Things to Run Away From Really Fast

05/15/11

"You need to find a vehicle to get to the heist."

"I magic one of the cars off the road."

"Your character doesn't have that skill!"

"I have that skill." I say, and I pull a random car off the highway. The driver steps out of his car and hands me the keys, looking dazed and confused.

The GM. Scare Factor: 1.

04/23/11

Victim lies face down on the floor of the food court. Blood pools around right shoulder (it trickles across the grout between the white tiles, sloping towards a nearby drain). Wound is a deep slash into the upper shoulder. Victim is alive (his arm twitches, and he makes a sound that barely qualifies as a whimper), but too weak to make any move to stop the bleeding.

Approach, avoiding blood. Are you all right sticks in my throat, along with any false reassurancees. I touch the unwounded shoulder, acclimate him to my presence, say, "I'm going to find something to stop the bleeding".

I'm shoved aside by a woman in her early twenties, short, red hair, who tells me to find a first aid kit. Content to abdicate responsibility, I grab the red bag from a nearby pillar and bring it back, grabbing for a swathe of gauze.

The world goes fuzzy, like I'm trying to think through a haze of cotton balls. I stumble but don't fall, and the red-haired girl demands a needle and thread. I think we need to stop the bleeding, I'm confused...

I'm going for food at Subway. The girl is a manager at Taco Bell, which is right next to it. We argue, and the conversation devolves into a shouting match. She thinks I'm incompetent (I think she's a bitch).

I walk away, grumbling.

First Aid. Scare Factor: 2.

02/25/10

I'm Alex and she's Nikita and – shit! I throw myself behind a set of crates as a blaze of gunfire lights up my trail.

"We have to take the south exit!" she shouts over the noise.

"They've anticipated your escape route," I shout back, "It's an ambush!"

"We don't have a choice!"

Splintering wood and conveniently placed explosives under piles of precariously stacked crates – we make a dash for the exit. Don't stop when you're in the open, I tell myself, sprinting across the lawn, It's when you're most vulnerable, and we dive into the river and Alex closes her eyes.

Caught in the slipstream, I nudge at Alex/Nikita. Don't hold your breath, I say. Breathe. It won't hurt you.

Alexandra. Scare Factor: 2.

02/24/11

"When can I schedule an appointment for you?"

Needing a doctor's appointment, but I don't have a day free for a while. I'm working every day this week.

"Why are we walking to the train station?" I ask the nurse.

"I need a light. You don't carry a lighter."

"Only if I'm dreaming," I say, amused, and I snap my fingers. A sliver of bright red flame flares up over my closed fist.

Zippo. Scare Factor: 1.

02/22/11

Three people sit around a table. Two of them are dead.

The bodies are slumped at awkward angles, twitching. Under their skin, tiny creatures mass and swarm and crawl, and at any moment, the meat-sacks will burst at the seams and the kitchen floor will be flooded with blood and tissues and squirming maggots.

A little girl sits in the third place-setting, quietly finishing her homework.

They play hopscotch on the sidewalk, and they make fun of her. They don't know what she could do to them, what she's about to do. Calling through cracks in the sidewalk, calling up all the little things that crawl.

She doesn't realize that she's raised a hand, fingers stretched out, until another hand is closing over hers and forcing her arm down. She turns and meets the cool stare and raised eyebrows, and knows that the black-clothed child is other, like her.

This "Samael" has a job offer for her, and so she follows.

Sarcophagidae. Scare Factor: 3.

02/21/11

Door after door leading to white hallway after white hallway. "You must remember the way," he says, "For you will return alone."

The next room is an airy loft, warm lights illuminating hardwood floors and brick walls, black leather furniture and red accents. Light streams in from the windows, but I don't look outside. My focus is on the jewelry box which sits on the black coffee table.

Dark stained oak, cheap brass clasp. Approximately six inches across, four inches tall, five inches deep. I flick open the cheap brass clasp. Red velvet? Darker. Not black, too repetitive. Inside the box is an onyx pendant, oval-shaped, set in silver.



My mind filters the details automatically, but I'm focused on the brief spark of red energy, invisible threads latching onto my energy reserves and trailing through another level of the dream-world. A horcrux, then.

Dark. Underground. Cavernous. Walls drip with slime and... blood, yes. No smell, no sensory input other than sight. Area is large, but confining. Can feel the thing trapped here, straining against its bonds.

Sharp movement. Living, shapeless mass of flesh and grinding bone. Something claws its way from inside, tears the creature open from the inside. A humanoid figure steps out of the bloody, writhing thing. This is the monster.

"Run," I say to the other man. "You need to get as far away from me–"

Too late. The room goes pure white in an instant, powered by the horcrux's parasitic bond. A cloaked figure unfurls itself across the room, stands up straight and I make a sharp gesture with my ebony wand, shouting and pulling on the emotions that I need to fuel the spell.

"AVADA KEDAVRA!"

White noise is deafening and the room gets brighter than should be possible and - nothing.






He sits poised on the far end of the couch, staring disapprovingly at his cup of tea. Earl Grey in delicate white china, set in a saucer that he holds in his left hand. I'm on the other end of the couch, looking straight at him. I probably have a cup of tea, or maybe it's sitting on the coffee table.

"So," I say casually, "From one dark wizard to another..."

He smirks at that. "A dark wizard, Harry? You?"

"This time around, it's different." I say with a scowl, "What was the first curse I cast at you, again?"

"As I recall," he says, taking a sip of the tea, "You attempted to cast the killing curse."

Attempted–?

"You lack the hatred required to fuel the spell." He explains, and he meets my eyes. "This version of you does not love, Harry. All you have is apathy."

Trinkets. Scare Factor: 3.

02/20/11

"If I was perfect, I would date perfect."

"Wait, this isn't just about the sex. You like his personality. You like that he's conniving."

"Don't even..."

"Oh my God. You're sleeping with me."

Amber. Scare Factor: 1.

02/05/11

"You're leaving? How the hell are you planning to get out of the city?"

"By bus."

"That route's run by the gangs. Do you know what they could do to you?"

"I'd kill them if they tried."

"You'd try to kill them, you mean."

"Well, yes."

An image forms in my mind. The bus I'm on, forced to the side of the road. The leader grabs me by the arm, hauls me to my feet. Keeping center of balance low, I take a quick step past him. Use his grip against him, grab, throw, dislocate his shoulder. Follow through to the next man, punch to the solar plexus. Disarm the knife, strike to the throat.

Unrealistic? Depends on reaction time of second man. Don't underestimate.

"Fine," she says, with the look of a person with too many stubborn people in her life. "I'm coming with you."

One Way. Scare Factor: 2.

★★☆☆☆

SOLO SENTENCE ESPRESSO

01/29/11

The agent says, "You can't escape this; your fingerprints are a match," and I smirk and rub at my handcuffed wrists, shifting the patterns on my fingertips into something unrecognizable.

Prints. Scare Factor: 2.

★☆☆☆☆

SOLO SENTENCE ESPRESSO

01/28/11

I'm not wearing my contact lenses, or my glasses, but the world is in focus at the centre of my vision, and blurry at the edges.

Fish-Eye Lenses. Scare Factor: 1.

★★★☆☆

SOLO SENTENCE ESPRESSO

It takes fifteen minutes of standing on the train tracks and yelling before the chupacabra shows up and dies and is recorded onto a tape so that its soul is sufficiently trapped for eternity (or until the sequel); I'm late for work and Dean's hit by a train, but we get better.

Chupacabra. Chupacabras? Scare Factor: 3.

★★★★★

SOLO SENTENCE ESPRESSO

The ballroom explodes into chaos as the giant chess set dismembers the guests, forcing me to escape with the elderly ghosts of the manor who then try to trap me as I escape through the cracks in reality with the maid and her sister who don't trust me after I rescue them from drowning because I can't die (from that point on, we're followed by their zombie-like blue-tinged doppelgangers who are haunting their mostly-dead father who says, "This is our eternity," and means, "This is Hell.")

Eternity. Scare Factor: 5. Rating: Awesome.

★★☆☆☆

Samael Presents:

(your daily)

SOLO SENTENCE ESPRESSO

(the contents of which you should still)

FLEETLY FLEE FROM

(with all due haste.)


On a deserted stretch of Saskatchewan highway, after I wake up in the back of an empty car surrounded by empty cars, I watch a figure approach from the distance (I don't expect him to attack me until the door is opening and I can't wrench it shut and I barely remember to break the dream into a thousand million jagged pieces of glass).

The Road. Scare Factor: 7.

Samael's SOLO SENTENCE ESPRESSO is not at all similar to Mzzkc's ¡Single Sentence Sizzler!® and disclaims all semblance of copyright infringement thereof. That would be stealing.

★★★★☆

01/16/10

I coax my motorcycle to its maximum speed, streamlining my body as I approach the closing elevator doors. The elevator cab has already left for the top floor, and I strain to hold the metal doors open. In half a second, I'll crash into the back of the open elevator shaft and hurtle half a dozen stories into the secret basement of the compound.

Pause.

No reason for that. I don't have to follow the rules, after all. I stand in the open air, looking up at the elevator cab as it slowly escalates to the top floor. That's where I'll find her.

Go.

I fly through the doors, over the pit below. The front wheel of my bike hits the far wall, and I twist

Speeding up the elevator shaft at maximum, up the vertical wall. Vertigo. Disassociated from gravity and catching up to the elevator cab, about to impact. I jump away from the vehicle; it fades away. Suspended in the air for a moment, and I reach toward the closed doors leading to the floor second-to-the-top. I pull myself in, catch on the small ledge there, hang for a moment, looking at the bottom of the elevator cab. It's moving towards me now.

Jump. Over the elevator, clinging onto the doors leading to the top floor. With a wave of my hand, they're opening...

I wake up. Damn it guys, could you break up a little more quietly?

Action Movie Physics. Scare Factor: 3.

★★★☆☆

01/14/10

She pours cream in her coffee, and I know she's the spy.

The woman sips at the drink as she turns and pushes into the crowd of people in the mall. I pull away from a conversation, follow at a distance. I can make out her long black coat, her long curtain of blonde hair. She breaks into a run, and I'm speeding after her. I'm falling behind, reaching out and (force pull) she's flying back into my arms. Hair falls away from her face - the wrong face. A body double. (I'm letting go of the woman, blending into the crowd.) Good.

She's going to make it fun.

I Spy. Scare Factor: 2.

Blondes and coffee seem to be a recurring trope.