I clutched my rifle tighter, staring around at the corners of the room.  The shadows – were they growing darker?  I swore that, out of the corner of my eye, I could see things darting back and forth in the darkness.

But when I brought the stock around, the weapon’s iron sights quivering despite my extensive training, there was nothing.  I swung back and forth, desperate and afraid to turn my back on any one corner for too long.

“Come out!” I shrieked, my voice sounding high-pitched and desperate.  “Come and face me!”

My cry was answered by a rustle of dry silk, and I spun as the newcomer materialized out of the air.

He was a man, if a man was stripped of all that made him a man.  He stood too tall, his limbs were too thin, jointed in too many places.  His details were shrouded by that dry, ancient silk, torn black strips hanging and fluttering in the nonexistent breeze.  His head was all but hairless, but his eyes were two pools of midnight.  He lifted his head from his sunken chest, and those eyes locked onto me.

“Why our world?” I beseeched the figure.  “We didn’t ask for you here!  We never summoned you, or your nightmare god!”

The figure seemed to pay no notice to my weapon.  I doubted that it would do much damage, anyway.  He was a Prophet, so filled with the dark glory of his master that there was not a single individual thought left in his head.  “You did not summon,” he wheezed, his voice a rasp across the ridges of my brain.  “And yet we came.”

“If you can choose to come, than you can choose to leave!” I shouted.  It wasn’t my imagination – the shadows were darkening, solidifying, intruding in on the faint and failing circle of light that sheltered me for the moment.  “He may be your god, but he isn’t ours!”

The figure raised a hand, long fingers unfolding with too many joints.  “He was not our God,” the figure whispered.  “But in the end, it made no difference.”

The shadows leapt forward, coiling around his finger and jumping out across the gap towards me.  I tightened my finger, and the weapon in my hand spat rounds at my attacker, but they seemed to pass through without effect.  I hadn’t expected them to do much, anyway.

The ribbon of shadow tightened around my face, cutting off all vision.  For just a moment, I felt pain, and then, by the grace of mercy, it all melted away.  I sank into the comfortable blackness of oblivion.

And then the ribbons of darkness wrapped around me once more, hauling me out of my eternal slumber and into eternal horror.

I stared up at the monstrosity looming in front of me.  My diamond sword slipped from my loose hand, landing on the crumbling digital floor and reverting back to a small, floating icon of itself.

This was it.  The end of the line.  All of the lines of the horizon, the vectors that sketched out the skyline and the clouds mapped across its surface, seemed to fuzz out and desaturate as they were sucked into the maw of the beast before me.  Straining my eyes, I could swear that, just before entering, the graphics were reverting back into streams of faintly glowing ones and zeros.

Shepard skidded to a stop beside me, his mouth falling open.  “That’s a hell of a bug,” he commented, his words a whisper in the roaring sound of our worlds being destroyed, consumed.

I nodded, still trying to find the words to describe the monster.  The creature was illogical, a mishmash of body parts from a dozen different nightmares, all crammed together onto a single body that wasn’t big enough.  Some of the limbs seemed intricately detailed, robotic with firing pistons and winking lights or insectoid with shining, spiked black chitin.  But other limbs seemed to be nothing more than a series of blocks and tubes, somehow connected and floating together as they flailed back and forth.

At least six gigantic, skeletal wings stemmed back behind the creature, blending into the gridwork lattice revealed behind the vanishing sky.  The thicker lines of the wing supports seemed to pulse, growing and absorbing the very universe we stood in.  Indeed, perhaps the creature was now the only thing still giving structure to our reality.

Worst of all, however, was the head, if you could even call it such a thing.  A central mouth, surrounded by irregularly sized glowing red eyes, gawped open mindlessly.  It sucked in the world, innumerable teeth gnashing together inside as it chewed through our digital world.  And yet, despite pulling in violent winds towards it, a faint scream, a scream of pure agony, rose up above everything.  I didn’t know if it was outside my ears or inside my mind.

I glanced at Shepard, next to me.  He was standing strong, sure, but his white-knuckled grip on his particle rifle betrayed his fear.  “This is going to be a nasty battle,” he commented, his voice tight with controlled tension.  “I would love some air support for this.”

I glanced up at the disappearing sky, tilting back the diamond-studded helm perched atop my blocky head.  “I don’t think we’ll have much atmosphere left, pretty soon,” I said.

There was the scrape of boots next to me, accompanied by a metallic ringing.  I turned to my left, looking at my other companion.  Dressed in green, he didn’t speak, but his gaze narrowed as he stared up at the monster before us.  Try as I might, I could see no fear in his young face – his blonde hair framed only rigid determination.  He had drawn his sword, an unlit bomb ready in his off hand.

I took one last deep breath and then reached forward, picking up my sword once again.  “Well, gentlemen, it’s been good to know you,” I said.  “Shepard, you’re on ranged support.  Link, I’ll be right behind you.”

The man next to me opened his mouth in a wordless roar and charged forward, his blade held high.  I was only a step beside, switching to my bow to get a few hits in before closing with the bug.  Behind me, I heard the ratchet as Shepard racked the slide on his assault rifle.

For just a moment, I closed my eyes, and all was silent.  And then they snapped open, and I became a slashing whirlwind of death.

The Prompt: All women have a purity ring of sorts whose size and quality are derived from their social standing, wealth, and traits desired for optimal relationships.

When I arrived at the bar, the collar of my jacket still upturned against the chill of the crisp fall evening, Tommy had already managed to procure a couple seats at the counter.  He waved me over, and I cut in through the already forming throng of young people.

“Hey, glad you could finally make it!” he greeted me, sliding an opened bottle of beer across the bar’s top to me.  “Man, I’ve been sitting here scoping out our targets for, like, ten minutes already!”

I grasped the wet bottle and took a long drag.  “Let’s just say that I needed this,” I replied, nodding towards the beer.  “Classes were terrible, and Finklestein kept us late.  I don’t think he realizes that most of his class doesn’t care about fluid dynamics at all, much less as much as he does.”

After draining a quarter of my beer, I spun around in the high stool, gazing out across the sparse but growing sea of eligible college students.  “So, identified any prospective targets yet?” I asked.

Tommy raised his own bottle to his lips, took a sip, and then nodded towards a pert and smiling brunette a few paces away.  “She’s pretty cute,” he offered.  “Athletic, you know?  I’m pretty sure that she’ll do all the work later on this evening!”

The girl was chatting with a friend, and she lifted her glass up to her lips to take a sip.  I caught a glimpse of the ring on her finger, and shook my head.  “Not a chance, dude.  Carved jade?  She’s only gonna go for an Asian guy.”

I was the next one to choose, leaning past Tommy to check out a wavy-haired blonde further down the bar.  I couldn’t see her hands, but she was wearing quite the low-cut top, and I could definitely see some other assets that called out to me.  “I wouldn’t mind bumping into her, if you know what I mean!” I exclaimed, tilting my head towards her.

This time, Tommy was the one to shake his head.  “She’s sprouting a two-carat diamond on her finger,” he pointed out.  “She’ll be totally into you – until she gets out of the bar and sees that you drive an old Honda Civic, not a Bentley.  And then she’ll be gone like the wind.”

I sighed and took another pull of beer.  “So what’s your best prospect, then?”

Tommy waggled his eyebrows at me suggestively, and then pointed over his shoulder at a girl sitting in one of the booths.  The girl was cute, sure, but she could definitely afford to shed a few pounds.  And the fact that she appeared to have ordered food at this college bar was not a great sign.  “Really?” I asked, apprehension clear in my voice.  “Her?”

“The ring, dude!” Tommy replied.  “I saw it when she was lifting up a mozzarella stick.  She’s got a ruby, a diamond, and a sapphire, all small – all I have to do is spout off some patriotic stuff and I’ll be totally in!”

I opened my mouth to protest, trying to convince him that he could do better, but Tommy reached out and slapped me on the back, nearly making me choke on the beer.  “I’ll let you know how it goes later, buddy!” he told me, and then went scurrying across the bar.  I watched with a combination of bemusement and resigned disappointment as he slid into the booth opposite the girl and started chatting.

“This seat open?”

I turned around, nodding.  “Yeah, it is.  I think I’ve just been ditched for the evening.”

“Great!  At least I get something out of it.”  The voice was distinctly feminine, and I couldn’t stop myself from checking out the girl sliding onto the stool beside me.  She had straight black hair that fell on narrow shoulders, but as she pushed errant strands back out of her face, she revealed a pair of large and sparkling brown eyes.  A cute little upturned nose was above a large mouth, pulled back into a smile as she wryly observed me checking her out.  One eyebrow lifted slightly, as if asking if I had finished yet.

“Sorry,” I apologized, putting on my best disarming smile.  “If it helps, you’re way prettier than the last occupant of that seat!  Can I get you a drink?”

“You know what?  I’d be happy with one of what you’ve got,” the girl replied, nodding towards my beer.  “I think it’s been one of those days.”

The words made me smile; I knew exactly what she meant.  “Heck yes,” I agreed, reaching over the counter to wave and catch the bartender’s attention.  I pointed to my bottle, and then held up two fingers, waiting until he nodded in confirmation.  “I’m Jake.  Nice to meet you.”

“Hi, Jake,” the girl greeted me.  “I’m Abbey.”  She held out her hand to me for a joking handshake.  I couldn’t help but risk a quick glance down at her ring.  It was purely instinctual – how could I not?

The ring was surprisingly elegant.  A central diamond, princess cut in a square, was flanked by two smaller emeralds.  The ring was made of white gold, its lines both clean and appealing, but strands of white gold rose to curl slightly around those two side emeralds, giving just the slightest hint of playfulness.  It was, I realized with a sudden rush, the most beautiful ring I’d ever seen.

“Abbey,” I repeated, my eyes finally rising up to meet hers once again.  “It is, honestly, a pleasure to meet you.”  I caught a hint of a blush in the girl’s cheeks as she smiled back at me, and in that moment, the rest of the bar seemed to all fade into the background.

Author’s note: I really like this writing prompt!  It’s a fun idea to consider.

I glanced down at my watch as I ran along, trying desperately not to let the loose bundle of papers tucked under my arm come undone.  The bouncing of my limbs made it hard to read the time, but I finally caught a glimpse of the clock face.

Shit.  I was already five minutes late, and I had no idea where the meeting room was.  Dan, that empty-headed idiot, had only given me the floor number, and I had assumed (like an imbecile) that the room would be obvious!  But now, dashing down this corridor with door after door, I had to admit that I was hopelessly lost.  Each door had a floor-to-ceiling pane of semi-opaque glass set in next to it, presumably so that I could see into the meeting rooms, but I hadn’t been able to spot an occupied one yet.

I spotted a door up ahead, unlike the others – this one was covered in vertical wood paneling, just like the wall, and only the bright brass doorknob distinguished it from the rest of the corridor.  Crossing my fingers, I opened it and peered inside.

Nope.  Nothing but some machinery making faint chugging noises against the back wall.  I closed the door, turned around-

-and almost slammed into Dan, walking in the corridor right next to me.

I gawped at the man, wondering where in the world he had come from.  Just a moment ago, I had been the only one in the hallway, and I most certainly hadn’t heard any approaching footsteps!  “Dan!” I gasped.  “Where’s the room at?  You didn’t tell me the room number!”

The other man seemed perplexed by my panic.  “It’s room 443, right here,” he replied.  He waved a hand at the room in question – just opposite the door I had just opened that had been covered in wood paneling, in fact.  “Take a breath, man, you’ve still got five minutes!”

As Dan headed into room 443 at his annoyingly slow, leisurely pace, I glanced down at my watch again in confusion.  “I thought the meeting was starting… at… ten…” my voice trailed off.

My watch now read only 9:55!  I raised it up, staring at it with suspicion, but the second hand seemed to be operating normally.  I realized that I was standing still, and I hurried forward once again to catch up with Dan, but my mind was awash in confusion.  What in the world was going on?

As always, the first few minutes of the meeting were worthless anyway.  Making sure that everyone was here, dealing with conference callers, following up on old pieces of business from the last meeting that had never quite been removed from the agenda – all necessary, but all incredibly boring as well.  Thanks to arriving a few minutes early, I had managed to snag a seat near the door, and I spun a couple times in my chair, gazing out through the semi-opaque glass next to the door into room 443.  I could see the glint of that brass doorknob on the other side of the hall.

As the head of the Committee for Diversity and Equal Treatment was making his usual inane announcements about H.R. representation, I glanced out through the pane of glass again.  Someone was outside the room!  I wondered if they were here for the meeting – they were moving jerkily, their actions making them look as if they were late and panicked.  The opacity of the glass prevented me from making out details, but they looked to be about my height.  A bundle of loose papers was barely tucked under one arm.

The person outside twisted around, his or her gaze shooting up and down the hall, and then they turned to the door opposite the hall from me.  I watched as they twisted the handle, pulled the door open from the rest of the wall’s wood paneling-

-and vanished.

Something made me glance down at my watch.  10:05.  It took a few seconds for me to put together what had happened, but then, sitting at the table, my eyes slowly began to widen…

The guard jerked one thumb over his shoulder.  “And, last sight on this free tour of your new home: Morag.  This guy’s gonna be around forever.”

I stared through the bars at my fellow inmate, dressed in an orange jumpsuit identical to mine.  He looked like an ordinary enough fellow, maybe in his late forties, bronze skin and dark hair.  He had been lying on his bed when we had approached, but now jumped up, peering out the bars at me with interest.

I glanced over at the screw, standing next to me with one hand resting on the pistol on his belt.  “What, like a life sentence?”

The guard shook his head.  A moment later, he nodded.  “Well, yeah.  But that’s what makes it so goddamned hilarious.”

The confusion must have been evident on my face.  “Here, I’ll show ya,” the guard said, correctly reading my lack of understanding.  “Stand back, prisoner.”  And in a swift gesture, he drew his firearm!

I jumped back, but the guard was focused on the prisoner.  He raised the gun, shoved it between the bars, and before Morag could respond, pulled the trigger.

The sound of the gun echoed like a crack of thunder in the confined concrete space.  Morag staggered back, both hands pressed over the hole in his abdomen that was already gushing blood.  He hit the back wall and slumped down to the floor, leaving a smear of redness across the back of his cell.

“Oh my god!” I screamed.  “What the hell are you doing??”

The guard chuckled, re-holstering his weapon.  “Look,” he said, pointing into the cell.  And as I followed his finger, my eyes wide with shock, I saw Morag stagger back to his feet, straighten up, and then brush himself off as if nothing had happened!

The guard laughed, but his tone was mocking, edged with bitterness.  “The idiot’s immortal.  Nobody knows how, but he can’t be killed.  Heals from anything.  But he still managed to get himself convicted of multiple manslaughter – life sentence, no chance at parole.  He’s gonna be stuck in here forever.”

Still laughing, the guard started heading back down the hallway.  I held back for a moment, however, staring at Morag.  He gave a jaunty little wave to the guard, and then smiled back at me.

“God, that’s horrible,” I whispered aloud, gazing at the man in the cell and imagined being imprisoned, forever, until the end of time.

Morag shrugged a shoulder.  “I’m looking on the bright side,” he offered.  “I still get some news in here.  And humanity’s going to make itself extinct in the next few centuries, no doubt.  A couple hundred more years, and this place will have fallen apart enough for me to get out.  I’ll be free in under a millennium.”

“Convict!” the guard shouted, and I had to hurry away without a response.  But I couldn’t help glancing back over my shoulder, my mind awash in confusing thoughts.

Author’s note: This story should be readable both forwards and backwards, if I didn’t mess anything up!  Go by paragraph (read the last one first, and then the second last, and so on).

************

“Hell?  Maybe you don’t know me – this seems more like Heaven to me.”

I stared around at the young men and women, already sweating in the heat that filled the humid air.  I couldn’t help my eyes lingering on the women’s curves – I was a red-blooded male, after all!  Well, I had been.  I finally returned my attention to the horned imp in front of me.

“Well, yes,” he said.  “You were a pretty terrible person.  Even you have to admit that.  You did kill over a dozen people.”

“But I confessed!  I thought that meant that everything was forgiven!  Do I really still get punishment, damnation?”

“Yep.  But we do have a program where you can work against your fellow souls, lessening your sentence.  And, given your history, we think you’ll be quite suited towards this work.”

The imp, hovering on bat-like wings in front of me, gestured towards a nearby rack.  On the rack hung a whole array of rusty implements, many of them sharp, barbed, bladed, or otherwise designed to inflict pain.  My mind started to change.

“So, this is Hell, huh?”  I gazed around, my eyes taking in the naked bodies lined up.  “Doesn’t seem so bad.”

************

Sorry that this is so short – it is really, really tough to write this way!

I stared up at the two men leering down at me through my open window.  If it wasn’t for the flashing lights of their cruiser, parked behind me, I would have thought that they had stolen the outfits.

The man next to my door was a skinny little goblin, swimming in his navy blues.  His companion, standing silently a few steps behind, was a troll squeezed into child’s clothes.  A tiny, wild part of my mind cackled that they must have picked up each other’s uniforms.

“I’m sorry,” I said aloud.  “Look, I know that I was going a little fast, but it’s late at night!  I just want to get back home to my wife.”

The goblin scratched at the pockmarks on his cheek.  “Nah, see, we got this game,” he drawled at me.  He flicked his eyes towards his companion, who let out a deep snigger.  “We call it Wheel of Torture, see?  Show him.”

The goblin jerked a finger over his shoulder at his mountain of a partner.  I twisted my head, looking back, and saw the big man holding up a wheel the size of a dinner plate.  It had been subdivided into crude slices, with curiously childish handwriting scrawled across each slice.

“See, we get bored out here, stuck on traffic in this little town, so we made this!  And it’s your punishment for getting caught!  Now, traffic’s been kinda sparse, so we spun the wheel for ya.”

“Spun for ya,” the troll repeated in a throaty chuckle.

The goblin exchanged a smile with his partner, and then returned his attention to me.  “So, sir, get outta the car.”

I did as he commanded.  I wasn’t any sort of giant, but I still loomed a good six inches above the skinny little goblin, who took a half-step back.  “Now, our first spin got kneecap,” he said, his hand dropping to his belt to fumble with the clasp holding in his pistol.  “But we figgered that we’d be nice, let you choose which one you wanna lose!”

I couldn’t seem to find any words.  “I’m sorry, what?”

The goblin had finally freed his weapon.  “Too late!” he chirped, and I felt a steel ball peen hammer slam into my left knee.  An instant later, a loud bang assaulted my ears.

My left leg gave out beneath me, and I fell to the ground.  A wave of agony, hot and liquid, rose up, making me wretch.  Stepping closer to stand above me, the little cop giggled, his voice curiously high pitched.  “Ready for your next spin?”

I clenched my eyes shut, trying not to vomit.  “Oh, no!” the goblin called out a moment later.  “Looks like you landed on ‘sex’!  Better get yer hole ready!”  The troll sniggered again, and I heard the sound of the zipper on his pants being pulled down.

Inside my head, something suddenly clicked, snapping into place.  The pain, previously all but unbearable, was muted, muffled, pushed aside.  Wait a minute!  These small-town hick fucks thought that they were going to rape me!?  For some dumbass game!?

Without a conscious thought in my head, I lunged for the little goblin.  He let out a satisfying squeal of fright as I loomed suddenly above him.  His gun was still in hand, but it was butt first as he raised his hands to defend himself.  I slammed my clenched fist into his face and felt something crunch beneath my knuckles.

As the shrimpy little prick dropped to the ground, I twisted the gun free from his hand.  The steel was cool in my hand.  The troll had started forward at the sight of his partner being assaulted, but I raised the pistol up to point between his eyes, bringing him to a halt.  My entire arm was shaking, but the gun remained rock-steady.  My weight was on my good leg, but as long as I didn’t look down, I could imagine that my left knee was still uninjured.

The big man stopped, letting out a wordless grunt of surprise.  For a long moment, we stood there, neither of us moving.  And then my eyes fell to the wheel, dropped into the dirt at the side of the road.

I gestured towards it with the gun.  “Pick it up.”

The other cop did as I asked, holding it out in front of him like a shield.  I twitched the weapon at him again.  “Spin it.”

A whimper escaped the troll’s lips, but he did as I asked.  The wheel spun with a clicking sound, and the man glanced down as it came to a stop.  “Sez broken arm,” he read off in uncertain tones.

I pulled the trigger of the pistol.  “I don’t give a shit,” I replied as the man’s head exploded in gore.

I turned my attention back to the scrawny little fellow at my feet as his partner’s corpse hit the ground.  “What about you?” I asked.  “Wanna try your luck at the wheel?”

“No!  No!” the little shrimp screamed, his legs scrabbling across the ground as he tried to wriggle away.  I pulled the gun’s trigger again, and a ragged tear appeared in the little goblin’s neck.  His wiggling became wild spasms for a moment as he vainly tried to stem the arterial gush of blood from his severed artery.  He lay still after a few seconds.  I put another round into his skull for good measure.

Gun still in hand, I managed to stagger back to my car and slump into the seat.  The pain of my shattered knee was growing louder, tougher to ignore.  But I was in the middle of nowhere, and I didn’t want to deal with the consequences.  Not now.

I put the car into drive and pulled away.  Thank goodness I drove an automatic, I thought to myself with a touch of black humor.  That would really cause problems.

A mirror hung on the back wall of the office.  Jack liked mirrors.  He especially liked when he caught a glimpse of his own face in them; the strong jaw, the aquiline nose, and those flashing blue eyes gave him the look of a rakish anti-hero, a man equally confident wooing women in a bar or exchanging gunfire with crooked cops.  Jack always made sure to take good care of his face.  And whenever he saw his reflection, he would put on a brilliant white smile.

Jack was wearing a smile now, as his eyes lowered from the mirror down to the terrified woman slumped in the chair in front of it.  The woman’s fine business suit was torn and disheveled; dark spots marked where the blood from Jack’s knife had seeped through.  Her eyes, wide from a potent cocktail of fear and adrenaline, stared up at Jack without blinking.

Twirling the knife between his fingers with an ease borne of long practice, Jack squatted down to put himself at eye level with the woman.  “Come on, now,” he coaxed, his voice sure and strong.  Jack liked his voice.  It was strong, deep and sultry, always filled with confidence.  He could command a room, could make a woman gasp from the sound of his voice alone.  “It’s just a couple numbers.  And once you give them to me, all of the pain will stop.  Don’t you want the pain to stop?”

Gently, almost tenderly, Jack raised his hand up to caress the woman’s left cheek.  The knife, following behind his fingers, left a line of bright redness across her face as beads of blood appeared.  She shivered; no way to know if it was the sting of the cut or the softness of his touch.

Again, Jack spun the knife between his fingers.  The light danced along the blade, playing off the angles in a mesmerizing fashion.  Jack liked sharp knives.  There were so many uses for them, so many things that he could do with them.  He understood knives.  He brought his hand in a flick, and the woman’s jacket was split in half, falling to her sides.  Another red line now ran down her breastbone, and drops of blood flowed along the exposed curves of her small breasts.

The ugly sound of a boot on the marble floor sounded behind Jack.  Still keeping his brilliant smile pasted across his face, he turned his head to gaze over his shoulder.

Another man had stepped around the corner.  This one was shorter than Jack, stockier, and his features were obscured by a plastic mask of Gerald Ford.  Jack had picked out the masks himself; he liked knowing the history behind each face.  An MP5 was cradled in the man’s arms.

“Boss, we’re running out of time,” the man said, his voice lower in pitch, ugly and filled with gravel.  Jack suppressed a shudder.  He hated to hear the ugliness, hated having to deal with these imbeciles.

“I’m sorry,” Jack responded pleasantly, rising back to his feet.  He took a step towards the henchman, flicking the knife up to lay along his sleeve.  “What were my instructions to you, again?”

The henchman took a half-step back, intimidated by Jack’s figure.  Jack liked that he could command respect, even fear.  “Er, you said to not interrupt you, sir, but I thought that you’d want to know-“

“You thought I’d want to know,” Jack repeated, taking over the conversation.  One step closer, and he was finally within range.  The slightest note of rage entered his tone.  “You thought that you knew better than me.  That’s okay.  Excellent job, thinking on your feet.  Allow me to reward you.”

A swift motion, and Jack’s knife was embedded in the henchman’s jaw, the point rising up to pierce through his face and into his brain.  Vertically impaled, the tried to wheeze out something through his locked, pinned jaw.  Blood coursed down the handle of the knife and between Jack’s fingers.

For a moment, Jack held the man upright, marveling at how the muscles in his arm bulged and flexed with the effort.  Then he yanked the blade free, and the corpse tumbled to the floor.  A spray of blood flew from Jack’s knife, a few droplets splattering across the horrified face of the woman in the chair.  She flinched as they hit, but couldn’t take her eyes off Jack.  He liked that, liked that she couldn’t pull her eyes from him.

“Now then,” he said, his tone once again pleasant and cordial, “I do still need that combination.”

This time, as he raised his blade to tickle the woman’s eye, her mouth finally opened.  Jack listened carefully as she stumbled through a set of numbers, committing them to memory.  Jack liked how he could remember everything he heard.  He knew that he was a smart man.  He was grateful for his many skills.

Pursing his lips, Jack let out a low, echoing whistle, and another masked henchman stepped around the corner.  Jack caught the new man’s eyes flicking down to his dead compatriot, but this one was made of stronger stuff; he recovered quickly and raised his face to Jack.

Jack recited off the combination, and the man nodded.  “Do you want to see the vault open?” he asked, before dashing off.

There was always a visceral thrill to watching the bank’s vault door swing open.  “Not this time, I’m afraid,” Jack replied, putting on another smile.  His eyes flicked briefly to the woman slumped in the chair.  “I have a little business here to finish.”

The henchman wisely didn’t question his boss.  Jack turned back to the woman as he left the office.  “Now, what to do with you?” he mused.  Another caress, and a matching cut appeared on the woman’s right cheek.  Jack dropped his hand, dipping it inside the ruins of her blouse to caress her breast, feeling its hot weight on his palm.  He felt a stirring in his pants, and a vision of this woman, naked and writhing, pinned beneath him, briefly filled his mind.  “Maybe we could have a little fun.  You’d be lucky – there are a lot of girls who want to be with me.”

The woman shivered at his touch.  Jack’s eyes narrowed, his mouth twisting with distaste.  Jack could admit that he wasn’t great at handling rejection.  He worked hard to get everything he wanted; no one should be able to say no to him.  He withdrew his hand from the woman’s breast.  The vision inside his head was suddenly tinged in red.

“Too bad,” he offered, his voice still light and pleasant.  He could have been a radio announcer, he thought, as he raised his hand.  Heck, he could have been a TV star.  People would happily pay money to see him act, to hear him speak.  But Jack was a winner.  He had followed his dreams, and now he was able to do whatever he wanted.

Once again, Jack’s lips pursed, and he began to whistle.  A light tune, merry and upbeat.  Something in three-four tempo.  And as he worked, the woman beneath him finally found her voice again, and her wet, ragged screams provided a pleasant counterpoint.

********

Author’s note: I wanted to write a psychopath, a Patrick Bateman-type charmer with absolutely no qualms or hesitation.  Someone with every single gift and privilege in life who abuses it all.  Pretty nightmarish to me!

Author’s note: this is definitely based on the picture…

No sound carries in space.  That makes it eerier, perhaps, as I watch the destruction unfold in front of me.  Our only home, the source of all known life, being washed away in a single catastrophic event.

At least, that is how I would be feeling if the damn design artists could just get the stupid thing right.

Instinctively, I reach up towards my face.  Unfortunately for me, the helmet simulation is working perfectly, so I feel my gloved hand “thunk” against the plexiglass of my helmet.  I can feel my temples aching already.

“Pause, pause,” I say into the mike.  “Look, I’ve reported this before.  I’ve explained to you guys why we can’t have this.  Why isn’t this error fixed yet?”

The picture in front of me winks out, and I reach up and lift the bulky goggles off of my face.  This new 3-D gaming may be immersive, sure, but I do wish that the hardware engineers would work on slimming it down.  I feel like I’m back in chemistry class.

With the goggles off, my view of the slowly exploding planet is replaced by a group of confused executives and worried-looking nerds.  I turn around, pointing at the screen behind me, where my last view is still displayed.

“Just look at this explosion!” I yell, making sure to direct most of my anger towards the nerds.  “This isn’t at all how it would look!  Tiny little impact crater?  The back half of the Earth fracturing for no reason?  Massive fireball, when there’s no oxygen in space?  We’re trying to market this as science fiction, not science fantasy!”

At the head of the table, I see Bill, one of the executives, raise a hand in the air.  With a grunt of disgust to end my speech, I gesture towards him.

“Look, I’m glad that our head of QA is so focused on this project,” Bill begins in an affable but confused tone, “but I’m not quite sure why this is such a big deal.”

In response, I wave my hand down at the getup I’m wearing.  I still have the kinetic control gloves on my hands, and the mask is now perched on my forehead.  “We keep on talking about the ‘realistic, immersive experience’,” I say, quoting the proposed jacket design from memory.  “We went and studied space suits to get every detail right.  We’ve got a launch simulator so intense, NASA wants to lease it from us.  But we can’t put all that emphasis on reality and then make a total joke of the laws of physics like we do here.  And this is in one of the early cut scenes!”

Throughout this speech, Bill is nodding.  I can only hope that this is a gesture of understanding, not just of wanting me to finish and shut up.  He turns towards the closest nerd, a worthless excuse of a developer named Casey.  “How long would this thing take to fix?” he asks.

Casey fiddles with his glasses, adjusting where they are held together at the bridge by duct tape.  “It’s a pretty intense cut scene,” he stammers, obviously flustered at being put on the spot.  “It would probably take us a couple weeks to generate it again just for taking out the fireball.  Adding in the other effects would probably be months.”

Now it’s Bill’s turn to sigh and rub at his forehead.  Unlike me, he doesn’t have any goggles blocking him from doing so.  “Weeks, huh?” he says finally, and I feel my heart sink.  “Look, we’re set to go gold next week.  Sorry, but there’s no way that this is getting fixed.”

I can already feel rage and arguments welling up inside me.  A half dozen different ways of approaching the problem present themselves to me inside my head.  I sweep them all away, letting out my breath with a sigh.

“Okay,” I say instead.  “Let’s move on to the next bug – this one happens when we stumble onto the alien craft in the next crater over…”

My prompt: “Make me feel heartbroken in 4 sentences or less.”

I could still hear the doctor’s words ringing in my head as I sat there, holding my wife’s hand.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Phillips, but I’m afraid that there’s nothing we can do.”

The pistol was surprisingly heavy in my hand; it had been years since I had last removed it from its drawer.

I tilted my head back, looking up at the ceiling, imagining that my wife was beckoning me towards her.

Author’s note: I am not at all depressed!  Quite the opposite, in fact.  But the prompt said to write something heartbreaking, and so I did.  Don’t be worried!  The flow of fiction won’t stop!