50 tons. It simply couldn’t be done. You’d need to use pulleys. But that left you with another set of problems. How do you get the pulleys up high enough to lift the rocks? How did you make the scaffolding that held the pulley’s strong enough to not collapse under the weight of the rock? And what the hell did you use for rope or chain?

“Chain? Ha! They didn’t even have steel back then. They had bronze at best. You can’t lift a 50 ton rock with rope made of woven together weeds, and pulleys of bronze and wood. You can’t do that. It’s like trying to have men line up on one end of the rock and lift it. You can’t get enough of them to lift it.”

He thought of the rocks in the desert that slid across the sand on a thin sheet of water, with a bit of wind. “Did they know about that?” Even if they did, how would they scale it up to work for 50 ton rocks?

He also wondered why there were no tracks where the rocks had been moved along the ground. “You drag a 50 ton rock across dirt, it’s going to leave a big damn trench.” Let alone if you hauled 20 or 30 of those rocks across the ground.

“Downhill is one thing. You can maybe figure out how to get the rock to tumble downhill.” But that wouldn’t move the rock 100 or more miles. That would move the rock down the side of a hill. Down the side of a mountain at best.

“Yeah, yeah. I know. Giants. Giants picked up the rocks and carried them.” But again, the math didn’t line up. If a giant was 12 feet tall, how much could it lift? Not 50 tons, that was for certain. Again, you had the problem of how many giants could you get working together to move the rock.

“Elephants.” Well. Maybe elephants could move the rock, if you had enough of them, and enough miles of rope. “How many ropes do you need to lift 50 tons?” He figured if one rope could lift 1000 pounds, that would be 100 ropes minimum to lift 50 tons. “100 ropes, 100 elephants. How would that even work? And could you even get 100 elephants to pull on the ropes at the same time?”

“If you can’t explain it, then it had to be aliens, right?” Jake laughed. Nope. Not aliens.

“They came from the Pleiades.” Except the Pleiades cluster was maybe 200 million years old. That wasn’t long enough for complex, intelligent life to form, let alone develop the technology needed to cross all those light years of space to get to Earth, and genetically engineer the human race.

“If it was aliens, they had to come from somewhere that’s older than Earth. Not from the Pleiades.”

Jake knew he couldn’t understand how they’d moved the rocks. It was beyond him. Beyond his ability to figure out. But that didn’t mean it was aliens. It meant that 4500 years ago they knew things about simple mechanics that modern technology had long forgotten.

Lost technology. Lost simple mechanics.

Like the bridges in South America made out of woven together weeds. 4500 years ago, they knew how to move those big rocks. Now, with all our modern machines, and tools, we’d forgotten how they did it.

“I’ll bet on them using water, wouldn’t you?”

Jake enjoyed touring the monolith rocks, and thinking about how they could have moved those rocks across the countryside, and how they could have stood them on end in holes they shouldn’t have been able to dig.

“I wonder what else we have forgotten over the centuries?”

A bunch of words
@mysoulstears

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Written for Week 295 of Miranda Kate‘s Mid-Week Challenge. You can learn about Miranda’s challenge here. The stories people share for the weekly challenge are always little works of art, crafted with words, meant to be shared, and enjoyed. Please go read them.

#ThursThreads Week 562 : There Wasn’t Time To Waste

The machines woke Sunshine the next morning. “Why did you wake me?”

“We knew you wanted to see what would happen in a few minutes, when the plates slip and cause an earthquake.”

“Oh.”

“We will also have to lift the boat from the water. There will be several tidal waves.”

Sunshine had never seen tidal waves before. All she knew of them was they were large waves, and moved lots of water.

The machines continued. “We want your permission to move the boat. We couldn’t get that while you slept. We would have waited, but the plates would slip before you would have woken up. There wasn’t time to waste, waiting for you. So we woke you.”

The  boat lifted hundreds of feet from the water.

“It is time.”

It started as a low rumble she could feel in her bones before she heard it. An earthquake. The mountains on the shore shook, she saw them as they did. Molten rock, and clouds of gas erupted from a miles long strip of the mountains. The rock raced toward the water.

When the mountains moved, the water of the ocean got left behind, and almost like it realized the mountains had moved without it, the water decided to chase the mountains. It took hours that seemed to happen all at once, but Sunshine watched as the ocean caught up to the land, and then formed monstrous waves that reached well into the mountains.

“Nothing could survive that.”

247 Words
@mysoulstears

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This is week 562 of #ThursThreads, hosted by Siobhan Muir. Please go read all the stories in this week’s #ThursThreads. They are always fun to read. And there are some gifted writers who write for it every week.