Random stories

“In the depths of wildest dream, I have seen the face of God, slack dead atop the seven thrones. High on the fevered shakes of the soon to pass, the dance of honeyed death, yet I awoke, soul burned but untaken, burdened with terrible knowing. It would have been but a mercy to be slain so, before the agony of what is to come, the churning sea that will boil into the liar sky, wash it away to reveal the hidden eyes.”

“Right, you’re religious, that’s cool,” Mary said, not looking up from her phone. She adjusted in her seat as she texted.

—-----------

Tammy, this guy… what were you thinking?-

\-What? I thought he seemed sweet? Better than your last guy, for sure.

—-----------

Mary sighed. “Right, so what do you like to do for fun?” she stared into the kitchen, trying to will the food to finish.

“I have taken to painting.” The guy, was it Patrick?, said. “I find that pulling the shambling horrors from my thoughts, arresting them to canvas is the only way to gain rest for a time, but my hands are imperfect things, bound to these four dimensions, unable to engrave the dread dog's likeness truly.” He raked a hand through his messy dark hair.

“Ah, okay, you’re an artist,” Mary nodded her head. That explained the weirdness. “I used to do collages in college, never did any paints though. You sound really passionate. Do you have an Instagram?”

“The many coils of this world, so interlinked to form the fired nerves of a babbling hivemind, a pretender god hewn from the masses. It hurries the madness. I cannot force myself to look upon it.” He drank his water in one long pull and began pouring more from the vase-like pitcher, fingers almost touching with his wide grip. He filled up Mary's as well.

“You know, that is so smart actually. My friend was trying to get me to take a break from social media. I’m jealous. I’m hopeless though, addicted.”

“Deep in the wastes of the ruined kinglands lies the dread dopamine city, where pleasure holes are filled with the twitching hordes, unable to feel not but the most intense pleasure. It is the third worst of the hells I have witnessed.” He placed his hands over his eyes and began to weep.

“Okay, that’s hilarious,” Mary loosened her shoulders as she giggled. “That’s definitely me scrolling through TikTok for hours.”

“I’m sorry, guys,” the waiter said, popping up beside, was it peter? She would really have to find a way to ask again. “Food’s gonna be about 15-20 more minutes, we had a cook walk out, rambling something about maddening drawings in the bathroom.”

“Oh, that’s fine,” Mary said. “We’re having fun. No worries.”

“In the face of senseless millennia stretching out on either side, life is but a coarse blip of sensation in totality.” Her blind date offered, staring into the middle distance.

“Oh, that sounds so smart, is that like zen stuff?”

Comic form: [https://imgur.com/gallery/BcypkTE](https://imgur.com/gallery/BcypkTE)

thanks to /u/echoeversky for idea to run these through midjourney

/r/surinical

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Submitted by Surinical on Mon, Sep 26, 2022 to /r/WritingPrompts/

The prompt

The woman looked at her at her blind date and said, "I told Tammy that I wanted old and rich...not eldritch."