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Word Count: 883

Life isn't easy for humans.

It's not unusual for them to lose hope in life, in happiness, become so despondent and sucked into their own sorrows that they feel there is no other way but to end it.

That is where this human is right now.

At forty-seven, this human male has seen and been through a lot, and the negatives have far outweighed the positive. His family bickered, his parents divorced, brother was sent to prison, sister a teenage single mother. Small glimmers of hope flickered in between; young loves, times of passion, hobbies, and the one thing he kept coming back to: Cars. A mechanic's life is hard, filled with menial labor and poor salaries, just barely scraping by to keep the apartment running, buy food, get any of the bare necessities humans need to survive.

That was where he was when his wife finally gave up on him. Too into his work, she said. Never had enough time for them, and still had s**t to show for it. He pleaded, they fought, sometimes it got physical and he would regret it with every fiber of his being. She walked out on him with half of his belongings and their young daughter. Divorce papers were signed from afar, no contact was allowed with his daughter for several years, not by court order but her mother's.

At least this way he could get further, get hire. Concentrate on the big 'I' for a while and build his reputation as a good, useful and desirable mechanic. It still hurt. Years later, it still hurt, even though he had managed to claw his way to a good standing, tooth and nail. He got good business, was a lead technician, was able to afford a nice house and a dog, the only one he really trusted then. But things were still far from good beyond the superficiality of what the world wanted for him.

It was hard for him to keep a steady relationship now, the fear of marriage and loss looming overhead. Drinking had long since become one of his favorite pastimes and he would work buzzed, come home angry, drink himself into a stupor and fall asleep, such was the daily routine. Sometimes he would call her house, ask to speak to their daughter, and she would never let him speak to her. Likely never told her he called. There was no doubt in his mind that all these years, she had been nurturing such a negative opinion of him in their daughter that she would never want to speak to him anyway.

One day he called, and she answered. There was a brief silence before he announced he was her father, and the conversation ended with a 'click'. No words had come from her except 'hello' but she might as well have said '******** you'.

Days passed in blurs, then.

He had begun to run on autopilot, so emotionally exhausted and uncaring. This dejected human had internally folded in upon himself, attempting to become a shell to all the grief he had to endure, but in everyone there is a breaking point.

Locked in a box hidden underneath the bed was an item he had hoped to never use, and never dreamed to have used for what he was about to. Autopilot did not quite shut off and his thoughts were blank, merely driven by the urge to stop this grief and pain, the urge to end it all. The metal barrel touched against his temple, thumbing off the safety and pulling back the hammer with a practiced ease.

The phone rang.

His hand shook.

A beep, and a voice. Her voice.

She was quiet, her voice shaky, nervous. It was a brief message, but she offered an apology for hanging up, and that she did want to talk.

His hand lowered, returning the weapon to a less lethal state.

At that moment, he resumed control. Hope beat back all of the pain and sorrow. If he had nothing else in his life now, at least he had this.

The next few days were spent playing phone tag. He would hang up if it was his ex-wife, but his daughter began answering the phone more and more. It was awkward, but they would chit chat a little, ask each other how their days were, and finally they arranged meetings. She wasn't exactly what he had expected, but it was a welcomed change; she wasn't her mother's spitting image despite what he had feared, they only shared a few values and she was more of a man than a woman in mindset. He couldn't presume to be her father now, but he was allowed the benefit of being a friend and that was all he could have asked for.

Life had taken a change for the better for this human, things seemed at ease for once and he felt... happy.

He felt as though things had finally settled in and become right.

He felt at ease as his car began to roll at the spark of a green light. Felt calm as a truck at the left of the cross roads came barreling down the street. Felt content as it collided with the driver side door, crumpled it and him. Felt bliss as the airbag failed to deploy.

And then he felt nothing.

Somewhere, in the darkness, a lantern lit up.

Word Count: 393

Where…… am I?

I….. am not normal….. Why am I trapped in such small glass cage?

My wings! Ah….. What is this? These things human have….. Hand is it? Why do I….

Bits of past flutters, like scatter glass shards. Shining brightly, brilliantly, I reach out for them only to have them vanish, like mist.

Drip.

Drop.

Black… ah it’s staining my hand…. Get it off! Off! What is this? It’s crawling up my arm. No! Never!

Rattle.

Shake.

Whimper escapes my mouth but I refuse to give them up. No, not my light, my soul. Like oil, (or is it?) the black substance erode away white, it’s heavy, dreary, suffocating. Am I breathing? I can’t tell. But somehow I knew. I was dead, not alive.

Flashes of a night sky pass behind my closed eyes. I miss that, home. But what is home? The night sky? My buddies? Family? Group? I turn to the left in my mind and I see a black bat, she playfully nudged at me before flying away to a nearby fruit tree. I look at myself. White fur with wings…

Ah, that’s right, this was me a mere albino fruit bat. Then……
Flutter of horror, invisible things that keep us trapped, gathered on the ground.

Don’t touch me, don’ take me away….

Don’ttouchmedon’ttouchmeDON’TTOUCHME! I snarled in reality
(or is it?) as I slept within my glassy prison. The dark poison had already consumed me on the outside, but I refuse to let the dark content seep deeper into me. Never, Not a chance. I dig deeper into my memory. There were restrictions, the inability to move as I was blinded down with things I cannot bite my way out of. A thin hard object cutting into me. It hurts! Hate! I struggle with all my might, but…..

Now I am here. This bubbling feeling of hate. Oh. It seems like my struggle was in vain…..It had already existed in me before. This darkness, that is taking over my whole existence. But now…. Blood red eyes snapped open. I shall take revenge; I shall cast judgment upon my tormentors. Those that hurt me, those who would hurt in the future, I shall be the cold judgment that this cruel world needs. Yes….. I shall absorb this oil of darkness and I shall bring this world to ruins.

I am….

The last shard of light crumbles and vanishes.




Word: 331

Those two fools are wasting their time. Toa and Malaki was it? Fools. I had already made up my mind yet they still try to pull back the light in me. Their acts are futile yet I can’t help to admire their determination. They know they will fail yet they still try to save whatever is left of me. Of this foolish little fruit bat. Maybe deep inside of myself, I have known this is all nothing but idiocy. Killing those scientists would not bring back my family, my pack, my night sky yet the anger still boils in me. It refuses to leave.

Ba-bam.

My heart beats, or rather, this soul beats. My whole existence wants to kill, murder and tear, yet something is holding me back. This thin silver thread called sanity trying to hold this monstrous insanity back, just like the two higher ones trying to save me. Why do they persist? It cannot be stopped. Once corruption starts, it shall never be clean again. It’s contagious; it spread like the pledge infecting everything, leaving nothing. I am beyond where they can reach me. They can’t affect me, or rather they’re not supposed to.

Their light is so warm; it reminds me of lukewarm skies and sweet heavenly fruit. Like a mother’s touch it lures me to sleep, calming me, smoothing me. It’s the only thing that can leads me to sleep yet…

Then there was darkness, it’s demanding, voice loud and pride. The fragments of my broken memory play behind my eyelid whenever I slept. It’s haunting, hurting, it won’t go away. It drowns me in its unbearable power. Whisper of past long gone repeats in my ears, I want………….

Sometimes I just want forget it all.

I just want to drown in sweet nothing-ness. Forget everything but to sleep in sweet bless. No feeling of wanting and yearning. No more hatred, anger, pain. Just sweet blissful peace.

I want it so bad.

The promise of silence.

It wasn’t that it was hard, no. When there were fish in the sea, the chances of catching a fish were just the same as they’d been when his father had been making a living, and his grandfather before him. Maybe, yeah, there was a slight decrease in, well, variety. But he knew what the limit was; he’d never put a toe over it in all the years he’d fished. Fishing itself was easy. Fishing free of disturbances, free of competitors using nets with holes so small they were practically disqualified for use anyway – that part was almost elementary for him.

But it could be hard. So many fish were farmed these days, instead of hand-fished like his were. Fish farms were cheaper, and churned out fish in masses that could be poisoned by pesticides or simply close proximity to other fish. The fisherman knew many of those articles by heart. And he knew what was endangered. He never overfished, even when he thought he needed the extra money – he had a wife and two kids, but Heather worked, too. They got by with more than enough to spare for luxuries and entertainment, although he didn’t know what he’d do when it came time for his eldest to go off to college in three years. He worked long hours sometimes, but what he did was honest work. That was why Heather’d married him, wasn’t it? He was an honest man, and he knew how to treat a lady, and that wasn’t all too common these days.

Today had been one of those scarcer days, where when it was ordinarily time to turn back, he had a little less than enough to turn a comfortable profit. So he’d phoned home, had his crew phone home – he’d be a couple hours late, nothing too out of the ordinary, keep dinner warm. They’d done it before, and it was a bit of a routine for them. The moment it got too dark he’d shouted a reminder to his pilot to turn on the lights, make sure any approaching ships could see them. They had a motor-powered boat that was functional, sturdy, trustworthy. It was larger than a sailboat but not so big that it needed more than five people manning it, and really, that was only so they could switch off and rest instead of watching the water all day, beautiful as it was.

They were just heading back now. The shoreline was maybe half an hour to forty-five minutes away – he wasn’t sure of the exact distance, because it wasn’t him in the ship’s cabin, now was it? But he was sure that it’d be soon. There were a couple other ships on the horizon, heading back in. For the most part they were ships he’d seen day in and day out for years, because the industry was only so large. There were a couple he couldn’t recognize specifically, but he knew their types, a refined oil tanker and a couple little hobby sailboats. No cruise ships in this part of the bay, no sir.

The oil tanker was a little odd on this side of the bay at this time of day, but maybe it had been delayed in the morning. He glanced out over the horizon, where the lighthouse he passed every morning and every night was blinking into view. They were closer than he’d thought.

They were drawing nearer the oil tanker, but that didn’t make him worry. There were only so many docks along the shoreline, after all. Unfortunately, their proximity made it all the more clear that the other boat’s lights were off. “Off?” he asked, when one of his crew members relayed the information to him. “That can’t be,” he muttered. Sure, there were idiots who drove around in a car at night with their headlights off, but never boats. It was all too dangerous – boats could be carrying all manner of cargo, and most tankers did not carry cargo that was good for the ocean at all. He brought himself around to the other side of the boat – sure enough, he wouldn’t have been able to see the other boat at all had it not been so big.

“Hey!” he hollered, placing his hands around his mouth to make his voice louder. He didn’t have a megaphone onboard – he had never needed one. “HEY!” he repeated, waving a hand. Was there anyone on the deck of the tanker? He didn’t have eyesight that good. There was no response, though, and their lights remained resolutely off. What on Earth?

He had the Coast Guard number by heart – he always made these calls because no one else had the patience for it. He didn’t need to listen to the recorded messages to know which buttons to press, and what to say. They were to stay in place – okay, that was fine. He called the instruction up to his pilot. All they had to do was wait.

Soon enough, though, he noticed that the silhouette of the tanker was…getting bigger? Their lights were on, and even if the tanker’s captain couldn’t see, it definitely had radar. Why on earth would it be getting closer? He heard the engine underneath sputter to life – evidently his pilot had noticed, too. He was a good man.

But the tanker had momentum on them, and their boat was old, and not a fast accelerator. The silence on their boat was deafening – no one wanted to distract their pilot. On the deck, they jumped in an attempt to get someone, anyone to notice them. “It’s slowing down,” he murmured.

It wasn’t decelerating fast enough, he noticed distantly.

“Get portside,” someone told him. But what if he’d been mistaken? He had to keep waving until he was sure they were all safe. And they would be. He knew it.

It wasn’t decelerating fast enough.

For a moment, the silence seemed deafening.

Oil Spill Kills One, Injures Two, the local paper read the next morning.

word count: exactly 1000, according to word.