strangelittlestories

[strangelittlestories]

The Miller’s Daughter watched and listened in the darkness. The light from the flames of the bonfire flickered through the underbrush. The eerie lilt of the song echoed around the trees.

As the strange creature of a man who had been both her saviour and tormentor sang the last words that announced his name, she felt a wave of relief wash over her. But when that wave subsided, she was left with only anger.

She *should* have waited for him to leave. She *should* have taken her eavesdropped knowledge safely home. But this situation was too absurd. The whole mess of her story bubbled up inside her.

She burst out of her hiding place, crying out, "Can I offer you some bells for your hat?"

"What?" The capering figure stumbles and backs away from her, nearly stepping into the fire.

"Or maybe some motley for your coat? Some ribbons for your walking stick?" She was yelling. A wild giddiness was rising inside her.

The impish man clocked who was accosting him. Conflicting expressions warred on his face. He settled on a poisonous smile; he thought he knew the Miller’s Daughter. He thought he knew the shape this interaction should take.

"...did all those nights staring at the spinning wheel addle your mind? What are you talking about?"

She kept striding towards him and kept talking directly into his face. Spittle landed on his eyelid.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I thought since you were such a Grade A fool, you might want some of the accoutrements." She stood over him, backing him right up to the bonfire’s edge. “Obviously, my life is a joke to you. And my child is apparently the punchline! You hogwashed buffoon. You fate-addled jester.”

“Okay, you’re upset-”

He tried to wriggle away from her. The shadows bent around him as he moved. His whole body went flimsy and wrong-shaped.

But she caught him with firm hands, wrath wrapped like bands of iron around her fingers. He schlurped back into a focus. She held him out over the fire like the world’s most haunted marshmallow.

“Alright, Rumpel-sh*t-stain,” she hissed, “what was the point? Why do this? Why help me marry a man who threatened to execute me? Why make me promise my first born? Why sing your own gods-damned name while dancing round a fire withing walking distance of my home? What was the point of all this, you incomprehensible harlequin?”

“Hey now, let’s not be hasty, Miller’s Daughter-”

“My *name* is Beth.” said Beth, who realised in saying it that she had made it true.

This, more than the threat of the fire beneath him, seemed to horrify the twisting man she held in her hands.

“Beth. Great. Love that for you.” The words tumbled out of his mouth. “Listen. It was never about taking your child. I just had to find a way to clear you debt! You’ve gotta pay your debts, y’know? We *want* you to keep the kid. That kid’s gonna be a prince or a princess! That’s right where they need to be. They’ve got a great destiny in front of them. We just want to help the fulfil it!”

Beth stared iron spikes into Rumpelstiltskin’s soul.

“Who.” she spat. “Is ‘we’?”

---

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[strangelittlestories]

affirmations for writers: i know how to write. i have seen sentences before, and i know how to make one. i can identify up to several words and their meanings. i am not afraid of semicolons.

[strangelittlestories]

To the person anonymously writing slowburn office lady yuri in my DMs

I don't know why you've chosen me for this harassment campaign you've embarked on. I don't know why you feel that my DMs are a better medium for this story than, I don't know, posting them on a writing website?? Or on your own blog??? And most importantly, I don't know why you are laboring under the delusion that I can't report you just because you are sending the chapters anonymously -- I can in fact, and you would be IP banned.

I'm issuing you this ultimatum right now:

Stop sending me your slowburn office lady yuri

OR

I will report you

OR

Send me the next chapter within 24 hours, because are a fucker for where you left it off, and you have not sent a new chapter in several days. I need to know whether, when they were the only two in the office late at night after a brutal crunch week, and the stars could be seen in the sky due to a power outage on their block, and they talked about life, they actually do kiss or if that's another fakeout, of which you have done MANY.

My patience with you has worn thin. Stop sending me this story, or send me more, or I will report you.

Good night.

[strangelittlestories]

Okay, but hear me out: a horror remake of Home Alone, where the sticky bandits are vampires.

The bandits scheme their way into getting an invite into the McAllister home. They know Kevin's home alone and figure he'll be easy prey.

The twist, of course, is that they're not the monster. Obviously, Kevin is.

The rest of the movie is classic horror fare, with the two vampires trying to escape the horrible Rube Goldberg Saw trap that is this house. The reason they survive all the extremely lethal traps is that they're vampires.

Their inability to die, frankly, only compounds the horror.

Then the old man who hits them with a shovel at the end is Van Helsing.

[strangelittlestories]

"God never gives you more than you can handle."

Bold of you to assume.

If I were a bicycle, I would have no bars

You would have to steer me with your knees

Careening from disappointment to disappointment.

I would have nowhere to put your light

Or your horn.

Every time I try to come up with a name

To use online, I find myself consulting my passport.

My sock puppet accounts are very ineffective.

Each and every spy I have tried

To bring in from the cold

Has frozen. 

If I were a delivery driver,

I would not even read as far as "...with care".

A star would be born in the back of my van

As the stacked packages collapsed on themselves.

My lack of capacity is so large it is a singularity

It creates life.

A responsibility, by the way, I *cannot handle*.

I will be god to this new universe

And I will give them more

More

More

More

Than they can possibly handle.

[strangelittlestories]

You know that story about that guy who hid his death in a needle that was inside an egg that was inside a duck that was inside something else? And so on and so on?

Hopefully you do, otherwise this next bit won't make much sense to you.

I feel sometimes like someone has done that with me.

Not that they've taken my death and hidden it somewhere (though I'm still here, improbably, so maybe). No, I mean it feels like someone has hidden something vital and fragile and maybe a bit sharp inside me.

I think I can feel it sometimes. That if I bend the wrong way or move too fast or crash too hard into my limits, then something inside me will crack and people will come looking for the pieces. It's like… someone tore a little bit of me out and tied a knot in all the tubes to keep some terrible treasure safe.

That is to say: I feel simultaneously maximum security and intensely breakable.

It would make sense, too, of this sense of impending doom. This feeling I have when I am walking home at night that there is someone or something watching me from the gloom outside the halo of the street lamps. The other day, I thought I saw a figure in an overcoat and beanie hat on a rooftop, staring scalpels at me (which is like ‘staring daggers’, only it doesn’t feel violent, just like I was an inconvenient growth on the thing of real value). That’s all I could remember, though: the coat and hat and stare, like the rest of them was just… blank.

Last week, I crossed the road and three pigeons turned the heads to stare at me and watched me until I rounded the corner. Only, I’d gone the wrong way, so had to double back. The pigeons were gathered in a little huddle, cooing in a way that was both judgemental and inquisitive. As if to say: “Really? They did it in this idiot?”

It could be nothing. My memory has always been a coffeestained letter, smudged in vital places and urgently needing a follow-up phone call. But it feels like *something*, even if it is nothing.

That is to say: I feel at once both hunted and unwanted.

Is there a word for this? It isn’t quite being paranoid. It’s not exactly hypochondria. It’s one of their grandchildren, though.

---

Psssst. Hey. Listen.

It’s me. The thing inside of our friend.

Don’t look at me like that. It’s not my fault they’re like this. They felt this way already. Their whole life, pretty much.

That’s one of the reasons why I chose to hide in here. They wouldn’t notice the difference.

The other reason is that they’re nice and twitchy. If you’re small and fragile and precious, and you’re looking for somewhere to stay safe, I recommend taking shelter in an anxious person.

It may not be a relaxing experience, but you can be darned sure they’ll notice if anything’s trying to sneak up on you.

They’re scared of so many things that aren’t out to get them, it might even make them feel a little better to know they kept us safe by fleeing the things that *were*.

Oh, don’t look at me like that! I’m going to pay them back for all the help, I swear.

For, you see, they were wrong about one thing: I am not like the death hidden in the needle in the egg. I am almost the opposite. I am a birth.

A birth that is strange and tenebrous. A birth that is ten degrees to the left of real. A birth that is always just below the boiling point of nightmares.

And I’m just about ready to pop.

I’m so excited to meet my friend and show them that the squirming sharpness inside them was always a miracle.

---

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[strangelittlestories]

trying to word this in a way that isn't hideously regressive and reactionary, but i do think, for me personally at least, the most effective "lady knight" character archetypes and stories are the ones that exist in a setting that at least acknowledges the existence of gender-based oppression/essentialism and patriarchal hegemony. which isn't to say that nobody can or should create art where societal values are more progressive and women are allowed and even encouraged to become knights, but that - to me - exploring what it means to transgress against the established social order in order to become a public figure whose intended purpose is to maintain, protect, and reinforce that same established social order (through violence) is much more interesting.

[strangelittlestories]

They called him Idle Hans.

Not because he was lazy (laziness isn't real), but because he had already done most of the stuff he wanted to do. Hans rested easy, knowing the great achievements of his life were in the past and he was never going to top them - so he did not try.

The latter years of his life were pretty easy-going, but punctuated by the occasional suggestion that he should find a new goal or take up a new hobby.

"No thanks," he would always say, "I'm fine to float through the chill twilight. I don't need to be haunted by the tyranny of achievement."

He passed away aged 90, on a very low-key hangout at a local park.

In the afterlife, things got decidedly less low-key.

Wherever Hans had ended up was dark. It was aggressively, proactively dark. The kind of dark that Anish Kapoor would try to get exclusive rights to. A shade of black that was definitely trying too hard.

A voice echoed out of the darkness...

"You're Idle Hans, right?"

"Yes. That's me."

"Great. Because I'm going to make some work for you." said the Devil.

"I'll hear you out, because there's a solid pun here," replied Idle Hans, "but I can't say I'm interested."

"I think you might be intrigued. I want to make you a demon of rest."

"There's demons for that?"

"Oh sure, technically it's filed under Apathy."

"What's the work like?"

"Oh, y'know, you go and sit on folks' shoulders and whisper stuff like 'maybe take a nap' or 'light one of the nice scented candles you've been saving'.

"Sounds surprisingly... wholesome."

"Blame the protestant work ethic. They've made the oppression of the to-do list into a virtue. So radical rest is the province of the Enemy."

Idle Hans chewed this over. He turned the world over and over in his head, the pieces falling into place like a jigsaw puzzle when you finally have the corners sorted.

"I'm in. But it sounds like a big job for just me."

"Don't worry about it. We're gonna clone you, so you'll have a small army of demon Hans' to help out. A whole host of you, so you can really take the weight off some of those poor over-capitalised souls."

"So what you're saying..." said Hans, "is that many Hans make work light?"

"I knew you'd fit in here." said the Devil.

[strangelittlestories]

Credit to: user

[strangelittlestories]

"We are the children of the cosmos," said the Druid of the Stars, "it is our duty to sift the heavens for wisdom left for us by our celestial parents."

"That is a nonsense," replied the Druid of the Earth, "we are the children of our planet. It is our duty to cultivate the gifts our progenitors planted in the dirt."

"I dunno," said a third Druid, "why are the heavens and the land our parents? We named them. We tell them stories. We feed them with our devotion and our bodies. If anything, they're our *kids*."

"Who the heck are you?" asked the Star Druid.

"I am outraged." exclaimed the Earth Druid.

"Hi outraged." The third druid smiled. "I'm Dad Druid."

---

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[strangelittlestories]

Knight who seeks to get injured in combat so she can be tenderly held by her Lady but she keeps absolutely killing it out there and she's too honorable to throw a fight

[strangelittlestories]

If you have not studied The Arcane Arts (tm), the best piece of advice I can give you is this: do not answer your phone.

I know, you don't need to be told. Who answers their phone these days?

But just in case you're ever tempted...

Just in case you ever wonder if the person calling has something interesting to say...

Just in case you ever want to hear a human voice, even if it's spam call...

Don't.

Not unless you've had your local Helpdesk Wizard install some really robust wards.

You probably won't even speak to a human. Most of the things doing the calling are homunculi bodged together from LLMs and discarded toenails. The humans you will speak to are all sleep-debtors, aka the unfortunate souls who pay off their student loans by renting their unconscious minds to call centres while they slumber.

And they'll *all* try to curse you.

Cold-call cursing is one of the banes of modern existence. It's a huge industry. They keep it pretty lowkey - just grimy little Luck Sinks or cloying Attention Drains. You won't notice you've been cursed, but your life will be just that *little bit worse*.

It's about volume to them. If they make 10,000 calls a day and get even just 10 pick-ups, then that's ten tiny worms of ill-intent burrowing under the skin of your psyche and gobbling up your karma. Times that by 365 days a year, then add in the fact that most people only get themselves exorcised every 6 months at most? You get a hoard of ill-gotten fortune.

That's how they do it. That's how they make life unliveable. They do it a little at a time over the course of years.

So don't answer the phone.

And, hey! If hearing this makes you as rageful as it makes me? Then have I got a scheme for you.

Because I've had hundreds of handsets running for the last year, all signed up to as many dodgy mailing lists as possible. I've got them arranged in my favourite divinatory glyph (the Wikipedia logo) and I've been been back-scrying every call.

I've finally got a fixed location for where it all gets routed back to. I know where the Cayman Bank Dungeon is, where all that stolen mana sits accumulating interest.

So get on board, buddy. We're going heisting.

---

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[strangelittlestories]

The god of life was dead.

The attending physician called it at 2.05am in the divine suite of the Hospital of Second Light.

Low Priest Vertigo had been standing vigil over the theurgery for hours, repeating the Prayer for Cellular Regeneration, chanting the Rite of Heartbeat, and singing The Seed That Sleeps in the Winter Dirt. Their throat was raw. Their head was throbbing. Their bones felt both heavy and hollow.

The priest and the physician (a theurgeon named Alacrity) walked in silence together to the hospital’s chapel to the god of death. It was little more than a cubicle, really, a little desk in the morgue screened off from the slabs and drawers.

But it was what they had and it was the only place where a death certificate could be notarised.

They each spilled a drop of blood into the coin slot and the little animatronic psychopomp (styled as a plague doctor in a crow mask) jerked into life. Its beady eyes glowed red and feral. Vertigo wondered if it was the death god behind those eyes, attending the ceremony in person to mark the passing of its sibling and enemy. Perhaps. Or perhaps it offered no special treatment and let whichever spirit who was on rotation perform the solemn duty.

The pair filled in the Cause of Death as ‘sudden massive spectral trauma’.

The psychopomp signed it with an unintelligible glyph in its usual stop-start motion.

As it did so, it suddenly changed. Its limbs (an automated shell to contain the divine) began to move more naturally. Its chest began to rise and fall as if breathing. But when it spoke, it became clear it was not breath, but laughter…

“What will you do, priest?” The words tumbled out amidst a vicious chuckle. “Now that life is dead, what is the point of you?”

“...the hells?” Alacrity murmured.

“Oh, I am nothing from the hells or the heavens.” The voice from the psychopomp was a rush of syllables, out of time with the beat of creation. “I am something before and after. I am that which never was and always will be. I am the faithkiller.”

The psychopomp marionette reached out with one stop-motion hand. It had grown claws.

The priest caught it, inches from the theurgeon’s throat.

“I know you,” said Vertigo, their eyes alight with nourishing sunlight, “I have heard you in the silence between prayers, in the beats between verses.”

“I am the full stop when praise has ended. I will not be denied.”

“Yet I deny you.”

“With what power, priest of nothing? With the last dribbles of belief in a space where a god once was?”

The priest reached out with their other hand and grasped the puppeted machine around the head. Around them, five shadows spread out to the edges of the morgue, cast by a light that could not be seen.

“Did you think that my faith was so fragile that it would fade, just because you killed the thing that I believed in?” The faithkiller tried to reply, but Vertigo’s hand was covering the psychopomp’s mouth, muffling whatever taunt or jibe it tried to emit. “If there is no god for me to nurture, no divinity for me to contemplate and unravel, then I will do as the god did and contemplate life. I will water its fields and try to answer its questions. Life contains more secrets still.”

The thing replied with more muffled eldritch twitterings.

“But your words are not one of the mysteries I will dwell on today.” A crunch as the priest crushed the being right out of the psychopomp’s circuits. “I am concerned not with the inevitable, but with potential.”

---

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[strangelittlestories]

Offer prayer to the broken lightbulbs

Step over the jagged remnants

with feet bared for supplication.

Flick the switch back and forth

Knowing it will do nothing

But remind what is smashed

of what it used to be.

It will only draw attention to the darkness.

Give prayers to the broken lightbulbs

To your siblings in spiteful obeisance

Who burnt out with gleeful abandon

Kneel down next to them

on the vomit-stained tiles

And whisper

“Oh sweet blasted wire

Oh precious pop of ozone

I love the way you were made for a purpose

That you cannot fulfil”

Then do not help them up.

Pray to the broken lightbulbs

It will not make them whole again

You will not unshatter glass

You will not undraw blood

But the filament persists

It can burn if our prayers

hold enough voltage.

It can still make light

Hot and bright and uncontained

Stinging to the touch.

---

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[strangelittlestories]

I don't think any of us expected that the most interesting thing to change after the vampires took over would be the *currency*.

I am writing this as I sit in a donation van (a considerably more fortified kind of vehicle since The Change, and given a definitively Gothic feel by the crucifix hubcaps). I am bleeding into a surgical tube. Literally hemorrhaging money.

Once this process is completed and the daily contributions (far less than they once were) are taken to the Daylight Hospital, I will be substantially poorer than I was before.

It's considered an odd thing to do by some, who would much rather take their vital fluids to the nearest pawn shop and put their lifeblood in hock for a crisp Five Hundred Mil note.

In some places, things aren't even that civilised. I'm sure rumours of playground bullies running 'donation' rackets are exaggerated, but it still provides a chilling reminder that this is a new kind of world we find ourselves in.

(And don't even get me started on how the markets fluctuate every time a blood-bourne disease is discovered or cured...)

But hospitals still need blood, so here I am. (Although, admittedly, they don't need as much, when most life-threatening conditions can be cured with a very simple (irreversible) treatment).

It's not that I'm a generous person. I'm not doing this for the warm fuzzies.

I just don't like being a commodity.

And the most efficient 'screw you' I've found is to give it away for free...

[strangelittlestories]

HOLY HECK, gang! My live show campaign shot up by like 30% in the last 24 hours. Fudging HUMBLED.

It ends at 9am UK time on 4 June. So it's the last chance to get in on the action...