Writing Explorations: Week 66, Secrets

[The Mood is Write]

My Writing Explorations series of exercises are a chance for users to explore new concepts and practice the art of raising two fingers to Writer's Block while screaming obscenities to fickle muses: to rebel against the idea that a person requires a mythical force inside them to make new and amazing things.

No. Listen well, users: there is no being inside you waiting to be let out. You are the writer, and in this exercise, you are given a place to push not only against Writer's Block, but also against the forces of stagnation. Feel trapped in your genre? Explore a new one! Stuck with a singular archetype? Do something else! In this thread, you will not be critiqued unless you request it. Should you wish it, I will happily offer my thoughts on how it might be improved, but I will not comb looking for fixes: this isn't the place: this place is for safely trying new things and indulging a love of writing.

Shake the bars of your cell block and roar, writers!

[fieldbox=How do I take part?]You can write to one or more (or none) of the prompts, the theme in the thread title, the bonuses—hell, you can even cast aside all of what I offer if you get a different idea.

The whole point is "get writing!"[/fieldbox]

Prompts:

1. A character finds an app on their phone. When they type in a person's name while thinking of them, it reveals a single hidden secret about that person. The character types their own name, and the revelation is a secret they did not know about themself.
2. All of the protagonist's friends are undercover agents tasked with keeping them alive. Those seeking the protagonist's life find them during a large social gathering.
3. The plot hinges on a secret silent language. Outsiders are unable to learn it at all.
4. The main character works in an office with a superhero who only thinks they're good at hiding their identity. Everyone at work knows and helps to cover for the hero when they regularly slip up.

Bonus Rounds:

• Write in a random genre.
• "On a scale of one to Australia, how dangerous are we talking?"
• His mind was filled with thoughts of french fries and revenge.
• "I hope you get hazard pay for having to put up with him on a daily basis. So much hazard pay."
• She never spoke, never made a sound, but the look in her eyes told the tale of what was going to happen.
• "Today is the worst day EVER!"
  "What's wrong?"
  "I had to put on pants!"
• "I'd rather be dead."
  "Then I have some good news for you."
• There had never been a worse time to sneeze.

 

[Kitti]

Every day, for as long as he had been alive... no, that wasn't quite right. He knew that if there had been something before that, something before this life, he must have seen them then, too: bright eyes the color of banana leaves flecked with hints of bronze. His perfect mirror.

As children, they had been mistaken for identical twins. Some refused to believe that they weren't, even when it became apparent that they were different genders. From the dimpled half-smirk when they thought of something funny to the way they ran a thumb from earlobe to chin when they were thinking, their mannerisms echoed a bond deeper than words.

Perhaps, then, it shouldn't have come as a surprise that they could seemingly understand one another with little more than a handful of sounds and a meaningful look. For as long as he could remember, he had just known what she meant. Their parents had been concerned, spoke to therapists about speech delays, learning disabilities, and had heard the same echo: twin speak. It's normal. They'll grow out of it.

"Ih'mm" she sighed from the hospital bed beside him. He squeezed her hand gently, felt her grow calm.

"I know, it will be over soon," he eased his grip but she took his hand tightly in her own again, suddenly alert. She didn't say a word, her eyes searching his face. The cloudy look from the sedatives cleared, just for a moment.

"On a scale of one to Australia, how dangerous are we talking?"

He didn't reply, gave her another reassuring squeeze. "Here I am giving you one of my kidneys and you're the one complaining." If she knew the real answer to her question, she never would have let them go through with it.

"Sleep well."

 

[noodle]

(I just can't stop writing about these characters. XDDD)

There had never been a worse time to sneeze. Ethan and Evan stared at each other in silent panic as the cookie jar shattered on the floor. "Nice work, dimwit!" Evan hissed angrily, both eyes- one green and one silver- glittering with annoyance. "Mom's going to kill us!"

"I can't control my sneezes!" Ethan scrambled off the counter, bare feet hitting the floor running. His twin was close on his heels. Both seven-year-olds bolted for their bedroom as the stomping gait of their mother entered the kitchen.

"Boys!" Her voice didn't sound very angry- but that didn't really mean it was safe. "Turn around."

They froze in the doorway and slowly turned around, sheepish grins on their faces. Their mother was staring at them in idle amusement, one eyebrow raised and her grey sweater-clad arms crossed over her chest. Black and silver hair cascaded over her shoulders. "Explain."

Before they could, the door swung open and their father and little sister walked in. Sawyer looked annoyed, her little four-year-old face scrunched up in irritation. Her little wings were folded tightly on her back and she had her fists clenched at her sides. "Today was the worst day ever!"

Alex chuckled from behind her and nodded to his wife, a silent cue. Accepting it, and turning from the troublemakers for now, Luna crouched in front of her daughter.

"What's wrong?"

"I had to put on pants!"

The shapeshifter snorted with laughter before straightening up and looking down at her two sons, who had taken their opportunity and were attempting to sneak away again. "Hey. Clean up your mess."

So with grumbles and begrudging motions, the twins began to pick up the shards of ceramic and the broken cookies from the tile floor of their small kitchen, while the couple embraced each other and their daughter changed into her pajamas.

And with a warmth in his heart, Alex looked upon his family and knew nothing could ever take this away from him.

 

[PoetLore]

Random Genre: Suspense/Romance/Drama

Tiffany watched the professor scrawl his explanation of the equation across the whiteboard and frowned. Her hand flew up about halfway through and since his back was to her, she called out to him, "Professor Blackman?"

He turned and frowned, "What?"

His abrupt reply and the expression on his face had her a bit nervous but she continued anyway, "You have an error in line five..."

His face seemed to turn red as she watched, "I most certainly do not!"

She stood and went to the board and showed him precisely where the error occurred, "Since this is wrong, the rest of your solution is wrong."

He looked at where her finger was and leaned closer, "That is NOT wrong young lady." He showed her in the textbook where he was showing them the answer approved by the book.

"But it IS wrong." She grabbed a paper and pencil and began writing out the original problem in delicate neat manner, and solved the equation. "This is correct. I have no idea where that answer came from, but it is wrong. Anything you did based on this would fail miserably."

"Class dismissed." Professor Blackman barked out. Once everyone had left the room he leaned into Tiffany's personal space. "Do NOT come back to my class, do you understand me?"

"But..."

"Do you UNDERSTAND me?"

"Yes sir." She gathered her things and left room. She wasn't the least bit surprised to see her best friends waiting for her outside. "He kicked me out."

Brendon frowned, "We should talk to dean Harris. You are right of course."

"You're always right." Meranda agreed.

"Not according to the text book," she sighed, "I'm going to send the publishers a letter informing them of their error."

"I hate to say this, but it IS the accepted way of solving the equation Tiff. The fact that it's flawed doesn't change that fact. Maybe you can send them your solution and ask them to disprove it. that will get them going crazy." Meranda's grin was impish and full of a bit of a rebelliousness.

Brendon rolled his eyes, "Don't you need that class for your degree?" he asked getting back to the heart of the matter.

"I could probably test out of it without any trouble, but I believe that would require my meeting with all the math department for permission."

"I'm sure that could be arranged, especially since you could teach the classes better than they do."

"I doubt that...I can't handle people who are thickheaded with math. I would suck as a teacher."

Meranda nodded, "Me too."

The three left the hall and went tot he lunchroom where they met the last two members of their little gang of math geeks, though they weren't your ordinary math geeks. these five were what would be termed prodigies. All of them performing high level calculus before the age of seven, but Tiffany was something else as well.

Thad and Charles looked up, "Class is over already?"

"I got kicked out....again..."

"Some kind of record I'm sure." Thad smirked. "On a happy note, today is Turkey Turnover day. Yum." Thad was always hungry it seemed, and revolved his life around the menu at the university cafeteria. "And they have pudding too..."

Tiff chuckled, "Thanks Thad...not real hungry just now..."

"No? can I have yours?"

"Knock yourself out..." Tiff replied and watched him dart out of his seat grabbing her ticket and plant himself in line. "how does he stay so skinny?"

Before anyone could answer her that blank expression came over Tiffany's face and her hand reached for a pencil. Meranda shoved a notebook under the pencil and Tiff began to scribble it seemed all over the page. It was no intelligible language, but a mixture of numbers and shapes and even a few odd symbols as well. She wrote twenty lines before the episode ended and Tiff's eyes focused once again on her friends. She knew by their expressions that she'd had another message so she looked down at the paper. "Wow....longest one ever..."

"I think you're just able to remain focused longer now," Meranda suggested. "They've been getting longer for a while now."

"Yeah..I guess so." She looked at the paper and she saw an actual language, not a random smattering of numbers and symbols. "This is a warning..." She said flipping the page around to them so they could read it. For whatever reason the five of them were the only ones who could understand this language, and Tiff was the only one who received the messages. They usually had things to do with her safety and with important physical events, like tornadoes, or accidents involving a lot of people and how they might be prevented. As a result she had the personal cell phone number of a very high government official in her cell phone that she called whenever something of that nature was received. Many lives had been saved as a result, so she was happy to put up with the weird out of body episodes.

Thad returned with his food and saw the page and pouted, "Aww..I missed it? I love watching that..."

"That's what happens when your whole life revolves around your stomach." Brendon chided.

Charles was reading the message when he suddenly sat up straight and started looking around the room. The others studied the page too and immediately joined him.

Tiff frowned and turned the page back to herself and reread it. It spoke of the one and imminent danger on a certain date. She blinked, that was today. Who was the one? And why were all her friends being so weird? "Who's the One?"

Thad looked at her and figured it was time to let her in on a few things, "You are. We need to get you out of here....there's no way to protect you here."

Meranda was about to lift Tiff out of her seat when men with assault weapons entered from every entrance into the cafeteria. Instead of lifting her, she shoved her under the table.

"On a scale of one to Australia, how dangerous are we talking?" Tiff asked.

"Australia plus five I'd guess."

Brendon started pulling her toward the food service area. he was the tactical specialist in the group and he knew there was more protection behind the steel of the counter. He was firing off rounds to give them cover, as were the others in the group. The reason they all stayed together in such a tight knit group was to attempt to keep those who were looking for Tiff, from knowing WHICH of them was the One. But the message spoke of them knowing the identity of the One, so he wasn't trying to be stealthy about protecting her. "Keep your head down, and trust me. You will get out of here alive."

Tiff was shocked and confused. Why were all her friends suddenly acting like commandos? And when did they start carrying guns?

Meranda, Charles and Thad were attempting to draw the fire of the enemies while Brendon was pulling Tiff along under the tables. It was more than evident though, that they knew which of them they were looking for, because they were not firing randomly, but were looking for a specific target.

Brendon got her to the counter and shoved her behind it and put his fingertip to his lips before sliding back the way he'd come. Once he was far enough away from her he fired a few shots, hoping to pull the assassins in the opposite direction. Unfortunately, Tiff chose a particularly quiet moment to sneeze. There was never a worse time to sneeze that that precise moment, but stuff happens. Instantly all the assassins were looking for where the sneeze came from and were closing in on Tiff's hiding spot.

The four were seriously outnumbered, but they were not willing to see Tiff murdered in cold blood either. They were signalling one another in the secret language using motions on their hands or in the air. They started picking off assassins one at a time, but there were five or six assassins for each one of them. Charles was the first to fall victim. Meranda pulled him back under a table and he just shook his head at her. She left him and found the one who'd taken Charles down and shot him once between the eyes.

Brendon was frantically trying to get back to Tiff when he saw one of the assassins creeping up on her from her blind side. He stood and fired at him but was completely exposed and was instantly riddled with bullets.

Thad and Meranda were thinning the opposition but Tiff was in real danger. There was and odd otherworldly calm in the air though as they moved around the room. Thad was wondering if this was the time that the One would become what they were prophesied to be, or if Tiff would remember those old messages and try to do something she wasn't ready to do. however, this was a dire situation and if ever there was a time to try something desperate...this was it.

Tiff saw Brendon get shot and something inside her brain snapped. She stood and held out her hands and the counter bent away from her. Her eyes were glowing pure white with light from within and every Assassin trained his weapon on her and began firing. Not one round touched her as she moved to the closest one and grabbed his weapon out of his hand and it seemed to melt, but in reality it bent as she altered the molecular properties of the metal. The man tried to run but she caused a chair to come up behind him and bend around him, holding him in place. She was able to capture half of them, and the rest fled.

She moved then to Brendon and placed a hand to his chest and the metal within him came to the surface of his skin and toppled to the floor beside him. The wounds closed up and she stood then to check on her other friends. Seeing Charles she moved to him and her hand touched him as well but his injuries were different and she was only able to keep him alive not restore the sight to his left eye. She stood then and the glowing in her eyes faded and she let out a slow breath.

That smiled, "Hot damn Tiff...you are the One."

Tiff huffed, "Looks like it..but...who are you guys?"

Meranda stood, "Federal agents sent to keep you alive until the prophesy came about...."

"All of you?"

The four moved to stand next to her, "Yeah...all of us."

"So ...you were never my friends."

"Not at first, but we are now. Hopefully they'll let us stay with you now....we have to deliver you to headquarters now."

"I see...what will become of me now?"

"You are going to save the world...just like the messages have said all along..."

"Oh...is that all?"

 

[Doctor Jax]

Mads leaned back against the wall, grinning as the group in front of him raucously laughed, playing a game of Cards Against Humanity in the cafe. It was a popular place, so the noise level wasn't necessarily a problem, and he scanned the area around his friends. He saw no 'unsettling' faces, though he always kept a mental tab on a certain black-haired boy with blue eyes who happened to be losing sorely at the moment.

His eyes settled on each person in the group. Anita's brown skin shone under the low lighting, her naturally kinky hair forming a nimbus around her head as she read off a card. Dally had a sly look on his face, the winestain birthmark dotting his lip twitching ever so slightly. Ines was doing her best to keep it together, her stately black eyebrows scrunched together in an effort to keep her composure. And their charge - their friend - Henry pursed his lips as he stared at his cards.

"So any of you know what you want to write about for Gethalb's essay?" Henry asked, glancing up and around the group.

"I was thinking maybe supplyside economics in the Middle East..." Anita muttered after a giggle as she glanced at the card on the table.

What's that smell? the black card read.

"Boring. I'm thinking something spicier. Like women's rights in the Middle East," Ines said, leaning forward to hold Anita's nonplussed expression of distaste.

"Slow down there, feminista, I'm sure someone else's got that covered in our class," Mads offered.

"Mads' got a point. A dozen where that came from," Dally said. "Now are you gonna draw or what? It's been like ten minutes!"

"Oh, has not," Henry shot back. "It's been two tops."

Over their heads, Mads could see a man walk through the door with a briefcase, and a shiver raced up his back. Every alarm bell in his head went off. There was a certain look to him, a kind of "off" color to his skin and unnatural twitch to his movements that only Mads seemed to pick up on.

After all, he'd been trained to.

He stuck his hand in his pocket, and he pressed the home button on his phone four times. To their credit, neither Anita, Ines, nor Dally looked up at him, but then again, they knew better than that. Instead, he saw Dally scoot ever-so-slightly to the right, blocking the man's view of Henry, while Ines glanced up across the couches of the cafe to look around a bit. Anita put down a card - lots and lots of abortions, and immediately said, "I gotta run to the bathroom. All that tea went right through me."

She got up, giving Mads a glance before walking right past the man at the counter having trouble ordering a drink. Several moments later, he got a text reading, Smells like Centaurian, V caste, wearing a bad-fitting meatsuit. Briefcase is heavy.

"Hey, I'm gonna grab another cup, okay?" Mads said.

"Sure thing. Oh my god, seriously? Dragon dildos?" Henry squealed, completely unaware.

Mads walked towards the front, just as the man with the briefcase - balding, skin a little slough-ish, lips an uncomfortable shade of pinkish blue - was about to walk deeper into the shop, his eyes glued to Henry and their group. Mads' face lit up as he said, "Hey, man! Long time no see, ey?"

He came in for a hug, the man faltering, before Mads held him at arms' length and said, "Dude, where you been? Hey, I got this sweet motorbike that I think you'll love to see, just tuned it up..."

"I... I think you have me mixed up with somebody else..."

He steered the man towards the door, and the man stiffly followed along, unsure of what to do, though a dull rage sparked in his eyes. Anita walked out of the bathroom at the same time, and her eyes glossed over as she walked past, her hand on her phone as she pressed the home button three times. Mads' own phone responded in kind with a sharp buzz back.

Before the man could protest further, Mads had already got him out on the sidewalk, heading towards the corner of the building, and the man shook him off.

"Spratsnatha. You cannot protect him forever," the man hissed, spitting on the ground a glob of blueish black. "He is heir to genocide. An entire planet. An entire civilization."

"He's a kid, on Earth, who wants to finish his German education," Mads responded. "He has no more connection to the Centauri Implosion than I do. Don't even bother with the briefcase - I've already jammed it."

"One day, one of you lapdogs of Earth won't be there to guard his back," the man garbled, eyes peering from beneath sandy-brown brows. "And we will avenge ourselves."

The body suddenly dropped to the ground, and Mads stared at it, looking about for a moment to ensure that no one had seen the altercation. Luckily, no one had. Mads picked up his phone and speed-dialled a number.

"Hey. Yeah, again. Another race, pissed off. He's safe, yeah. Has no idea. I need a clean-up crew, like usual. The body stinks, looks like he loaned it a while. Hm? Reroute the number then, you know what shop it is. They'll send an ambie clone out. Okay, see ya."

With that, he raced back into the coffee shop, shouting, "Dude! My-my buddy, he just... he fell, and I need help! Yeah, call an ambulance or something!"