InterNutter

Indie writer seeks audience with an audience. Paying customers welcome. [pronouns: ze/hir] Daily free stories happen because it is an excellent counter to Writers' Block.

Burpengary East http://www.cmweller.com 12171 posts

Challenge #00973-B242: Outed!

http://chokingonfeelings.tumblr.com/post/128277134565/my-friend-is-secretly-a-mythical-creature-clich%C3%A9

And another one!

(Prompt from CallMeGallifreya on Tumblr)

Everyone was staring. Callie could barely move, but she still tried to scoot away from the boggling faces. They were afraid.

Fear leads to anger...

Even her best friend, Mekena, was retreating. She was the last of her human classmates to curl her fingers into a fist.

Anger leads to hate...

"...please don't?" Callie quavered. She knew what they saw. A monster from legends so old that they were hard-wired into the psyche. Shapeshifting had been the only way for dragons to protect themselves against humans.

Everyone thought dragons were automatically more powerful than anything that had ever lived. Yet they were nearly wiped out by soft, squishy, ingenious and inventive humans.

Hate leads to... dragon-ka-bobs...

"...oh my god," whispered Mekena. "Callie. You're a dragon?"

And in the moment of most tension, on the very cusp of violence from her classmates, Callie's sassy damn mouth took over. "Well, geez, Mekena... The scales and the wings are usually a dead give-away."

The world held its breath.

Callie wished she could bite her tongue out.

And then the mood broke. Not in thrown things and screaming, but in peals of laughter. And only then, when most of the class were in the fits of tear-streaked mirth, did the chem teacher finally turn on the vents to clear the room of the fumes that that asshole Vitura had made sure she got a face-full of.

"And this," said Miss Callenti, "is why we create gaseous outputs in the fume hood."

"Reddit said it was a love potion," complained Vitura.

"Euw gross," said Mekena. A sentiment echoed by all of the girls in the classroom. "What part of 'bug off' do you not understand, you asshole?"

Strength finally returned to her limbs, but not enough strength to begin to change back to her human guise. She could at least sit up and furl her wings in. And curl her tail away from so many feet and chair legs.

"Yeah," Callie agreed. "What next? Try to add GHB to the water supply?"

"Yeah, that didn't work," said Vitura.

Miss Callenti scribbled a note. "Mister Vitura? You are now assigned to Sensitivity Training. You obviously need it."

"Again?" whined Vitura. "I keep failing that class."

Mekena came over with fake coughs that masked the words, "Forever alone."

"Dyke bitch," muttered Vitura on the way out.

Miss Callenti waited until he was gone and Callie had at least gained some verticality. "Now. Since Mister Vitura has opened the door... let's go through some easy ways to detect date rape drugs..."

(Muse food remaining: 22. Submit a Prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories! Or comment below!)

Random reason to love Steam Powered Giraffe #5

Yeah, I'm being erratic with this. My life kind of imploded. Things get interrupted when my life implodes a bit.

Anyway. Today's reason to love Steam Powered Giraffe: Holy shit, they're sexy.

Yes, I know. They're so very much younger than I am. I'm plausibly old enough to parent them. But... consider exhibit A.

Pictured here is David "The Spine" Bennett nomming on a granola bar. Just... standing there and staring at not very much whilst masticating calmly for all to see.

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Challenge #00972-B241: A Ghost of a Chance

http://chokingonfeelings.tumblr.com/post/128277134565/my-friend-is-secretly-a-mythical-creature-clich%C3%A9

Here we go again! Pick one!

(Prompt from CallMeGallifreya on Tumblr)

I was making tea when she walked into the house as if she owned it. For all I know, she did. I'm... well... more sort of a 'permanent tenant'. Many have tried to get rid of me. It never sticks.

She wore black. I put the teapot down and said, "You're not one of those occultists, are you? You mind your candles,

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My life is on the cusp of sucking, but don't worry

Good news: Beloved is keeping the day job. We're nominally financially stable for the foreseeable future.

Bad news: The help I'm getting for Chaos is due to run out just when we need it the most.

Good news: It was hellishly expensive and borderline unafordable, so we'll have slightly more money next year.

Bad news: Which will be too late for me to get enough shit together for experimental stuff to help Chaos with.

I feel like such a whiner about this.

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Challenge #00971-B240: During the Wee Small Hours on a Long-Haul Scavenger Vessel

“Why exactly do you need chloroform at 2AM?”

(Prompt from CallMeGallifreya on Tumblr)

"Um. It's not for anything terrible. I mean. Not really terrible. Um. Sort of?"

Captain Mellier groaned and sighed. "How can something be 'sort of' not really terrible, Jones?"

Jones was twiddling with her fingers. "Um. You know the Oshit problem on board? Um. Well. We were -uh- experimenting? A little? With ordinary shipboard chemicals?" She managed a nervous rictus. "On the Oshits, I promise! Um. And... Baker? Um.

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It never rains...

It firkin floods.

Bad news has a tendency to snowball around me. I don't just get one bucket of poop descending upon my life like a fateful, fragrant comet. No. I get trucks of it. By the dozen.

And there is something drastically wrong inside my head that makes me blame myself for shit that's out of my control.

Beloved's work superiors act like whiny, micro-managing idiots and make Beloved want to quit? Somehow, it's my fault. Fandom friend some literal thousands

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Challenge #00970-B239: One Agumentative Walk Following a Bad Spill

“Please put me down it’s just a sprained ankle"

(Prompt from CallMeGallifreya on Tumblr)

"Mikug seeing way human go down. Mikug knowing is pain-of-death."

Reeva sighed. "Mikug forgetting self is Deathworlder. Self is fine. Self has to strap it and limp for a while."

There were drawbacks to working with heavy-grav cogniscents, and this was one of them. "Mikug taking human to mediks. Mediks helping."

The only language they shared was Broken GalStand, which made understanding a little more complicated. "Mediks

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Random reason to love Steam Powered Giraffe #4

I could go on forever. I know. There's so much that I love about this band that I can barely keep it in...

But today? Let's go with: They are incredibly creative.

It's not just the songs and the makeup. Or the mechanical-imitation miming.

If you check out their site you'll notice that it's not just the music.

The art, the lore, the comic... heck, even the website itself - it's all a product of one or more members of the band.

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Challenge #00969-B238: The Unstoppable Human

“So what if I broke my arm I’m still doing it.”

(Prompt from CallMeGallifreya on Tumblr)

Kri'ki had assumed it was yet another bizarre human ritual. Elis had sent her off to fetch hard, stiff, long lengths of metal. Then ductape. Then she had to assist in binding one of Elis' forelimbs to some suitable struts and build a harness to immobilise the limb.

"Which festival is this for?" asked Kri'ki. Humans celebrated the most peculiar things at the oddest times.

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Oops (very late random reason to love Steam Powered Giraffe #3)

Lazy Sunday-itis got to me and I plumb fell asleep before I could think of a Reasons to love Steam Powered Giraffe article...

So check out: The dedication to their art...

You get a free listen to some SPG tunes as well, so enjoy these :3

Sam Luke transforms into the lovable bronze stove woobie Hatchworth [give him a bit of leeway, Hatchy's been shut in a vault for 80+ years. He has no idea he's weird].

Isabella Bennett changes herself into

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Challenge #00968-B237: One Bland Morning in an Infectious Diseases Lab

“Please stop petting the test subjects.”

(Prompt from CallMeGallifreya on Tumblr)

"Aw, but they're adorable."

"Only a human would find a cage of Oshits 'adorable'..." Brantid sighed. "I cannot allow you to become attached. They are sacrificial subjects in my study on the prickle-hide plague."

"You're giving them prickle-hide? Ouch. Poor iddle spidies..."

Do not kill and eat the profitable mammal... Brantid restrained herself, barely. Chloë, the human hired because she was immune to both Oshits and the plague, was proving more

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Random reason to love Steam Powered Giraffe #2

Continuing on from yesterday's attempt to pull you unawares into the fanmily [that's the collective name for the SPG fandom] I bring you yet another reason to love this band.

Today's reason? Their comedic brilliance

They can, have, and will carry a joke around for years [See: The Spine's 'back story' ] including a few from their busking days.

Most of the stage comedy is banter-related. The Spine usually plays the straight man in these episodes, but he has his nerdy moments.

My

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Challenge #00967-B236: STEVEN!

“I may have accidentally sort of adopted five cats.”

(Prompt from CallMeGallifreya on Tumblr)

Baby Rose was investigating the nutritional quality of her own fist again. Connie gently encouraged her to chew on the pediatrician-recommended teether that her mom insisted all babies loved.

Rose gnawed on it once, twice, and then looked up as if to say, Why would you betray me like this, mother? and promptly spat it out.

"Yeah," she sighed. "Try telling Gram'ma that. You try telling gram'ma. No,

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Random Reasons to love Steam Powered Giraffe

Anyone who knows me also knows that I love all colours of anything out of this band. They're weird. They're quirky. They have a story and a lore and an entire universe growing organically from something that started as four college kids busking in the street.

But today's reason to love them is this: The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Check out the way Rabbit moves in both of these music clips. One from once upon a time

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Challenge #00966-B235: Consult the Tea

More about the mentioned-once Captain’s Cup

(Prompt from CallMeGallifreya on Tumblr)

Working with humans was always a rocky path...

Bal'thox watched in confusion as her human captain installed a small heat plate near the Captain's chair. Humans had been all over this ship. Adding insanity upon insanity.

Certainly, some of them worked. Like the gravity generator that was half technology, half cargo cult.

Others mystified. Like the twin, plush representation of six-sided die that now dangled above the main screen. And

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