writingwarmupsofthedamned

[writingwarmupsofthedamned]

"I want you to kill the king," the boy said.

I glanced over at the man on the other side of the table, and he met my eyes. His left eyebrow was pierced with a golden ring and his eyes were a steely grey. I could feel the edges of my mouth curling into a smile, and before I could contain it, we were both laughing.

"Excuse me!" The boy across from us was indignant, his voice carrying a faint whining quality. "But I am quite serious."

"That's what makes it funny!" The other man said, gasping for breath as the laughter subsided.

"I can pay you." The kid, no more than fifteen, fumbled in his cloak and took out a large, heavy pouch. It clanked when he set it on the table.

I reached for it but the other man was faster. I hadn't expected that of someone his size. I expect that was a miscalculation he often relied on people making.

He opened it, and took out two gold pieces. He handed one to me. "For wasting our time," he said, before shoving the pouch back across the table to the boy.

"Do you think that is how much my life is worth? That you can buy it like that? Times are hard but I am not so desperate."

I rubbed the coin between my fingers, feeling it warm to my touch. I glanced at the portrait of the king on one side. I wondered what it would be like to even see him in person, much less to lop off that pretty head.

"Well, I am not expecting you to get caught. Whether you can manage it or not is your business. Consider that a down-payment. With the king out of the way, I could give you much more."

I sighed. I was too tired to play this game anymore. I wanted to go take a bath and go to bed. My back hurt.

"I wouldn't take the word of a kingslayer, prince or not." I stood, pushing my chair back, noting with satisfaction the look of shock on his royal highness's face.

The other man followed my lead and stood. "It was an honour to meet you, my lord." He said, slipping on his leather coat.

I felt something pointy and hard press into the small of my back. I glanced behind me to see a face I recognized. He looked pained.

"I don't want to do this, don't make it worse," he said.

I saw there was another guard at the other man's back too.

The prince smirked. "You already took my money. I can have the guards arrest you for taking payment for the crime now, or, you can do what I asked you. You won't be getting any more out of me, though."

The bar around us had gone still, everyone was watching to see what we would do. A scene had been made. If the king died, everyone would know it was us. On the other hand, I didn't fancy being hanged for a crime I never intended to commit.

"Then I suppose we have a deal." I said, before reaching back to grab the captain's wrist, twisting it until it broke, and forcing his face into the table.

I leaned down and whispered in his ear, my voice as soft and sultry as he always used to like. "I broke your wrist so I wouldn't have to tell your wife. I think we're done, don't you?"

The guard behind the other man had begun to lose his nerve, but the man stood still, watching to see what I would do.

I looked up at the prince. "We'll need protection. Afterwards."

"Of course," he lied.

I released the captain, and the other man turned to look at his guard, picking him up by the collar like he weighed nothing, and setting him down beside the captain.

"Get him out of here." The man instructed.

The guards hurried out, and we both took our seats again. I held out my hand to him.

"Lyana. It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance."

"Dorek," he said, shaking my hand. He sighed then, and looked over at the spoiled princeling. "How do you want it done?"

[writingwarmupsofthedamned]

My maid’s hands trembled as she brushed my hair. 

“I can do that myself, really. It’s fine,” I said, taking a sip of my tea. I tried to make my movements smooth so as to not spook her, but the gold-rimmed teacup probably cost more than my entire village back home, and it was hard to treat it casually.

“Oh, no, Miss. Sorry, Miss. I’ll work faster, Miss.” Her voice was barely louder than a whisper. I watched her through the mirror, her gaze fixed steadily on my hair. She had yet to meet my eyes since I’d arrived the evening before. 

I forced an easy smile. “Take your time. I’m in no rush to get to breakfast. I’m not even sure why I’ve been invited, if I’m honest.”

The brushing continued, slower but less shakily than before. There was a careful deliberation to it, the kind I’d seen in alchemists carrying explosives. 

“We’re all just honoured to have you here, MIss.”

I wanted to scream, but the shock of it might kill the girl. She looked barely sixteen and I wondered if they’d sent her because she was the youngest and everyone else had refused. That happened, sometimes, though mostly households tried to send their best- if they didn’t quit at the very request. 

She began to braid my hair. I watched in the mirror as her hands gently weaved everything into place. She was using the technique that was currently fashionable at court, which was strange for a country girl. Perhaps the mistress of the household was particularly fashionable, or perhaps it was the girl herself. 

“Do you do the mistress’s hair as well?”

“Yes, Miss. I did it this morning.”

“What’s she like? I must confess I don’t know much about the Stormfells. I am mostly here at the King’s suggestion. They are cousins, I think?”

“Yes, Miss. He comes here with his entourage sometimes. My mistress is a very proper lady, very honourable, very good.”

Utterly useless adjectives.

“Twyla, may I ask you a blunt question?”

Her hands faltered but she did not look up from my hair. “Of course, Miss.”

“What is it you’re so afraid of that you think I might do?”

She dropped the braid and finally looked at my face, her eyes wide. “I...”

“Please.” 

“They say that you turned the Duke of Bradywaithe into a beast and cursed all of his staff to be objects. I don’t want to be a footstool, Miss.”

Twyla’s eyes filled with tears. 

Oh.

I opened my mouth to correct her, to set the story straight, but, catching sight of myself in the mirror, I stopped. I was dressed in a beautiful silk gown in a lavish bedroom the size of my whole cottage. Being feared was dreadful indeed, but it was certainly better than always being hungry.

“I promise you, I won’t turn you into anything. Especially not a footstool.”

“Thank you, Miss.” 

A slight tingle of guilt crawled up my spine as she went back to styling my hair, but I shoved it down and took another sip from the gold-rimmed teacup.

You are the most influential and powerful person in the kingdom. Even the royals walk eggshells around you at risk of offending you. The thing is, you have no idea what you’re doing or how it has gotten to this point, but you’re in way too deep now and you have to keep the lie going to survive.

[writingwarmupsofthedamned]

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Write a horror story in the format of an Internet search history

[writingwarmupsofthedamned]

Surely anyone could take up gravedigging, couldn't they? It wasn't a special talent in her hands or a magical shovel passed down through generations, but the fact that since the plague, no one would do the job unless they were bound to by blood.

Her family had started it, so, it had been fair at the time. 400 years later, she was starting to wonder when they would finally achieve atonement.

Writing Prompt #2486

She was tired of the high expectations that came with her birthright. She didn't want any of it. She didn't understand why it had to be her, and why someone else couldn't take the job.

[writingwarmupsofthedamned]

You didn't always feel this way, did you? Like you were cursed?

No, you were different once- not happy, not necessarily, but you thought that things would get better. You were strong, and the world was within your grasp, if only you could make your way through the forest and find the world to take it.

That's how it always is, with curses. It starts off small, because it needs to feed. Every little dissatisfaction, every disappointment, every time a little piece of your heart is chipped away, it drinks of your misery and it grows.

How old are you now? How big is your curse? How much of you has it consumed?

Ah, yes. I thought so.

Lots of stories about worlds where everyone gets a superpower. You live in a world where everyone gets a curse on their 18th birthday. No one likes it but what are you gonna do

[writingwarmupsofthedamned]

There's something very magical about the heart of a man who's never loved before.

They're remarkably easy to find, yet often overlooked. Hearts full of love and pain are usually the ones the spells call for, the ones heavy with desire and anguish that can be turned into pure poison or pure bliss. I have made a few of those spells before, but they never turn out quite right. The bliss tears people up, while the poison heals and twists and reimagines. I gave up on those kinds of spells years ago.

I discovered the power of an unloving heart when I stole one accidentally the first time. It was supposed to be a heart for me to heal, but when I looked at it in the light, it was clear that love wasn't the problem at all.

He'd only ever loved the idea of her, as it turned out. He loved her as a concept, as a trophy, as a nurturing hand, as a warm, willing body. He loved her for the things she did for him, the things she improved for him, the doors she opened, the clarity she provided.

I thought the heart was worthless, at first. I was tempted to give it back to him untouched and tell him he was whole again.

Instead, I ran some experiments, and I found a secret. I ground it up and froze it in crystals, and one tiny drop taken like a pill before bed provides the most startling effect: apathy.

That's the problem with all the anti-love spells that have come before. They always wanted revenge, they wanted hatred, they wanted their person to come running back, they wanted desperately to forget- but the real power is in not caring at all. One simple drop and you're over it, moving on like they meant nothing, like they stopped existing when they stopped being of use.

It's tremendous, really, the possible applications for love and loss and business and money. Imagine what the most selfish, delusionally confident, cutthroat version of yourself could accomplish.

Yes. Now you begin to grasp it.

Would you like one? Just a taste. The first one is always free.

“I’m telling you, she stole my heart, man.” “That’s awful, man. Breakups are hard.” “No, dude, she literally stole my heart.”

[writingwarmupsofthedamned]

That's why all the record were destroyed, all the books burned, all the poems and songs cut from the tongues of those who dared to put their voices to the darkness. You can't hate a thing that you don't know about.

Our ancestors did not tell us why, they only told us of the destruction so that it would serve as a warning. Their hope was that the Bone King (we don't know his name) would fade from the memory of history, and one day all would be free of him. Of course, they knew some scraps would survive, his supporters hiding their documents and relics in secret compartments under the floorboards and hidden in the walls. They couldn't let us go digging. They had to tell us that the knowledge was forbidden, for our own good.

Don't find the scraps.

Don't know of his malice.

Don't see him when you close your eyes.

I know a truth about human nature, though. To say something is forbidden only makes you want it more.

So the scraps were dug up.

So we found tales of his malignance.

So we see him, all of us, when we close our eyes.

He tells us things. Each of us, something different. Only the children talk about what he says, the rest of us pretend. We pretend not to hear the whispers, not to follow his instructions, but everywhere pieces are falling into place.

Packages are delivered. Beds are made in far-off places. Old swords are sharpened and made to shine.

We all have our part to play, in making this war of his, the war to wake the King of Bones.

My part, he says, is to open the door.

Deep Water Prompt #4002

They say the king can reach us through the darkness of our closed eyes. His bone white crown will bloom first out of the darkness, if you so much as think one slight against him. 

[writingwarmupsofthedamned]

The twins were three, and I'd only looked away for a moment. The kitchen would never be the same.

Writing Prompt #2460

It was years of destruction in the making, and I was only too foolish to not realize that sooner.

[writingwarmupsofthedamned]

I am the doll maker.

Macabre as some children can be, not every child wants to have glass eyes rolling around on their night stand, disembodied and directionless.

My sister was like that. She'd found three of them, one red, one brown, one blue. She'd try to cover them up, put them in a drawer. Once, she let the blue one roll right off the edge of the night stand and crack on the wooden floor.

The next morning she woke up and couldn't see out of her right eye. Her eyes had been blue, but one has been grey ever since that day, though some sight has returned to it.

So, I made her a doll. It was a plain thing, just sewn together from scraps and stuffed with grass, but it worked. She named it Lucy, and kept it on the foot of her bed, facing her while she slept. It seemed to make the nightmares go away.

Other parents began requesting dolls for their unwilling children, once my mother started talking. I was sixteen then, and quickly realized if I charged for making these dolls that I might postpone having to go work in the lumber mill with my father for a few years. Perhaps, I could avoid it altogether.

That was some years ago now, and all the children have dolls, depending on the eyes they find. If the child only finds one eye, then I make them into pirates with eyepatches or puppies with floppy ears falling over the blank space where another eye should be. If they find an uneven number of eyes, I hide one at the back of their head, careful to keep the hair from covering it.

One frequently unsupervised especially precocious child has a spider doll.

My workshop is in my bedroom, with all the unfinished works watching me as I sleep. I tried to work somewhere else, but this is where they like it best, I can tell. It was unsettling at first, but I got used to it.

The only thing is that lately, I haven't been able to sleep. Perhaps it's middle age finally catching up with me. I often work late into the night, or roam around the main floor of my house, restlessly picking things up and putting them down when my mind can't settle on an activity.

They don't like it when I don't sleep in my bed.

If I don't get into bed at a reasonable hour or I get up late into the night, I'll leave the room and come back to find my work undone, to find eyes on the floor, rolling around like marbles. Sometimes they'll all be lined up in a row on my desk, staring at the door.

I wonder if our parents and our parents' parents have known this all along. The eyes don't watch us while we sleep because they like it, they watch us to make sure we don't leave their beds.

What happens to the children who leave their beds?

Text: Children who dig in the forest often unearth strange glass eyes. They are presents, the Elders tell us, and we should leave them on our nightstands to keep watch while we sleep.

[writingwarmupsofthedamned]

Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. I was the one who stole it.

I'm not a thief. At least, I wasn't before. I'd never so much as stolen a lipgloss or a chocolate bar from a WalMart.

I didn't think anyone would notice it was missing. I took it from her desk. We didn't know she was dead then, only that she was late for our meeting. It felt like something that was meant to be mine. It felt like it was calling to me. I know that sounds ridiculous, but that's what happened. It is just as responsible for this as I am- not that I am trying to shift the blame. There is no excuse for what I've done, none good enough to justify the consequences.

I thought it was only a pen.

I took it back to my desk with me, made swirls with it on a pad of note paper. I doodled a little frowny face, with three little hairs coming out of the top of its head.

It wasn't meant to be Paul, but in retrospect it did look like him. He was always scowling, and had only a few strands of hair left since it had started falling out during the stress of his divorce two years ago.

After lunch, we were informed that a sheet of glass had fallen from one of the skyscrapers nearby. He had been returning with a cheesesteak sandwich from the deli and probably never knew what happened to him.

Someone said his head was sliced clean off.

I should have drawn the rest of the body.

Prompt #591

This is my first and last confession.

[writingwarmupsofthedamned]

For some reason, after I said that, Larissa still seemed concerned. I pushed the cup towards her on its saucer, trying to make my face remember what a friendly, non-threatening smile looked like. 

"You don't get a lot of repeat customers in here, do you?" She asked. 

"There's a war on, business could be better for everyone." I shrugged. "Look, the sign on the door says 'no guarantees' because there aren't any with this sort of thing. It's alchemy, not making soup. I can't tell you how your body will react. I can't promise you that you won't be vomiting up hairballs for the next hour. I can't promise that you won't be stuck with a tail for the rest of your life even after all of the other effects wear off. All I can say is that I am the only shop in a fifty mile radius, so either drink up or find another solution."

She looked from me to the cup and back, before taking it and sniffing its contents warily. I knew she had no choice. She knew she had no choice. We danced the dance anyway, weighing the options, tallying risks and rewards. She drank the potion in one decisive gulp and set the teacup down with a clack.

She pulled a face. "That's awful."

"Yes, well. You try making werewolf scat palatable."

She choked a bit at that and I turned back to my work station so she wouldn't see me laughing. It was best not to upset them just before the transformation.

"Now get out of my cabin before you change and break things. It might take up to thirty minutes so feel free to chop some wood while you're out there to pass the time. Chopping block is around the side."

"Is this going to hurt?" She asked, her chair scraping against the floor as she stood. 

I turned back to her again. 

"It'll be the worst pain you've ever experienced- but it won't stand a candle to the pain you'll be able to cause."

She nodded and closed the door behind her. 

I sighed and went back to my workstation. War was such a terrible thing, especially for the young. 

Prompt #14296

"Drink this. It's not exactly poison. But it's not exactly tea, either."

[writingwarmupsofthedamned]

It was an inside joke between us, the secret catchphrase. At least, we always thought it was until now. 

It started when she got hacked, maybe fifteen years ago. It was that kind of time on the internet where you could just guess someone’s password and get in. There was none of this ‘two factor authentication’ ‘use capital letters, a symbol, and a number’ stuff. Her password was Muffins, the name of her cat. 

The hacker had messaged a bunch of her closest contacts, saying weird things and asking for money. One of us said- it’s fuzzy about who said what, it was so long ago- that we should have a codeword to use for the next time, to check if it’s really them. Someone suggested the code phrase: ‘do you want some muffins?’, as a play on the cat’s name. 

We started saying it all the time as a joke when one of us would do something out of character, or change our minds on something. I would say it when she volunteered to vaccuum (her most hated chore), and she would say it when I cooked.

She was vaccuuming when I came home. I asked her if she wanted some muffins. She said yes, looking at me with a big, blank stare. 

Neither of us particularly like muffins, as a pastry. 

She put away the vaccuum and sat me down on the couch after that, seeming confused when I didn’t actually produce any muffins. 

Then, she told me that she’d been cheating on me with our next-door neighbor, Alex. It had been going on for four years now. They were in love. She was so sorry but she couldn’t live with the lies anymore. She said she understood if I never wanted to speak to her again, but wanted to go to marital counselling with me. She wanted to work it out. 

I asked her again if she wanted some muffins, because what else do you say when someone tells you that? Having an affair wouldn’t be like her at all. She got anxious about lying to me to keep my Christmas presents a secret. There’s no way she could keep something like that hidden for four years. Not to mention, Alex wasn’t really her type as far as I knew. She’d found him nice in small doses, but loud and overwhelming if he spent more than a few hours over for a barbeque. 

“Now isn’t really the time for food, babe.” She had said, putting a warm hand on mine. 

“I’m going to pack up my things, I need some time to think.” I said, standing up and going upstairs to throw some clothes and my toothbrush in a bag. 

I had to get out of there as fast as possible and find my wife, because whatever was down there, that wasn’t her at all.

Your “spouse” of 20 years has just confessed to having an affair, but they don’t know your secret catchphrase. You suspect whoever or whatever is in front of you is not your spouse.

[writingwarmupsofthedamned]

It’s not really the syphilis itself that gets to me. The headaches, the fever, the fatigue- all of that is manageable. If it was only that I had to stay in bed for a few days every month, it wouldn’t be much worse than my period. 

It’s going to the doctor every month to tell her that I’ve caught it again- that’s the part that hurts.

The hassle of getting across town to the office, sitting in the waiting room, the oh-come-on look every time I say I’ve caught the same thing all over again. It’s embarrassing. 

I’ve told her it’s an ex that I keep going back to, that I can’t resist. I can’t just come out and tell her that I opened the Box of the Six Roses, can I? She’d think I was insane. I’d be committed. I’d never be able to access the restricted archives at the library again! 

So, I keep on going with my ridiculous little lie. I could do more doctor-hopping, I suppose, but I like this one. Her hands aren’t cold, and though she may judge me, she persistently makes sure that I’m not experiencing any ill effects from either the curse or the antibiotics I’m always on. 

When I first realized I’d been cursed, I worried that it would have a negative impact on my dating life. I’ve since realized that I don’t have a dating life to worry about, so it’s not been an issue. I mean, I’m too busy with my research on the box, doing talks about my find in otherwise boring academic conferences, and my cat. Tidbits is a handful. I have no time! 

At first, my research was all-consuming. I did nothing else for months after I found it. You can’t work at that frenzied sort of pace forever, though. It got easier once I got used to the curse coming back every full moon. Now that I’m less frantic about breaking the thing, I’ve been tackling the next question:

Why would you curse a box that’s empty?

You unknowingly acquired an ancient artifact that carries a most horrible curse. Well, “most horrible” by ancient standards. By today’s standards it is a mild inconvenience at worst.

[writingwarmupsofthedamned]

“Um, I’m here to see Steve?”

The two henchmen (there was no other word for it) looked down at me, their thick necks bulging out of the top of their buttoned-up dress shirts. I could only assume they were considering whether to squish me under their boot or let me scurry along on my business. 

“He’s expecting me. I’m Lisa. Lisa Kissinger.”

My voice was shaking. I suddenly wished that I’d worn something less... slouchy. Something more badass. Not that I had anything better in my closet. These were my best sweatpants. There wasn’t even a stain on them! 

They didn’t respond. They glared instead. Maybe they didn’t speak English? Maybe they didn’t need to speak at all. Who needed words when you had muscles?

“Is that where you go?” The bald one on the right pointed at my sweatshirt, which had ‘JFU’ written on it in big, red letters. 

“Uh, yeah... I’m a grad student.” 

He smiled. I didn’t know that his face could even do that. 

“That’s great! What are you studying? That’s where I got my bachelors in economics.”

I had so many questions.

“Herpetology.”

“Plants?” The one on the left asked. 

The bald one elbowed him in the ribs. “That’s botany, dumbass. You study lizards and shit, right?”

“Yep. Lizards and shit.” 

“That’s cool. We need more women in STEM, isn’t that right, Ian?” The bald one looked pointedly at the not bald one. I took a step back. I did not want to be in between those two in the middle of an argument. 

“I never said she shouldn’t be in STEM! I just said that she has such a beautiful way with language that she shouldn’t be boxed in by-”

“Gentlemen!” The door opened, and Steve was there, smiling at me. “You’re holding up my guest.”

“Sorry, boss.” They said in unison, as if it were a well-worn mantra. 

“Lisa, please, come in. It’s so good to see you.”

Steve put a hand on my shoulder and almost pushed me through the door. 

We sat in the lounge. It was all velvet paintings and red vinyl seats. The smell of cigar smoke lingered in the air. 

Steve sat on the couch across from me, arms and legs spread wide like he was a king on his throne. For all intents and purposes, he was. 

“I uh...” I became suddenly aware of all of the awkward places that I was sweating from.

“You need a favour.” 

“Yeah.”

“Of course. Anything, Lisa. Name it. You helped me out of a real pickle that day. You’re a kind-hearted soul, and I want to be able to repay you. Please, don’t be shy.”

“It’s um... it’s kind of a lot.”

“If it’s in my power, I will help. Shoot.”

“I need your help to find a snake, and get it back here. Smuggle it back here. It’s a very rare, endangered species, so it won’t be easy or cheap. I just... I’m broke, and I didn’t know who else to turn to. It’s... complicated.”

“Of course! Of course.” He smiled broadly. “I thought you were going to ask me to kill someone. You sure you don’t want me to kill someone?”

I shook my head. “Thanks, but I’m all good on that. I’m going to need a plane, and a guide, and someone to help me get it back to my lab.”

“Sure. Consider it done. We have a plane. I know a guy. What exactly do you need a snake so bad for anyway? Is this some sort of school project?”

“Sort of.” If alchemy was a course I could take, then, yeah, it would have been for a school project. 

“Okay.” He held up his hands. “I don’t need to know the details. Would be cool to see this snake, though. When do you wanna leave?”

“Tonight.”

Years ago, you accidently helped a mob boss change a flat while transporting a corpse, being promised a “Favour” in return. Now, desperate, you seek them out to cash in your favour.

[writingwarmupsofthedamned]

I leaned in closer, making sure my gaze was fixed on her collarbone and not on her ample cleavage. She was probably used to that, but that wouldn't make it any less embarrassing to be caught staring, even if it was mostly accidental.

I watched the leaves swirl across her olive skin, settling slowly into a pattern of two overlapping circles, with what looked almost like wings on either side.

I felt sick. My eyes met hers.

She looked at me with concern, and then turned to see herself in the mirror.

"My darling, I'm afraid you're going to be married."

How dreadful.

Deep Water Prompt #3082

The tattoo looks like tea leaves scattered across her chest, drifting even as I watch. “It’s a prediction spell,” she says. “A good one. Go on. Read them.”

[writingwarmupsofthedamned]

There is no cheating when it comes to the gods. 

You cannot simply allow your opponent to win. That isn’t a fight, that’s suicide.

You cannot get a young whelp to fight you, one who has gotten the best of their friends but has never tasted the blood of the enemy in battle. You know they would be no match for you, not if you tried. They might get lucky but then, so might you, and what an awful waste that would be.

You have to die fighting for something- for honour, for justice, to protect your family. You cannot simply die for entertainment, a petty contest between friends. 

I worked so hard to be the fiercest warrior my entire life. I had no idea it would prove my downfall quite like this. 

I could travel, over the seas, over the long winding paths of silk and rice, and look for my equal. Surely there is one in this whole damned world. But travel is dangerous in its own right, and I couldn’t risk dying of accident or infection before I met my destiny. 

So, with no one to fight here, and no way to bring the fight to my future enemies out there, there was only one thing to do: set a trap.

My best riders rode out at midnight that night under a clear full moon, one in every direction. Their instructions were to go to the biggest city that they could find, and deliver a sack of gold, and an invitation. The sack of gold was to be a gift, a proof of the promises I made in writing. Proof that there could be more to come.

I knew they’d be intruiged. I only had to wait for them to find me, and try to take what was mine.

To get the eternal glory of a warriors death, you have to die fighting. You remembered this as the third village in a row surrendered before you could even draw your sword. You are a legendary old viking, and you’re getting worried.

[writingwarmupsofthedamned]

It started with one. She used to come into my backyard almost every afternoon, stop in the middle of the grass, and stare if she saw me. The first time I saw her, she took my breath away. It's a strange thing, seeing a deer in the wild. They're common enough that it shouldn't fill you with wonder to see one any more than it should fill you with wonder to see an especially fat squirrel, but it does. Maybe it's that they're beautiful, but I think it's more because they're so skittish. If they've stopped and looked at you, and not immediately bolted, you get a moment of looking into those black, horse-like eyes and feeling seen. Feeling like they've sensed you and aren't afraid, despite knowing they should be. It feels like they can see into your soul. 

I thought about going up to touch her, whenever I happened to be outside when she would visit. I never tried, knowing that was probably a bad idea, but I wanted to. I wanted to slowly gain her trust until I could run my hand down the curve of her white-spotted back and feel her muscles underneath her soft fur. Or is deer fur coarse? I've still never felt it, but I'd like to know. 

I liked to think that we had a connection, even if I could never act on it. I wanted my garden to be a place she could feel safe. 

When she appeared with a friend, a few months later, I was delighted. This was also a doe, a little taller. She kicked up her back legs awfully high when they finally both sprinted away. I thought, jokingly, that she'd brought her best friend to meet me, the chosen human. I felt that it had to be a good sign. 

Then, the buck came with them next, a week or two later. I think that was when things changed. He was a dark, imposing presence, with enormous horns unlike any I'd seen before. They were intricate and spiraling, and the way he looked at me made me feel afraid. He could really hurt me with those things, if he decided to charge. Even though the first time I saw him, it was through a pane of glass, behind a wall he couldn't penetrate, I held perfectly still until he left. 

They only ever came to the backyard and stared through that back window. They never ate the grass, or drank from the stone bird fountain, or went around my house to the neighbor's. It seemed like they were following some old instinct, like this had been a lookout point or the home of a wolf pack generations ago, and the pull to stop and look had followed through the ages even if the reasoning behind it had long gone. 

I had stopped thinking about it like it was a doe coming to visit me, and started to rationalize that they couldn't be coming to see me, specifically. After all, they were only deer.

I stopped looking forward to the visits, stopped looking outside so often hoping that I would catch a glimpse of her. Something felt wrong about the whole thing, and I couldn't put my finger on why. 

Three nights ago, I heard a strange baying outside my window. A loud, bellowing moan was coming from my backyard. I turned on my bedside lamp and got out of bed, pulling open my curtains to see what was happening. 

There were a hundred of them, standing there. Bucks and does and fawns, in my backyard, standing there, looking straight through my living room window. I'd never seen so many at once, not even on the documentary channel, not in such a confined space. There's a fence they have to jump over to get from the woods to my yard, and it dawned on me that there weren't any more because there was simply no space for any more to jump. It had to be every deer in the county. 

I crept out to my back porch, expecting the creak of my screen door to scare them away. 

It didn't. They all turned to look at me, instead. 

I could see their warm breath misting in the cool night air. 

"Go! Shoo!" It took me a moment to find my voice, but I did it. "Get out of here!"

I should have probably reached for my phone, first, to take a video. If nothing else, a clip of something like that would go instantly viral and I would make a couple of hundred bucks on it if I sold it to news agencies and stuff. But I wasn't thinking about that. I was only thinking about the deep and certain feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach, and the certainty that something terrible was going to happen. They had to get out of there, something terrible was going to happen. 

I thought at first that their presence meant that something would happen. I didn't realize that their presence was only a symptom of the bad thing, not the cause. They were only responding to the call. The call itself, that was the worrying thing, and I couldn't shoo that away. 

They came the night after that too, waking me again with that eerie bellowing. 

Last night, I was awake and ready for them. I sat on my back porch with a thermos of hot coffee and a book I didn't even really intend to pick up. I sat there from sunset onward, and waited. 

It was after midnight when they came. The first doe, the one I would always be able to recognize, came first, leaping gracefully over the fence. Then, her friend, and then the buck, his horns gleaming alabaster white in the moonlight. Then the rest, one by one, almost rhythmically landing, the sound of them leaping over the six-foot-high fence only audible if you were already listening for it. 

They came close, but never touching the house. I could have reached out and touched one from where I sat, felt their warm, soft (or coarse?) muzzle in my palm but I didn't dare. 

Since I hadn't made any noise, they weren't looking at me. They were looking in through my living room window, at him. 

I hadn't seen it before, from the inside, but from my vantage point on the porch, but I had left a small table lamp on in the living room and I could see him inside, looking out, crystal clear. 

I haven't been back inside my house since. I can't. He's still in there, calling them. 

I don't know what to do.

Prompt 2198

The deer came to the yard faithfully every day. when they started to bring more and more friends, that's when i began to worry.