The Deal

Having just moved into your new home, you jokingly say “If there are any monsters in my room, come out and we can make a truce!” Then, a skeleton walks out of your closet.

I dropped my backpack onto the floor in shock and inched towards the exit, wishing that I hadn’t closed the door.

“Well, well, well, what do we have here?” said the skeleton as it closed the closet door behind it. (I assumed it was speaking despite its lack of lungs and larynx. The alternative explanation was me imagining voices in my head, which was probably just as bad).

“Are you questioning my ability to speak?” it asked when I didn’t respond to its first question. (Holy fuck, was it a mind reader too?) “No, I’m not a mind reader, that’s just what all the other people I’ve encountered asked when they met me.”

“Come on kid, I don’t have all day. What are the terms of the truce this time?”

“I didn’t think of one yet! Give me some time!” I managed to blurt out. It was the truth, I didn’t know what I was getting myself into when I said those words.

“You’ve got ten seconds, if not I’ll go all Army of Darkness on you!” (it sure knows its trivia!).

“Okay, don’t bother me and my family, and I will feed you once a week!”

“What, do you think I need food to survive? Look at me!” the skeleton retorted.

“I didn’t think it true! What kind of truce has worked for you in the past?”

“I the life of your firstborn child in exchange for peace and quiet is a pretty common one I’ve received,” it said.

“What if I don’t want kids?”

“What the fuck is wrong with you? Everybody wants to start a family!”

“Not me. I don’t want any kids.”

“Fine, you can make that promise then, since you won’t be having any kids. It’s a win-win for you.”

“Are you going to meddle in my affairs? Will you try to get my partners pregnant?”

“Hell no, I’ve got better things to do than to make holes in condoms.”

“What the fuck do you do inside the closet anyway?”

“That’s none of your concern.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

“So we have a deal?”

“Deal.”


“And kids, that is the story of how you lost an older brother. So if you see a skeleton in your closet, be sure not to make promises you might later regret.”


Writing Prompt from Reddit: “Having just moved into your new home, you jokingly say “If there are any monsters in my room, come out and we can make a truce!” Then, a skeleton walks out of your closet.”

I Am

Things were different in the past, now people care about my color.
At times I am a burden, other times I am a frill.
I can be specific or all-encompassing. I am ubiquitous.
You could live without me but it would be difficult.
Commonly found in the air or on the ground, above and under you.
People worry when I’m left alone in populated places.
You put in me things you trust. I try to keep them safe.


The other day I woke up with a dream where I wrote a riddle and I thought it was brilliant, I managed to save a line on my phone before going back to sleep. I thought I’d try to recreate it but it turns out that writing a clever riddle is harder than I thought. To write a clever riddle you have to skirt the line between being too obtuse or too obvious – something I haven’t mastered. In turn, doing this exercise made me appreciate the amount of work that goes into creating good riddles. Maybe I’ll attempt more in the future.

In case you didn’t figure it out already, I am a bag.

The Spell

“It’s so hard to read this gibberish!” Dina said to herself with the stolen spellbook open in front of her. “There must be a better way to get a prom date!”

“No, this is all Adrian’s fault!” she reasoned. “If only he was in love with me, then I wouldn’t have had to resort to magic!”

She was by no means an experienced spell caster. She was far from one. Dina had spent exactly
one day under the tutelage of the Great Theodore, one of the school’s most powerful wizards before she found herself stealing one of his advanced spell books and attempting spells beyond her means.

Tonight was the school’s prom night and she had decided to test the seduction spell on Adrian because she wanted a dance. Things didn’t go accordingly, and she killed everybody in the vicinity instead. Now she was by herself, trying to figure out how to undo the damage.

Dina flipped through the pages of the book, looking for pictures that resembled mass resurrection. There was nothing as far as she could see. “Maybe that’s in volume two…”

Nearing the end of the book, her eyes widened when she saw a drawing of what appeared to be a tombstone with a crack going through it. “Could this be the spell to raise the dead? Only one way to find out.”

Dina cleared her throat, raised her wand, and did her best to utter the words on the page. “Du’s ra tha rath guia eh ko luu chai!”

Her wand started glowing and lighting shot out from its tip to the corpse closest to her, and bounced around from corpse to corpse, electrocuting each body and bringing them back to life.

“Yes!” she exclaimed, happy that the spell worked.

As the previously dead people rose to their feet, they all looked at Dina, eyes blinking in confusion, demanding an explanation. Eventually, everybody was alive in the hall, including Adrian who was now stumbling towards Dina. However, the lighting continued bouncing around and started striking people once again, sending their bodies into convulsions before turning them into ash and ending their second lives.

Dina realized what was happening and quickly returned to the book for a spell to end her previous spell.

“Dina, what’s going on here? Did you do this?” asked a dazed and concerned Adrian.

“No time to explain!” said Dina, as her eyes frantically scanned the pages of the book. “Ah hah!”

Raising her wand again, Dina yelled, “Suu kai la thri roos rhah!”

Her wand let out a small spark and quickly extended itself, turning itself into a lightning rod. The lightning redirected itself to Dina’s wand, dissipating almost immediately. “Phew.”

She collapsed to the floor, exhausted from the ordeal.


Haven’t done a writing prompt in a while, decided to get back into it today. Prompt from /r/promptoftheday “She resurrected”