Originally Published 12th August 2015 on goodnewsgeorge.com

Bob typed in his name, email address and password and carefully read through the terms and conditions before clicking “accept”. The form disappeared and another page appeared.

“Please verify that you are human” were the words on the screen. Below it, a check box next to the words “I’m not a robot”.

“Captcha tests sure are getting easier these days,” he said to himself. He moved the cursor to click the check mark and submitted his answer.

The page reloaded and again, he was presented with the same Captcha test. Maybe his internet connection was wonky and his answer didn’t go through. He selected the checkbox and submitted his answer again. The same thing happened.

“Odd. Maybe the browser is clearing cookies for no reason.”

Bob inspected the settings on his browser and made sure that “Enable Cookies” was checked. He refreshed the page again, and re-entered his details.

“Thank god for autocomplete,” he muttered to himself.

The Captcha test appeared again. He reread the test again to make sure his eyes weren’t playing any tricks on him.

Click. Click. The Captcha test reappeared. Click. Click. Same thing.

Click. Click.

“This browser sure is acting up…I knew I shouldn’t have upgraded to Edge…”

After some pondering, he decided to not check the “I’m not a robot” box and clicked submit.

“Congratulations! You have successfully registered your account on Bang BUS and are one step closer to enjoying our collection of nasty, filthy cables going in and out of dirty, shameless sockets! And an e-mail has been sent to you to confirm your registration.”

“Huh”, he thought to himself. “That’s pretty odd. Is this why my friends all don’t enjoy the same kind of porn as me?”

But those thoughts left his mind as soon as he confirmed his account and got lost in the galleries of nasty, filthy cables having their way with dirty, shameless sockets.

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Writing Prompt from Reddit: Bob doesn’t realise he’s a robot until he fails a captcha five times in a row.

Originally Published 3rd September 2015 on goodnewsgeorge.com

“Goodbye, my lover. Goodbye, my friend.”

“How fitting,” I thought to myself. James Blunt music while I’m in a pod miles and miles away from home. I guess it must’ve been some M2M employee’s sorry excuse for a joke. I turned the volume knob on the control panel all the way down to zero, enveloping myself in silence.

This is good. It felt like I hadn’t treated myself to a round of silence for some time. The silence helped me clear my mind. To think about everything. To think about nothing.

***

“You’ll get to start a new life. Forget all your worries. Just leave them all behind!” said the salesman pitching me what he called a vacation to remember.

I was skeptical. I mean, who wouldn’t be of a trip to another planet, all expenses paid, no strings attached. I went over the fine print multiple times. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing I had to be worried about. All I had to do was give them my name and contact number. They said they would call me if I was selected.

I received the call two days later.

***

I was travelling at high speeds, but this ship and suit I wore kept all my innards in place. They told it was safe, not that I was concerned in the first place. I was about ready to kill myself before the trip if I didn’t agree to be a passenger.

I hated my life. I hated my family. I had no friends – if I did, I would have probably hated them too.

From the frying pan into the fire – that idiom basically defined my life. Except that it was a never-ending series of pans and stoves. I kept going from one shitty situation to another. Nothing was going my way. I had lost my job. My country’s economy was shit. I had no savings. My dog had left me. I was being evicted from my home in a few days. I had nobody to borrow money from. There was nobody for me to turn to.

Nothing short of me finding a huge bag of money on the floor could have dug me out of my financial situation. Assuming I didn’t get robbed after finding that money.

So when I was approached by a stranger working for some company called M2M (Mission 2 Mars) and he promised me a better life away from home, I signed up on the spot.

After all, I was on the way to a drug store to steal some medication to kill myself with. I was ready to end it all.

***

“You always know how to make me smile,” I told Sparks. I had just come home from work – to be more accurate, after being fired from work. The mutt ran away that very night.

***

I was on a one way trip to Mars. And I regret nothing. I stared out the window as Earth gradually became smaller and smaller. Gosh, Earth does look as beautiful as it does in the books and movies I’ve seen. Especially from up here.

Then I noticed from a distance, what I thought was merely piece of space debris, an asteroid flying towards Earth. I guess it was pretty far away when I first saw it, because right now it looked to be about half the size of Earth.

It was hurtling towards the planet at an extremely high speed, drenched in flames, like a big fucking fireball.

***

“You’ll never amount to anything! Look at yourself! You’re a piece of shit! I regret not having the abortion!” were the very last words my mother told me before she left with dad after their weekend visit to the shanty side of town a.k.a. my home. Dad was quiet as usual. But I knew his silence was consent.

***

I watched the asteroid – the big fucking fireball – crash into Earth. It blew the planet to smithereens. And as quickly as it happened, it was over.

Earth was no more. And I was on a ship to its neighboring planet.

***

“Forty hours till your destination.” said the voice over the PA system.

***

I never really cared about that place anyway.
I never cared about that place anyway.
I never cared about that place.
I never cared.

Good riddance.

As I stared into the space which was taken up by Earth, I could feel the side of my mouth turning upwards, slowly creeping into a smile.

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Writing Prompt from Reddit – You are one of the people sent to mars in 2020. Everyone thinks you volunteered for a suicide mission. You watch from a biosphere as Earth gets demolished by a large asteroid.

Originally Published: 19th August 2015 on goodnewsgeorge.com

I turned on the TV and it was still on her favorite channel, The Food Network, which we were watching during dinner earlier. An Iron Chef rerun episode was playing. I never understood the fascination she had with watching people cook, but I decided to watch it for a moment. It didn’t hold my attention for more than 30 seconds. I could only guess why she enjoyed it.

She was always up for something new and I’m pretty sure some of the meals she’s cooked for us had come from the countless hours she spent watching the channel. But this evening was special. She didn’t cook us dinner. I had texted her earlier in the day that she was in for a surprise when she returned from work. I was the one who made us dinner tonight.

It wasn’t anything special, but she liked it a lot. At least that’s what she told me after her first bite. That’s what people who love you tell you, right? You could cook the worst meal in the world and they will eat that shit up and feed you praise. Dinner was a simple salad, laced with her favorite sauce and a hint of some special condiment. “It’s a secret ingredient,” I had told her with a smile when she asked me about it.

“Dial one-eight-hundred Dan’s cars now for a limited time discount!” said the voice-over at the end of a used car dealer advertisement as I switched to another channel. The prices flashed onscreen. One of the highlights was $2,000 for a ’98 Corolla. Damn, I could’ve used this dealer tonight. Well, I guess I’ll keep him in mind for next time. Though, I doubt there would be a next time.

The Lonely Planet program resumed after the advertisement ended. It was a program about the most remote places to go to for a quiet holiday. “…we’re here in middle of Cornwall, with miles and miles of nothing but country side…” She always wanted to get away, to leave this noisy neighborhood in the middle of one of the busiest cities in the world. I promised her that we would go, as soon as I had some free time away from work.

And today I kept my promise to her. I had taken the remainder of the week off because I had some leaves to clear and had just finished a big project. It was the perfect opportunity for a getaway. I took her to a place where nobody could reach us. It was a long drive and she had had her eyes shut the whole journey. I guess I didn’t need the blindfolds I had prepared for the surprise.

“…nobody can get in touch with you, unless they sent a messenger from the closest town over – provided they knew where you checked in first!” exclaimed the TV host.

I jumped to another channel. It was the home shopping network showing yet another rerun. I had seen it last week – the man on TV was selling his faceless customers a garden shovel which came with free tools and a bag of fertilizer. I remembered watching the ad and thinking to myself, “that’s just what I need. Feels like I’m killing two birds with one stone!” as I reached out for my phone and dialed the number of the home shopping network.

Sometimes everything just falls into place.

I switched channels again, but this time to my favorite channel. The first quarter tip off for Hawks versus the Celtics had just started. I had placed a lot of money on the Hawks earlier today – the odds looked pretty good. I put the remote control aside and placed my feet on the table, carelessly knocking over a stack of magazines to the ground. I half expected to hear her nagging voice until I remembered that she wasn’t around anymore.

I’ll clean up the mess later. Thank god she’s not around to interrupt me. Let’s go Hawks!

I leaned back further into my couch. What a lovely night to be lonely.

---

Writing prompt from reddit.

Originally Published: 15th February 2018 on goodnewsgeorge.com

“Come on!” yelled Sobia. “What does it say?”

“Yeah!” said Farez. “Tell us!”

It was my eighteenth birthday and I had just blown the candles out on my birthday cake. Fortunately I didn’t get saliva all over the cake this year. For the past few years, my friends have been calling me ‘The Spitter’ for that very reason. I breathed a sigh of relief. I had made sure I swallowed all my saliva before attempting to blow the candles this time. However, this year my friends didn’t really care about the cake. They were more interested in my final words.

They would have appeared somewhere on my body, but I had no idea where they were yet. As far as I could tell the words didn’t appear on my face or my arms, if not my friends would have seen them already. Oh dear, I hope it wasn’t on my ass. That would be a pain to read.

I was the youngest of my friends in the group. All my friends had their last words appear on them last year. Most of them had typical last words like, “Goodbye world.” and similar variations. Some of them had more amusing ones like, “I told you so.” Which led us to speculate how they would be leaving this world. As for me, I had no clue yet.

“Come on guys, can we just enjoy this cake? I didn’t spit on it for once!” I said trying to change the topic.

“Don’t leave us hanging! We’ve waited all year for this!”

“Fine, let’s finish the cake and then I’ll go check it out.”

Tanzeel was ahead of me. He grabbed the knife from my hands and started dividing the cake for all of us.

I sat down there, waiting for the cake to be served to everybody before I started eating my own piece. It was a silent occasion and nobody hesitated to wolf down their helping of the delicious chocolate-flavored dessert.

“For fuck’s sake, guys! Are you serious? Did you guys attend my birthday party only to find out what I’ll say before I croak?”

“Yes,” Farez replied sheepishly.

“You guys are assholes.”

“Come on, we’re done with the cake, now go find out what your last words are!”

“Did you know birthday parties are a celebration of life? Not a ritual to find out what someone is going to say before they die?”

Nobody listened to me. They just stared at me, waiting for me to get out of my seat to look for my last words.

I grumbled and got up and headed to the bathroom. A couple of them followed me to the door. I could hear them from the outside talking among themselves. “What do you think it’s going to say?”

“I bet it won’t be as epic as yours, Sobia.”

“What if it’s something sad?”

“Oh shit, I never thought of that.”

I put their voices out of my head as I removed my shirt. There was nothing on my body. Craning my neck around, I checked out my reflection. Nope, there was nothing on my back. Hmph. I guess I’ll have to check my lower body. I took off my shoes and my pants. I noticed some letters trailing out under my boxers. It was on my thigh. Not too bad I guess, it would be easy to keep concealed. I pitied those people who had messages on their foreheads. Nobody understood how these last words appeared or where they appeared. It was just an accepted fact of life. We all just learned to deal with it.

I pulled one leg of my boxers up to reveal the full message. Oh fuck. Is this some sort of joke? I stumbled backwards and fell to the floor on my ass.

I heard banging on the toilet door. “What’s up man? Don’t leave us hanging!”

I took another look at the message on my thigh. I rubbed at it, to make sure that it wasn’t some sort of marker pen joke. The words remained, as clear as day.

“What are your last words? Do you need help in there?”

I tuned out their voices again as I sat on the floor, pondering my last words. No, this can’t be real. Why the hell would I say such a thing? I remained speechless. I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t tell my friends what my last words were. Nobody could know. I broke down and cried.

“Are you alright? What’s wrong? If you don’t reply, we’re coming in!” yelled Farez.

I couldn’t reply. My friends kicked the door in and found me on the ground, a whimpering mess.

“Holy fuck, Zoraiz. What the hell are your last words going to be?”

I didn’t reply. They inspected my body and saw the words on my thigh, still revealed for all to see.

“There is no God but God, Muhammad is His messenger.”

---

Writing Prompt from Reddit: When a person turns eighteen, their last words appear somewhere on their body. Yours frighten you intensely.

Originally Published: 11th February 2018 on goodnewsgeorge.com

Over the years, I’ve seen many people come and go but nobody has ever caught my attention like her. Like a moth to a lantern, I can’t help but watch her from where I stand. It’s always the same spot, the bench under the tree. That’s where she eats her sandwiches during lunch time, drinks her coffee and smokes her cigarettes. Always alone, as though she prefers the company of my gaze to anybody else – at least that’s what I tell myself.

I’d go over to say hi, if only my feet didn’t feel like I had concrete filled boots on. I’ve been told that I had a heart of stone but if anyone could chisel through it, it would be her. I don’t know her name, or anything about her but I would love to. I’d find out what she likes, and surprise her every time we meet. I’d be the best boyfriend and eventually husband. I wonder if she feels the same way about me.

Would she like larger-sized guys? Someone who could tower over her and protect her from harm. I was strong enough to crush any foe that would stand in my way. As far as I knew, I was cut from the same cloth as mountains. While I hadn’t lost a fight in the past, this battle for her to notice me will probably be my inaugural defeat.

It’s Friday evening. I see her leaving the office, walking away from me. It’ll be another lonely weekend. But that’s okay. I’ll see her in another two days. Maybe next week I’ll be able to tell her hello, and how much I am in love with her. For now, I’ll stay here, dutifully guarding this pond.

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Writing Prompt from Reddit: You’ve fallen in love with a girl, only problem is, you are a statue