I thought I'd give myself one of these threads - you know, one of the ones people dump things they wrote in. Kephras, feel free to sue. Contents: Short Stories The Brain Surgeons: https://empireminecraft.com/threads/things-i-wrote.54488/#post-989255 The Raven: https://empireminecraft.com/threads/things-i-wrote.54488/#post-1032058 The Battle of Christmas (Part I): https://empireminecraft.com/threads/things-i-wrote.54488/#post-1088943 The Victim: https://empireminecraft.com/threads/things-i-wrote.54488/#post-1125970 The Girl: https://empireminecraft.com/threads/things-i-wrote.54488/#post-1217774 The Girl (Rewritten): https://empireminecraft.com/threads/things-i-wrote.54488/page-2#post-1250667 The Flight: https://empireminecraft.com/threads/things-i-wrote.54488/page-2#post-1319521 The Pirates: https://empireminecraft.com/threads/things-i-wrote.54488/page-3#post-1338056 The World's End: https://empireminecraft.com/threads/things-i-wrote.54488/page-3#post-1338857 Thoughts Results: https://empireminecraft.com/threads/things-i-wrote.54488/#post-1224475 Faith: https://empireminecraft.com/threads/things-i-wrote.54488/page-2#post-1242515 Anxieties: https://empireminecraft.com/threads/things-i-wrote.54488/page-2#post-1279165 Friends: https://empireminecraft.com/threads/things-i-wrote.54488/page-3#post-1340939 Joke News Articles Corbyn - The Welshwoman: https://empireminecraft.com/threads/things-i-wrote.54488/page-2#post-1242780 Poems Dreams: https://empireminecraft.com/threads/things-i-wrote.54488/page-2#post-1336257
Story progresses a little too quickly in my opinion, and the paragraphs are mostly all the same or similar sizes, making it look boring. However the grammar and similies/metaphores are good
The story progresses too quickly because it's sort of an introduction thingy. I'll expand it eventually, probably once I'm a significant way through the book if I decide to go ahead with writing one... probably
A joke. That's what it was. A big, fat joke that landed Jeff and I in jail, caused the mental retardation of thousands of people, and made the two of us rich. It was my biggest success, my greatest achievement, and caused my name to be directly linked to 'genocidal maniac'. "I know what we could do!", Jeff had said that morning on the daily commute to work. "Quit our jobs and start a cheap, affordable brain surgeon business!". I had laughed. "Jeff, that's crazy,and you know it. We'd go to prison if we cracked open someone's skull and messed with their brain. I prefer working in an office that stinks of rotten eggs and has damp coming through the ceiling than prison." "No, dude, think about it", Jeff murmured, slinking back in his chair. "We could make a sheet of terms and conditions, where they acknowledge we're not real brain surgeons. That way, they have no reason to call the cops on us both. They've acknowleged the fact that they have a higher chance of dying during the surgery than usual. We just have to put it in small print so we actually get customers!". I smiled. "That might just work, actually". "You'll think about it then?" "Think about it? I've already made up my mind!". I turned the car around and drove back home. We spent all day designing posters and launched our website, quit our jobs, and bought a building. On our day of opening, we made £800, meaning we served forty customers and we were most certainly going to get rich. The amount of people with brain tumours in this town was astounding. Much higher than you would think. Probably because of the neighbouring city's nuclear meltdown of a few months before. We were soon rich private brain surgeons, whose customers never complained about a thing. Ever again. Mostly because they usually lost the ability to talk, sometimes because they genuinely couldn't complain - we made them love everything about life! That makes us good people, right? Jeff backed out of the business after he vomited into somebody's skull on our second day because he couldn't handle the 'gore'. As the 'intellectual property holder', as he put it, he demanded he got 40% of my profits. I complied, seeing as he threatened to call the Police on our 'beauty salon business'. We advertised it like that so the police had no reason to arrest either of us. By the time our business closed, I was a billionaire playboy. I had a family, I had a mansion, I was one of the world's richest people, and life was good. For whatever reason, I continued the brain surgeon business, long after Jeff had been arrested and imprisoned for three years for engaging in... 'unholy' acts that he got with his share of my profits. I had supplied for myself and multiple generations of my descendents, so there was no reason for me to continue. I liked it, though. Bashing someone's skull open with a hammer while they attempt to scream 'why are you doing this? Why isn't the antiseptic working?', picking at random bits of their brain while they're unconscious, and then resealing them up and giving them back to their families... there was certain thrill to it all. Maybe it was the warm, fuzzy feeling you get off helping people. The ten minutes of extreme tension during the operation was made up for when you got to see headlines like 'Another man's skull breaks apart', and pictures of the patient you treated yesterday screaming with the top of their head gone again. It was hilarious. So, yeah... on to the closure of mine and Jeff's business... "Alright, buddy, we're nearly done here!", I said in a re-assuring tone. "Oh... th-thank... G-g-god", the patient dazily stuttered. The door burst wide open. I jumped. My scalpel sliced right through the patient's frontal lobe. "I'm back!", shouted Jeff at the entrance of the door, a cigarette in his mouth. "Jeff!" I yelled. My face lit up. "I've missed you, man!". "Still doing this, I see?" he said, looking into my patient's skull. He dropped his cigarette into the patient's skull. He slapped him. "Thanks a lot dude, now I have to light another one up. You've just accelerated the rate of me getting lung cancer!". "I guess he doesn't need this anymore, then." I said, getting a firm grip on the patient's frontal lobe, and pulling it out. I threw it into the bin. I sealed the patient's head back up with super glue. I was running out of the surgical glue stuff, so I had to ration it. Extreme cases only. I wheeled the patient out of the room and gave him back to his family. They left the building, and me and Jeff sat down over a cup of coffee and talked. The door swung open, the bell rang, and the patient I had just treated was being wheeled back in. "What have you done!", yelled the man's father, who looked really angry at me. The patient was sat, limp, in the wheelchair the family had just stolen. "Guys! That's my wheelchair! Why did you take it?". I walked over to them, threw the patient onto the floor, and his skull re-opened again when he hit it. "Sorry, Stephen Hawking". The man's father grabbed me and hit me in the face. "What did you DO?!", he screamed, spitting everywhere. "First of all, say it, don't spray it. Second of all, I don't know." He threw me back into my chair, rolled up his sleeves, and put his fists into a ball. "Look, dude, I told you - I'm not a real brain surgeon. If you need your son's brain fixing up again, go talk to the professionals". "When did you tell me you're not a brain surgeon?", the man grunted. "What do you mean 'when'? In the terms and conditions I got you to sign before I operated on the patient!" I yelled. "I'm calling the cops!" screamed the patient's mother, crying, putting her son back into the wheelchair and wheeling him away. "Go ahead, call the Police!" I yelled to the patient's father. "See if I care! The Police can't give you your son's frontal lobe back!". The father ran out of the room. "Jeez, talk about an overreaction", I murmured to Jeff. Jeff laughed. We talked for about twenty more minutes and incinerated the patient's 'waste', before the Police came in and arrested me. Turns out, telling the Police that you put 'By using Brains n' Brawn services, you acknowledge that we are not real brain surgeons and any damage done to the patient's brain and well-being is their fault' in a size one font won't stop them from arresting you. And that's how me and Jeff got put in jail and are now awaiting trial.
Picked up a follow up to this today. I'll publish it within the next few days if I like it enough. For now, I'll leave you with this, which I wrote about a year and a bit ago and am still quite proud of
Sigma lifted up the black visor that covered his face, and looked out over the white, barren wasteland. Small hills, covered with snow, dotted the landscape at random intervals. The smell of the darkest smoke found in the galaxy filled his nostrils, and the crackle of burning flames could be heard behind him. Sol beated down on him from above. He breathed in the air - it wasn't as clean as what he had respired aboard the Septem, or on his home planet. He could taste the impurities. "Delta", he rasped. He cleared his throat as the holographic woman shimmered into existence in front of him. "What day is this?" "December 24th", she replied through a synthetic voice. "December 24th", Sigma muttered. "Merry Christmas, as the humans would say." The holographic companion gave a sarcastic 'haha' in her synthetic voice, and walked forward towards Sol, her back now facing Sigma. "Nice flying back there." "I was flying fine", Sigma replied. "Dodging lasers fired from Tempus Elementorum while the Septem's wing is on fire was the problem." "We got here, anyway", Delta confirmed. "Less than gracefully." Sigma rose to his feet, taking in a long breath of air. "The impurities in the air I'm breathing in give me a rough idea of where we are, but can you tell me for certain?" "Planet Earth, 2289", Delta confirmed. "You were sent here to kill the biggest war criminal of all time - the man who set off every nuclear weapon in the world off at once. The man who committed the genocide of 24 billion people. You're here to kill Santa Claus." "Talk about Christmas cheer", Sigma said. "Where's 'Santa Claus' located?" "Lappland, Sweden" "Where are we now?" "The ruins of London, England, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland". "Oh, so we're not too far off, then?" "Not if you use the cybernetic implants in your legs and the aid your exoskeleton gives you, no, we're not. The North Sea is entirely frozen over, so you can walk across it". Sigma clicked a few buttons on the neck of his exoskeletal suit. 'Respirator systems: in critical condition', a little voice in his helmet said. Sigma leaned forward, and he began to run from his little burning ship and down the white, snow-covered hill. He went north-east. He was going to kill Saint Nicholas.
I sat at the bar stool, wiping the butt of my cigarette on the counter. "You need to think about your choice of actions before you make them", I muttered, pouring myself a drink from a nearby bottle of wine that had been left out before the incident. "It would have really helped your situation". I took a sip of the wine. "I'll... i'll... ki-", the man coughed, blood sputtering out of his mouth. "I'm going to kill you", he growled. He slid towards the floor when he tried to move. "And just how are you going to do that? I just shot you in the lung and God knows where else. It'll collapse in a few minutes and you will be dead". I pulled out another cigarette and my lighter, and lit it. "Want it?". The man leaned forward off the bar's wall and flung himself on the counter. He swiped the cigarette from my hands, and placed it in his mouth. He coughed. "You don't mess with us. Remember that. When you have a good thing going with us, you don't cut it off to go supply some other family for better money - you stay with us, otherwise you end up in messes like this". I took another sip of wine - it tasted sour and made my mouth feel dry. "Killing me stops the supply anyway", the man muttered. "Maybe", I let the dryness subside for a moment. "But we weren't getting anything off you anyway, so it doesn't matter whether you're dead or not". I stood up, and went into the back room for around thirty seconds. I re-emerged with a hammer. "You know, I liked you, Tom. I really did. So I'm going to be merciful - it has to be painful, or else I'll die too. This is going to hurt, but it'll be much quicker than what you're going through right now. I'm sorry". "Screw you", Tom said under his breath. "Yeah", I sighed. "I'll make sure your wife and kids do okay. I can't promise anything for your parents. I'll try to get them out of that slum, but I don't think the boss will let that happen. He has a soft spot for single mothers and their children, though, so I can definitely get you that much." Tom was in the middle of thanking me - as much as he could, given his situation, not realising where I stood. I was directly behind him - hammer raised, poised to strike down into his skull. I cut him off mid-sentence, and the little family-owned pub he had suddenly became a cacophony of screams of every volume known to man. What a shame. I walked over to the pub's door, took my hat and coat off the hanger, and put them on. I turned to face the counter, which was now red with blood. "What a mess", I muttered, leaving out through the door. I ran to an alley on the other side of the street, turning around to see dozens of police surrounding the area. "I'm sorry, Tom... but a war is coming, and you were ammunition for the enemy. If only you weren't so stupid".
She's stood there among red roses and green bushes; hands in front of her waist, one leg in front of the other, high heels making her look taller than she actually is. Her ashen hair flows beyond her shoulders - the lighting makes it difficult to make out her face, but pigs will fly before that isn't beautiful. She wears a sleeveless, purple dress - the colour of royalty, wealth, power and glory. The cloudless sky glows a perfect orange haze behind her, the sun taking its last bow for the day behind tree-covered green hills - making way for the Moon to take the throne of the sky. The clear blue lake behind her shows reflections; reflections of the sunset, the moonrise, the hills, the trees, the houses that sit nestled among the green. It looks perfectly still - a safe haven in a warzone of hate, death, and filth known as Earth. Yet not even that compares to the perfect girl who stands before it. She has her flaws and insecurities, but they also make her an icon of such magnificence. I long to put an arm around her shoulders or to share a laugh with her without us having to be embedded in our mobile screens, but I fear she will never know how I truly feel and these dreams will never blossom into a reality. ~Something inspired by recent things in my life. Looking back on it this sounds so god damn creepy to write, but I love writing about my inner dialogue and feelings and I thought this was good enough to share.
I'm tired - running on five to six hours of sleep a night and caffeine will do that to you when you're living in a teenage body. My eyes feel heavy and my body feels fatigued - yet I still fail to sleep. I toss and turn all night long, but the clock must strike 4AM before I can even begin to drift into my little world of dreams. I awake to the sound of my phone, blaring its ringtone beside me at 8AM. "But I only just got to sleep", I croak to myself. I turn the alarm off and disable the ones set to get off over the next hour in case I don't awake. I try to get up, but my body aches with tiredness. I close my eyes again, convincing myself I can rest them a little bit before I begin moving. I don't - I spiral back into darkness. My youngest brother throws the door open, which should really be jolting me awake, but I just open one of my eyes halfway. It's 8:30AM. He stares at me - fully clothed, ready to leave the house. "What do you want?", I mumble, turning away from him and closing my eye. He tells me he forgot, but says goodbye as he leaves to some day full of activities and runs from my room - leaving the door wide open, but I don't care. The clock strikes 11:50AM. This time, my eyes open to stay open. I get up, get dressed, and turn my laptop on. I check my accounts on the internet, read messages, and I head downstairs to eat breakfast. I go back upstairs with a cup of tea in hand, and continue to browse the internet or text my friends. I think of the exams I sat two months ago. "Shit," I'll say to myself. I check the date. It's getting closer to the 25th. My stomach churns at the thought of the date, and going onto social media doesn't help - it's spilling with people worrying over the exams. I am desperate to reply to them with something snarky, along the lines of telling them they have nothing to worry about - at least they weren't overly stressed during that exam time period. My hands begin to shake at the thought of opening my results envelope, and I know I'm probably going to disappoint my family members. I'm that kid who has had nothing but "he's so smart!" said about him by teachers since he was four years old. That kid who, at the age of ten, had his parents be told he's an excellent writer and has a future in it. That kid who, at the age of eleven, caved under stress put on him by his teacher and the bullying he received from classmates for the past five years, but still did massively okay in his SATs results. Something changed. The young boy who told his parents he's going to move far away from his birthplace and buy them a nice house somewhere, someday, was gone. "I have this in the bag," I recall telling my mother when I was fourteen years old, "I don't need to revise. And if I fail, who cares? I can sort stuff out myself later on." She'd looked at me with disgust, pulling her eyes from the road, as we turned the corner to school. "You keep telling yourself that", she muttered, "and see where it gets you come results day." "Whatever," I'd said. "I don't need these exam results anyway." And then that boy came back. He met a girl who made him want to do well and told him to do what he wants to do, and made him feel like he could. He wanted to do as much as he could for his exams. And then, just before he started the exams, she was gone, and he didn't want to do anything. Stress and anxiety and self-loathing consumed him for the first time in years. I missed an exam and didn't complete two and figured, 'what happens, happens'. I knew I'd failed, and people around me knew I'd failed myself. "What's wrong with you?" my mum had asked as I got in her car after school. "I missed my Leisure and Tourism exam," I said, trying to conceal any and all rage (directed at myself) that had been building up in me all day. "It doesn't matter anyway. It bears no relevance to what I want to do anyway. I'm already stuck in this town for life, there's no point in fighting it - you did better than I ever could in school and you've had to raise your kids here. If you can't do it, I can't do it." "Don't let this set the tone for the rest of your exams. If anything comes up with you missing that exam, I'll deal with it. You just focus on doing the best you can for the rest", she told me. I turned away, tears nearly breaching past the tear ducts for the first time in years as the events of the last few weeks flashed before my eyes. I couldn't tell her anything about what was making me like this - I was relying on a girl I knew over the internet to motivate myself and she was gone, and with her, my motivation to do anything. She would have thought it to be pathetic - she was probably of the opinion that you can't like a person in that way over the internet. I went through the next few weeks, avoiding anything to do with missing the exam - nobody knew, and I planned to keep it that way. I was too embarrassed to say anything. I went through the next ten like a mindless drone. I tried to work for them in the limited amount of time I had - but I was too anxious to focus on anything. I did twelve hours of preparation in total for one of the exams, and I wrote about three paragraphs in the entire thing - for even a D grade, I was advised to have six. And then the girl came back. And then I wanted to do well again. I started revising when she did, and talking to her would let the world roll off my shoulders. But it was too late, too far into the exam season - it was nearly over. And so now, I sit. I sit in waiting of what the 25th of August, 2016 will deliver to me in a brown envelope. I sit, having heart palpitations every now and then, my heart racing, knees shaking, and I write songs and stories and draw and talk to people to take my mind off things. I think of how close 9AM on that day is, and my toes curl and I run out of breath and sweat and I pray to a God I don't even believe in that when I open that envelope, my friends who did minimal revision also are there too, and we're the lucky few who can do well in our exams without even trying... Deep down, I know we're not. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This was a thing relating to my current thoughts. It's probably all over the place, but this is how I'm getting these thoughts out and the only way I can really vent. Releasing this stuff in writing form, and especially when sharing it publicly, reduces the anxiety I get when I think about this stuff. Soooo yeah. That's it. The past 2 years (technically 12 years) summed up, very quickly, in a post.
