Years

Michael stood at his front door, staring at the old wood of its frame, contemplating whether or not he truly wanted to push it open today. It had been more than fifteen years since he had last stepped outside of his house, ever since the fall. The world had gone to shit that day, and Michael had locked his doors and sworn never to leave his house unless he was being dragged kicking and screaming to his death. His windows were barricaded, furniture was pressed up against every entry way, and he had even found a way to create his own kind of cement in order to seal the back door.

But fifteen years was a long time. It was hard to say just how much of the world had changed in that time. He didn't just keep his windows closed, they were completely covered over, and he was never going to uncover them. That would be risking being found and targeted. If he wanted to stand any chance of surviving, it was best that no one knew he was still alive. But after all this time, what had happened to the world? Was it still in chaos? Would he still be in danger if he left?

He was finally beginning to run low on supplies, though. He had spent yeas surviving off of a small garden he had built in a spare room, the floorboards torn away to reveal dirt below, which he had tilled and planted with a few seeds that he was able to make from some of the food that he had with him. Potatoes, strawberries, apples. Mainly those kinds of things. It had taken him a few tries to get it right, and he had nearly starved, but he'd finally found a way to reliably grow them. But the soil was getting old and worn, and it couldn't support him for much longer. He had maybe one harvest left out of it, if he was lucky.

He couldn't rely on that. Even if the last harvest did grow, it would be meager, and maybe not even fully grown. It could poison and kill him if he was unlucky. Hell, probably not even unlucky. Those odds were better than the ones that he would survive with it. If he wanted to live much longer, he needed to brave the outside world again.

Slowly, unsurely, he unlocked the door and pushed it open. It was late in the afternoon - something he couldn't easily tell inside - and the wind was blowing gently. There was nothing outside. No one roaming the streets. Ruins and rubble of the buildings which had once been plentiful. Grass and weeds had started to grow and overcome what remained. There was little else left of the world. His home had been one of the few that remained standing.

He was luckier than he thought he was.

Free Write 15

I really don't want to write right now, in all honesty. I haven't felt that way in a very long time, but for reasons that I've talked with people enough for one day, I honestly just do not want to write today. But I know that if I don't I'll regret it, so at the very least I can do a free write and just get some words down.

I've been doing pretty good with my fiction to real talk ratio. I'm ahead on fiction, even with this real talk now, which is good and not something I manage to pull off very often. It's usually a tipping back and forth game, so the fact that I'm ahead right now makes me feel a little bit better. It takes a lot more effort than I originally anticipated to be able to make that kind of ratio work, though the fact that I've been finding new ways to get prompts and actually been running out of real world things I wanted to talk about helps as well.

Though it's been incredibly slow, I've been enjoying making my knife. I like creating something with my hands, and being able to actually see the progress that I'm making is incredible. I'm thinking that once I finish this I'll have to work on some similar stuff as well. Maybe make some more knives, or get back to making some instruments. I'm not sure at the moment, but it's definitely something I'm going to have to look into and consider.

I've been bouncing around between video games a lot the last month or so, struggling to find something that I really want to stick with. As excited as I am for the games that are going to come out in the next month or two, I feel like that's going to continue to be a problem because of just how many games I want to play. By the second week of February, there are going to be about six games out that I want to play, and many of them are going to be long and demand excessive amounts of my time. I thoroughly want to play them all, but I have a feeling that's going to be problematic. Especially because I want to try and push myself into working on other things. I'm not sure how many games I'm going to be playing at all in the coming months.

Security

Marcus woke up with a pounding headache, not entirely sure where he was. As he opened his eyes, all he could see was blinding white. White walls, white ceilings, white lights, white everything. It took him a moment to adjust, and as he did he started to see the silhouettes of people, all dressed in white clothing. Everything was so... sterile. Was he in a hospital? And if so, why?

Someone saw him sitting up, and a murmur shot through the people around him as they scurried away from his bed, eyeing him cautiously over their shoulders, as if he were some kind of dangerous outcast. He had no idea who any of the people even were, much less why they seemed to be afraid of him. They all seemed to be big and burly men, too, with tattoos poking out from under their purely white sleeves. If anyone should have been afraid of anyone, it was him of them. He had no idea where he was or why he was surrounded by these kinds of people, but it was quickly making him uncomfortable.

He tried to get up and ask someone where he was or what was happening, but his ankle was latched to the bed and he was unable to move. Even if he could, as he tried to move, the people closest to him took a step back, the fear now apparent in their eyes. Why were they so afraid of him? What had he done? What could he have done?

It wasn't long before another man came, dressed in white as all the others, though he had a much more professional look about him, what with his clipboard and glasses. He eyed Marcus studiously, who was sitting on his bed and looking back at the man, unsure of what to say.

"You seem confused, Marcus," the man finally said, not looking up from his clipboard. "Do you not recall last night? I know that we knocked you up with quite the dose, but I didn't think it would give you that much of a hangover."

"What are you talking about?"

"You're in prison, Marcus. The highest level security prison on the planet. It took us a while to get you in here. But the world can only stand so much of the origami killer."

Edge

At the edge of the universe, far away from the milky way and its sun, where barely more than darkness was visible, sat a campfire, resting on the solidity that only the edge of the void can create, eternally burning though it had no fuel. Beside it sat a man who had long since forgotten his own name, or where he had come from, or how he had ever managed to roam so far away from home. He tended to the campfire, making sure that no far passing black holes or supernovas tugged at or pushed out the flames. He protected them, and they gave him warmth and light where there was so close to being none.

If he had once had a sense of time, it possessed him no longer. In the back of his mind he recalled a word called sleep, though he wasn't entirely sure what it meant or if it applied to him in any sense. Far on the horizon of space he could see the universe, ever so slowly turning and shifting. He could tell it was expanding, but as it expanded it pushed him and his campfire further away as well, so he was well aware that he would never get to be a part of it. He had accepted this long ago.

He prodded at the flames every now and again. Not necessarily to give them more life or anything, but merely to change the way that they curled and rose, so that he had something new to look at. He wasn't quite sure how often he did it, but it was certainly less often than he saw a black hole pass by. The distortions those brought as they passed, pulling in at the space around them, made them easy to spot from where he sat. He saw everything that the universe had to offer.

But he didn't see the approach of the other until she had already sat down beside him. The two looked at each other, dazed by the sight of another person, not entirely sure what to make of it. He could never remember seeing anyone who looked like him before, and from the look on her face, he guessed that she was experiencing a similar train of thought. But as they stared at each other, neither one of them said a word. Perhaps because they had long since forgotten how.

Noiselessly he handed her the prod with which he saw to the fire, and she took it and prodded the flames without needing to be taught how. The flames sparked and curled, shifting in shape before settling form and flickering on as it always did. And the two sat side by side and watched it burn.

Anointment

Carla knelt down before the winged figure, bowing her head and laying her blade on the ground before her. The figure had called out to her, flown down from the heavens, and chosen her. She had been blessed by the gods. She was to be not a champion of man, but of angels. She had also felt that her purpose was greater than that of the earth, but she had never had any reason to truly believe that, and had merely resigned herself to fighting for the causes of king and country. But this was something more. This was something greater.

She closed her eyes as she saw the angel lift her blade off of the ground. She was prepared. Whatever this process would be like, however she was to be judged, she was prepared. She would do anything that she was asked to do to become the champion that she had always dreamed that she would be. She could hear the angel muttering words in a language she couldn't understand, felt warmth envelop her as light on the other side of her eyelids shone brightly. Her skin felt like it was on fire, but she endured the feeling, ready for hat would be on the other side of it.

Her own sword pushed down against her shoulders, feeling as though it was slicing into her shoulders, causing her blood to fall down her front. Still she waited, patient, ready to take from it what she had waited so long for. The pain was ever growing as the burning sensation seeped into the spaces where her sword had pierced her own shoulders. She used all of the willpower she had to keep her eyes closed.

The angel murmured words again before speaking aloud in English. "Rise," it called out, its voice unlike anything Carla had ever heard, "and receive your final judgement." Carla stood slowly, only opening her eyes once she was fully risen. She was completely surrounded in flames, dancing against her skin, and she could see her blood spilled on the ground in front of her.

"You have been judged," spoke the angel, "and found lacking."

"Wait, but I-"

And the sword was flying through the air, aimed directly at her neck.

Window

Andrew dashed down the hallway toward the window, knowing that he was only going to have the one chance and that window of time for it was abysmally small. He snapped open the harness on his hip and pulled his pistol forward, a practiced motion that made it possible for him to do while he was running.

"Are you insane?" The voice was coming from the headset shoved into his ear. He knew it was the voice of his commander, and he knew that she was about to tell him that what he was going to try and do was not only idiotic, but impossible. He was going to die attempting it. But he was going to die regardless in the coming moments, and he'd rather go out trying something impossible that might save the lives of others than playing it safe to buy himself a little more time. "I know what you're going to do! Do you seriously think that you even have a chance of succeeding?"

"Maybe I don't," he said aloud, knowing that the microphone pushed against his cheek would pick up the sound, "but I can't just stand around and not try. I need to do something. And we both know that that ship is carrying enough weapons to change the course of this war, and if it lands in enemy hands we're all going to die."

"You have a pistol, and you're on the sixth floor of a building! If you break through that window, even assuming that that ship doesn't have bulletproof glass in the windows, the precision required to hit the pilot with a square shot to the face while falling is far beyond human capacity. You won't have the time to aim, even if you could aim that precisely. There are a hundred things working against you right now. It's a one in ten billion shot, if not staggeringly higher!"

"And that's a chance that I'm going to take."

He fired two rounds into the window as he approached it, weakening it just enough that when he slammed his weight against it, the glass shattered and didn't slow him down as he passed into the open air. A dozen feet below him he could see the plane hovering in place, waiting for permission to land. He only had a few seconds before he would be below it. He swung his pistol forward and pulled the trigger as many times as he could, firing round after round into the cockpit. He dropped past it an instant.

The last thing he saw before his face was crushed inward by the rising ground was the slight waver in the plane's positioning.

Party

Mathias stood amongst the crowd, sipping on wine, a decorative rapier hanging comfortably from his hip as he watched the rich men wander to and fro, gladly putting their wealth on display for the world to see. They were all perfectly aware of why they had been invited - because they had the wealth not to question the hundred dollar fee on their way in, or that they had to pay for their cocktails. Even aside from that, they carried on them great jewelry, mass wealths of cash, and numerous other things with which to display their power through money.

Mathias, on the other hand, was there because his face looked remarkably similar to one of the patrons whom he had recently robbed, which was fortunate for a thief. He had entered unquestioned, and while he had had to pay the fee on his way in and buy a few drinks to fit in, it had been easy to pilfer far more than he had paid in the first place as he made his way around. The profits far outweighed the cost - more than he could say for any of the idiots around him, even if he hadn't stolen from them. The only thing they were there to do was to get their names and faces out there amongst their peers.

But Mathis had not come in alone. He had brought a date - a sexy little vixen, dressed in a tight black dress with long cuts down the front and up the leg. She looked good - good enough that no one could stop staring at her, even as she slipped her hands in their pockets and lifted their wallets. It was easy to get lost in her curves. Fortunately, Mathias had practice.

They met behind one of the pillars in the hall about halfway through the night, planting a kiss hard on one another's lips the moment they came together. "How have you been doing, my prince?" Drana asked, pulling a golden crown out of her bag and placing it on Mathias' head. "Are we full of riches now? Can we get the hell out of here so that the only one looking at my cleavage is you?"

Mathias chuckled and adjusted the crown on his head. "Now why would I look at your cleavage when I can just strip you entirely?"

"God that sounds so much better than this dull party. Let's get the hell out of here."