McDonald’s Soda- Horror Flash Fiction

You slump down my throat as my taste buds pop with your frigid snakeskin. Shangri La.

Well, not exactly that. You’re an ice-tuned McDonald’s soda, diluted ichor of the gods on this hot as hell day. My solace as the deviled sun blazes onto the field and stilts the freckled dry wheat-grass. My solace as I drive along this lonely road, to escape the fires before me. 

“Ah-”, I pant like a dog, “the weatherman wasn’t kidding when he said 115 degrees, huh?”  

I’m in a navy pickup, one out of country songs, and today the radio twangs a sour melody. The seats are muggy leather and the steering wheel is a lava stone, my clammy hands upon it. My sweat beads upon my brow and gashes my underarms. Heat sears through the window and threatens to set fire to the carcasses of fast food amassed at the bottom of the car, to send me hurdling into an abyss of crop circles, but to my dismay, it doesn’t happen. 

I continue to drive away, hot coals in my throat, as my eyes dart to the empty street behind me. No one is there. Not yet. 

I take another sip. 

Your delicate plastic orifice is bristled against my thinning mustache. You’ll make it grow again, right? Thick and bushy as it once was? 

I drink you more and continue down the long wandering pathway, you occupied in my left hand in a warm bear hug. My fingers oscillate upon your cardboard skin as my wide cuticles divot your golden arches. I sigh in delight. 

You are cold. Ice Christ cold. You take me away from the barrel bodies in the trunk, from the raw flesh-acetone scent and their bones that click together, tick tock tick tock. Time ceases when I am with you. When I take another sip. 

I swear I’m not crazy. But you know that. I am just a common man, overweight with fried foods and existential thoughts. I swear it. 

“Would you like another kiss?” I look behind us again, to make sure no blue clad men are looking in. None. 

“I love you.” I confess, “There is a fire in me; the heat of the sun.” 

I gulp you down. The liquid stops. You let out a dehydrated croak. 

Of course, I crush you under my boot, Just like the rest of them. 

Ice cracks. Blood seeps out. 

Debbie and the Large Pumpkin

Once upon a time, there lived two mice who were the very best of friends. Debbie and Gwenie were inseparable. They did everything together: the mundane and the exciting. They would talk and laugh endlessly and it was said they even breathed in time. It would be surprising if someone thought they didn’t have a telepathic connection.

They were the very best of friends at birth, and to all it seemed they would continue to be the very best of friends until they were buried side-by-side. That is, until last September, when the annual city-wide pumpkin-growing competition began. Debbie decided she’d enter because it could be fun. Gwenie didn’t think it was worth the effort, but as any good friend, she encouraged Debbie. Neither of them expected this pumpkin-growing competition to be the end.

***

Debbie wanted to win this competition. She needed to be the Pumpkin Champion. She didn’t know why, but the title seemed more important than life itself. So she gave her life to the pumpkin. She watered it and gave it fertilizer. She put the pot on wheels and rolled it around the yard to follow the sun across the sky, her little mouse muscles straining as the wheels forced their way through the grass. She whispered to the pumpkin, loved it. At night, she stood on top of it and wielded her rake to fight off any animals that might come to devour it.

Debbie did not eat, she did not sleep. Gwenie brought her food like clockwork, but she never smiled. Debbie now breathed in time with the pumpkin, not Gwenie. Debbie was snappish and skittish, never allowing Gwenie near the pumpkin and never straying far from it. After a few weeks of this, Gwenie stopped trying to speak to Debbie at all. She left the food on the back porch and vanished.

Debbie was not always with her pumpkin. Everyday, at a random time (to throw off sabotagers), Debbie set a crate over her pumpkin to protect it and left the garden. She peered over her neighbor’s fences, scoping out the competition. As she watched the pumpkins, a sense of victory filled her. Her pumpkin was significantly larger than any of these ants. Except for Tessie’s pumpkin. Tessie was outside at all hours, polishing her pumpkin. Her pumpkin appeared as large as Debbie’s.

***

The day before the Ultimate Public Pumpkin Weighing, Debbie was pacing circles around her pumpkin. Most of the pumpkins weren’t even a quarter of the size of Debbie’s. Debbie’s pumpkin had outgrown four pots and she could barely push it around the yard anymore. But still, she was not guaranteed the Pumpkin Championship. Tessie’s pumpkin was just as large. Debbie just might get second. Debbie could not lose everything she had worked toward, everything she had ever wanted.

That night, Debbie drilled a small hole in the top of her pumpkin and dropped pebbles inside. The pumpkin was halfway full when she ran out of pebbles in her yard, so, in the middle of the night, Debbie took a wheelbarrow to Gwenie’s house and stole all her rocks. Gwenie did not see.

***

Debbie won the Pumpkin Championship by a large margin. Her pumpkin was nearly five times as massive as Tessie’s (thanks to the rocks). Tessie ran from the competition sobbing as Debbie accepted her ribbon. Nothing had ever felt so good.

The next day, Debbie invited Gwenie over for pumpkin pie in celebration.

“Congratulations,” Gwenie said when they were seated at the table.

“It was nothing.” Debbie shrugged like it was actually nothing.

Gwenie gestured to the pie with her fork before taking a bite and saying, “We’re eating your pumpkin.” It pleased Gwenie to eat the horrid pumpkin.

“I had nothing else to do with it.”
“I thought you loved your pumpkin,” Gwenie exclaimed. Debbie had chosen the pumpkin over Gwenie, so it must be worth something.

“Meh.”

“You’re not wearing your ribbon…,” Gwenie observed.

Debbie laughed. “I’m not going to brag about winning a dumb ribbon for having the biggest pumpkin. What would people think of me?”

Gwenie blinked in surprise. “We haven’t spoken in months because of this pumpkin! You broke our friendship for the pumpkin and you don’t even care about it anymore?”

Debbie cocked her head. “We’re friends.”

“Are we? I’ve been talking to Katie down the street lately.”

Debbie frowned. “Oh. Well.”

“I’ll forgive you if you say you regret it,” Gwenie said. She wanted to salvage their friendship.

“I could say that, but it wouldn’t be true.” Debbie shrugged.

The Cat Lady | Short Story

November 28

To My Dearest Diary,

I thought Emperor Mozzarella loved me, at least as much as my other cats do, but clearly, I was wrong. He vomited all over my most cherished rug and completely ruined it! I can’t believe the Emperor would do such a horrible thing! I thought he respected me. I suspect it was revenge for giving Cherry the Cheshire the fancy cat food instead of him. But Cherry the Cheshire, the poor dear, is at the end of her life, and she needs a little coddling in these last months.

It really was a marvelous rug: very plush and very beautiful and very white. I inherited it from my mother. I was pleased when that abhorrent woman died because it meant I could have such a wonderful rug. 

I wanted to publicly shame the Emperor for destroying that magnificent rug by forcing him to give a stand-up comedy routine in front of the other cats. I expected him to embarrass himself, and I even gave the other cats permission to fling rotting vegetables at him. But he once again disappointed. He’s surprisingly skilled with cat puns, and the bucket of rotting vegetables remained unflung. Even I couldn’t prevent a small chuckle from escaping. My punishment was a failure. I’m afraid the Emperor rather enjoyed it. But don’t worry, I’m still holding a grudge. I will eventually have my revenge.

November 29

To My Dearest Diary,

James called and that good-for-nothing son-of-mine said he’s coming over tomorrow evening, despite the fact that I told him I’d rather he didn’t. He’s so inconsiderate. But the child said he’s “worried about me” and that I need “human companionship.” What did I do to make him think he’s worthy of my companionship? He’s not worthy of the floor I walk on, and I thought I’d made that clear. I don’t understand why he can’t be more like his sister. Even when they were kids, I always told James to be more like Mary Sue, but he never did listen to me. And now look where they are. Mary Sue lives in The Big City and is the CEO of Really Fancy Tech Company. James, on the other hand, has done zilch with his life. He’s a failure. A nothing living in an average suburban home with an average job and an average wife and horrid children that shower him with their sickly love. But Mary Sue. She’s made it in this world. Her name is known. She has power. She’s successful, and I’m proud of her.

At this point of my speech, James usually rolls his eyes and points out that Mary Sue is unhappy, goes through men like normal people go through waffles, and she hasn’t called me in five years, while James, the angel, has checked up on me nearly every day and “actually cares.” However, his points don’t make any sense and his argument is as stupid as he is. I’ll concede that Mary Sue is unhappy, but happiness doesn’t relate to success and is therefore unimportant; I am allergic to waffles (I do love a good pancake though) and therefore I do not eat waffles (because they would kill me and I rather like life) and therefore Mary Sue’s relationship with men is perfectly healthy; and she hasn’t called because she’s successful and successful people are often too busy to call their mothers. I’m so proud of my little girl.

James, though… I do not appreciate it when he calls. If anything, it only inconveniences and irritates me. James fully knows this and calls only to spite me for loving Mary Sue more when they were children (and now). And I know for a fact that he does not “actually care.” If he did “actually care” he would blindly follow whatever I say, wouldn’t he? This is why I prefer cats to people. (And diaries to cats.)

November 30

To My Dearest Diary,

I’ve been thinking about what James said yesterday, about how I need more friends. After a significant amount of thought (I wasted thirty seconds of my life thinking about what James said. I can’t believe myself), I’ve come to the conclusion that he has once again proved himself to be incompetent.

I’m anything but lonely. I have so many friends! There’s Cherry the Cheshire, Sweet Milly, Tibby the Tabby, Colby and Jack, Margaret, Cheddar the Yellow, Emperor Mozzarella, Tommy—I haven’t seen the poor dear in ages. I wonder where he’s gone—, Reina the Yellow, Raisin the Bald, etc. So many friends! Except for Emperor Mozzarella. We’re currently not on speaking terms.

James, that filthy clod, repetitively commands me to find friends. He doesn’t think my precious cats count. He says I should “be friends with things that can speak.” That narrow-minded lump can’t comprehend the fact that my cats can speak, at least to me, and are the only friends I need. What more could I want? Other than Emperor Mozzarella, they are doting and kind and so, so sweet—qualities that he himself does not possess! And he insults my friends?

And I have you, Dearest, as well, don’t I? You’re my best friend, and even better than the cats (don’t tell them I said that). I do love the cats, but sometimes on the longer days, it becomes all about me, me, me, and it becomes tiring to pretend to care about all their yowling. Raisin the Bald, especially, is quite narcissistic. Sometimes they don’t worship me the way I want them to. But you, Dearest, are wonderful in ways the cats could only dream to be. You listen so well. I can tell you all my secrets and never will a word of it reach the others. I confided in Tibby and Tommy once, but the poor things love to gossip. I gave Tibby and Tommy the silent treatment for three days. They learned their place after that.

Dearest, you understand me like no other can. You love me like no other can. You never want anything from me. Oh, the cats are good company, but they don’t compare. It’s constantly feed me, change my litter, love me. They expect so much from me! Is it wrong to sometimes take instead of give? Is it wrong to sometimes want things for me instead of always living for others?

November 31

To My Dearest Diary,

James visited yesterday. It was rather unpleasant, and his voice provoked a terrible ache in my left ear. He brought hot chocolate, which was nice. I made some for myself, but when I sat down on the couch across from him, he eyed my hot chocolate like I should have made him some. The nerve! If he had wanted hot chocolate, he should have kept it at his house. He gave it to me as a gift, and since it’s a gift, I have the right to do with it what I please. And I’d rather not waste hot chocolate on ungrateful little urchins.

James kept trying to make small talk. I detest small talk. I remained silent and glared at him until he left. That made me feel successful.

Then I had to go lie down because of my ear.

Wait a moment, Dearest, would you? The phone is ringing. It must be my darling Mary Sue.

November 31,

To My Dearest Diary,

Dearest, I’ve returned! Did you miss me?

James called again. I apologize once more for giving birth to such a barbaric son.

He sounded horrendous. I’ve always told him to enunciate, but that boy never did listen to his wise mother. And he wonders why I think he’s stupid. 

He seemed worried. About Mary Sue of all people. I don’t understand why anyone would even think to be worried about her. She’s perfect! There’s no aspect of her life and/or personality that could be any cause for concern.

He said she’s lonely and upset. I told him he was speaking nonsense and to get off the phone. That arrogant child ignored my command and stayed on the phone. He said he’d tried inviting her for dinner, but she refused to come over because she didn’t want to see James’s wife because she gave Mary Sue a ceramic catfish for James’s half-birthday three years ago. Which is absurd because Mary Sue has never held a grudge. I suppose she hasn’t talked to me since I gave her a glass flounder for Christmas five years ago, and I suppose other people would call that a grudge, but I promise it’s not a grudge. I don’t know what it is, precisely, but I assure you it’s not a grudge. She has always been such a sweet-tempered girl. She was frequently nice to the other children and she was so funny! She’d make her classmates weep with tears of joy. The teachers said she was aggressive, but they didn’t understand. My Mary Sue is an angel.

Anyway, I’ll send her a cat to keep her company. It’s worked so well for me. Probably Emperor Mozzarella. It’s a brilliant plan. I won’t have to deal with the Emperor anymore and James can’t pester me about Mary Sue’s supposed loneliness either because at least I tried.

Emperor Mozzarella is getting out of hand. On top of defecating on treasured rugs, he is now picking fights with the other cats. He ate all of Cherry the Cheshire’s fancy cat food and has sparked a war between the two of them. I usually stay neutral in my cats’ affairs (to keep up appearances as I supposedly love them all equally), but, due to prior infractions, I find myself inclined to support Cherry the Cheshire in her endeavors. All the cats will say their goodbyes to Emperor Mozzarella tomorrow. Personally, I will be saying good riddance.

November 32

To My Dearest Diary,

Everyone said their goodbyes to Emperor Mozzarella today. It was a sad occasion for the cats. There was much weeping. Despite their differences, the cats love the Emperor. I don’t understand them. How can they forgive his faults and choose to love an inconvenience?

I was planning to cut Emperor Mozzarella from our family. I wasn’t going to give him a way to contact us again, but Sweet Milly begged me with tears in her feline eyes to give him a stationary set. Either Sweet Milly is kind to everyone, or she and Emperor Mozzarella are in a secret relationship. I can’t wait to give the announcement to all the cats! (You can’t tell because you can’t see because you’re a book and therefore don’t have eyes, but I’m waggling my eyebrows suggestively.)

November 35

To My Dearest Diary,

Mary Sue, the darling, sent me a letter today.

---

To My Dearest Mother,

I know I’m currently not speaking to you because of that atrocious glass flounder you gave me for Christmas a while ago. Don’t let this letter deceive you because I’m still not speaking to you, and I’m definitely not forgiving you.

You have angered me and I know it was revenge for cutting ties with you. I’m scolding you because how can a mother so gruesomely spite their own favorite child? It’s cruel. You are a horrible woman and I hate you.

I got a box in the mail from you the other day. I thought you were finally making up for that failure of a Christmas present. I thought you were finally considering my feelings. And then I opened it and you know what I found? NOTHING.

You were seeking revenge against your own daughter and you toyed with my emotions.

I don’t appreciate that. How many times do I have to tell you? You never listen.

You know, it was always like this when we were children and you were middle-aged. You were always making promises and never following through. For example, that &$@%ing parent-teacher conference. You promised you’d be a good mother and be quiet and not embarrass me, and what did you do? YOU YELLED AT THE &$@%ING TEACHER and made the rest of the year #*$$ for me. You embarrassed me. Precisely what I told you not to do.

You’re a disgrace of a mother and I am ashamed of you.

With Love,

Mary Sue

---

To My Dearest Daughter,

You are such a sweetheart. You bring excitement to my dull, cat-filled world. I am so proud of you and all your accomplishments. Take pride in the knowledge that I love you more than James.

I am so sorry that the box arrived empty. It was not my intention to spite you. When I originally mailed it, there was a lovely cat in there, Emperor Mozzarella, who was sent to be your friend. I love my cats so much and I wanted to send you my love in the form of a cat. He must have run away. He always did want to conquer kingdoms and form his own empire. It’s why he demands that everyone call him the “Emperor.” It’s really quite pretentious, isn’t it?

Love Always,

Your Mother

---

Emperor Mozzarella must have run away (and—oh, dear—Tommy, too). I’m so disappointed in him for disappearing. I thought he was better than that. Maybe I went too far when I forced him into the stand-up comedy routine. He must have been angrier than I thought.

I haven’t seen Sweet Milly for a few days either. She most likely ran away, as well. Probably because I refused to give Emperor Mozzarella a stationary set. She always did have a stubborn streak. This is unfortunate. She was my favorite, but don’t tell the other cats that.

November 41

To My Dearest Diary,

I’m far angrier than what’s considered an acceptable level of angriness. I’m angry at James, angry at myself, angry at my cats. &$%@, I’m even angry at Mary Sue. And now I’ve written “angry” so many times it’s lost all meaning, and I’m angry at that too.

Mary Sue has left already, but James is still in my living room like a cloud of stink you just can’t get rid of. I left him alone. He’d better not ruin the coffee table.

Margaret died just now. I am sad. 

It makes me feel melancholy. I have the strongest desire to constantly sigh gloomily. I’m upset with Mary Sue. She made me feel this way.

It was awful, darling. She was a hurricane. She stormed in and you could see the smoke pouring out of her pores. The world shrunk in her presence, like she took up more space than she should (despite being a relatively short person). And she brought the box.

The one I sent Emperor Mozzarella in.

And then she started screaming absurd things. She claimed that I’m an awful mother, that I sent her an empty box to toy with her emotions, and that I mailed her a letter afterward to mock her. I strongly disagree with all of these accusations. I am an amazing mother, just ask any of my cats or my children. I sent her a cat to make her happy, as if that can be considered “toying with her emotions,” and the letter I sent was completely honest.

I took offense.

James, that disgusting sea lamprey of a son, just sat there, letting his dear mother absorb insult after curse after insult, and did absolutely nothing to defend my pride. I blame him entirely.

Mary Sue, in a final display of dramatics, flung the box at my feet. It tipped on its side and spilled tens or hundreds of decorative fish, clearly revenge for my supposed allegations. Margaret, the poor dear, happened to be napping on the floor when the box fell on her and crushed the life out of the poor thing.

She’s dead now.

I, as any sane person would when their cat has just unexpectedly been crushed to death by a large box of decorative fish, both screamed and generally panicked.

James, of course, reacted in turn by unnecessarily demanding that I tell him what was wrong. As if I owe him an explanation for anything.

Mary Sue just stood there looking stunned and a little bit peeved at my ruining of all her theatrics. The poor darling was always a bit delicate. Endearing most of the time, but never good in a crisis.

I don’t quite remember if I told them that Margaret had died, or if they intuitively guessed, or if they’re secretly psychics and they read my mind. But either way, this lead to the most absurd accusation of the night.

Mary Sue began to speak. “&$@%, Mom. What are you—”

James, that rude little boy, cut her off with a glare. He faced me and said with a strange look on his face, “Mother, you know your cats aren’t real. You have allergies.”

Dearest, can you believe it?

They’re so silly. Of course my cats are real. I’ve had them for years. Children do tend to weave the most fanciful lies, don’t they? Lies so absurd they couldn’t possibly pass for the truth. And besides, I’ve had my cats for years! They can’t be implying that I’ve been imagining them for years, can they? That means they must be real, doesn’t it? They are real, aren’t they? I’ve had them for years… Are they real? Tell me they’re real, Dearest. Dearest? Answer me! Don’t ignore me!

Dearest… You’re real, right?

---

Photo by Immortal shots from Pexels

My Youtube recommendations understand me better than any person could.

— Arachnid Weaver (@arachnid_weaver) February 18, 2020

The Keyboard

To create a story is to create a world and characters so vivid that the reader cannot bear to accept it as only fiction. To create a story is to allow the reader to breach a space that fundamentally belongs to the writer, and as they peer into its depths, it becomes its own reality. I’m awed that it is me who lurks behind a keyboard and builds worlds, that it is me who toys with the nonexistent reader’s emotions and plays god to my characters. Despite being wholly unqualified, I try to create stories that will entrance readers and lure them into the make-believe.

The story’s foundation is built in the writer’s imagination, in isolation and darkness, hidden and inaccessible. It begins as an idea that is so easily blown beyond reach. The barest brush at the edge of one’s consciousness and then nothing at all, a wisp of smoke, a dying flame, a final breath. The idea is sneaky, a small mouse hiding and darting across the edges of vision when no one’s looking. To capture the idea, one must be constantly vigilant, hunting and prepared to pounce. The pen sets the trap. At the briefest whisper of an idea floating by, the pen is touched to paper. It rips across the page. It constructs an inescapable prison to store the idea so it will never be forgotten. The keyboard bides its time in the background, preparing for the war it anticipates.

Once captured, the idea is welcomed into the brain. In the mind, the idea festers. It swelters and parasitically feeds on thoughts, leaving no space for anything else. It grows like a fungus, and you allow it, nurture it, cherish it. The idea is a needy infant. It requires constant care and attention to grow. The mind is the mother, willingly throwing all of herself to the idea. It soon eats too many thoughts and is too large to contain within the mind anymore. Pieces of the idea overflow and escape and the mind frantically tries to recapture them, but there is too much. The idea can no longer be contained. It demands to be free, yet the keyboard continues to lie patiently in wait. Brief notes are scribbled, but the keyboard remains mostly untouched as the idea grows into something worthy of it.

Pen cannot keep pace with the flood of ideas that pours from the mind during the exodus. Something always escapes while the pen is preoccupied with decadent flourishes. One must turn to the keyboard to find what the pen lacks: speed. There is something beautiful about the pen, about thoughts flowing in one’s own hand, but as speed increases, legibility is sacrificed. Even the most perfect words are worthless if they cannot be deciphered. The keyboard is cold and mechanical, but endearing, as it never once falters at the barrage of letters that spill from the fingers in a hurricane of story. Every flailing limb of the idea struggles and pushes to escape first. They tug and demand and pull the consciousness every which way. The keyboard is attacked, the fingers venomously striking the letters, matching the speed of the rushing ideas and the keyboard’s hunger for words. Clicking fills the air and becomes music.

The idea is sloppily captured on the page in the rush. Word vomit is splattered to the edges of the sheet, contradictory and directionless and pointless. There are ugly words and cloudy images that must be refined or excised. My mind changes from a loving mother to a soulless surgeon. The love I felt for the leaching idea becomes clinical detachment as I appraise the words with a critical eye. With cold efficiency, I slice into my story, butcher it, maim it, the backspace pummeled, even as my heart cracks and shrivels. I raze my story, decimating the contradictory, the directionless, the pointless, with knives and guns and bombs and keys blazing. It becomes a war zone. Unrecognizable. I assault the keys, my anger expressed through the ferocity of the frantic strokes. The keyboard finds a cruel joy in the vicious destruction of all the words it ever loved.

And then I slow and melt from the violence-starved butcher to the artist. I paint over the fractures with beautiful words. The keys are pressed slowly, gently, each letter carefully considered and caressed. The furious typing is replaced with a graceful dance as the story grows. I nurture the story, feed it and love it once more with beautiful words until it blooms into something lovely, but this time my love is requited. The story sheds its ravenous hunger. It is content and complete. It no longer impedes on my every thought. It settles, finally placated. I breathe a sigh of relief, the battle over and casualties counted.

All throughout the creating and expelling and destroying and rebuilding of the story, the keys clatter. It’s deafening. It’s a wild dance of only the hands. A key is pressed lightly and the finger moves on. There is no proof that the key ever changed except for the letter that has burst into existence like a firework. The letter’s moment of glory is immediately surpassed by the next letter that appears, then the next and next, like bullets fired in quick succession. It quickly becomes nothing on its own, insignificant, but powerful taken in tandem with the other letters. The keyboard hungers for these words. It will become enamored with a beautiful turn of phrase, a romantic. It will encourage a mediocre one to flower, a friend. It will ruthlessly slaughter an inadequate one, a slayer.

The keyboard, a thin, unassuming sheet of squares, is so much more than what it seems. It houses the twenty-six letters, a meaningless jumble of symbols that combine into an innumerable number of words, which are combined in endless, infinitely different sentences and paragraphs and pages and stories. The keyboard allows stories to be told, to exist. It allows worlds to be created and demolished. It is the conduit through which stories can leave a writer’s mind and come alive. And yet, unlike the story, the keyboard does not gloat nor posture. It elegantly accepts praise and continues to work, bearing the vicious tirade of punching fingers as it destroys and creates from ruins.

---

Connect with me on Twitter @arachnid_weaver.

Would you rather live or die in the apocalypse?

— Arachnid Weaver (@arachnid_weaver) February 16, 2020

Want to lose weight this New Year? Introducing the new calorie-free diet

Do you want to succeed in your New Year’s resolution of losing weight? Look no further than the calorie-free diet. Forget keto and intermittent fasting. Calorie-free dieting is the fastest way to lose lots of weight and keep it off. What’s more, the diet is naturally free of sodium, sugar, fat, artificial flavors or colors, and other toxic substances! There’s no catch. The calorie-free diet will make you happy and healthy.

The best part about this diet is that you don’t have to exercise and you can eat whatever you want. Want to watch Netflix all day and eat only chocolate cake? Go ahead! We won’t judge. We’ll join you.

What to do

Calorie-free dieting is super easy. Just set the table like you usually do; play a recording of clinking silverware, chewing, and muffled conversation (available for download on our website); and imagine eating whatever you want by reading a detailed description of the experience (found in our cookbook).

Our cookbook, The Calorie-Free Lifestyle for the Trendy, is stuffed with delicious recipes for our signature calorie-free food. We’ve included an exclusive excerpt here.

The Apple

Your teeth skate against the waxy surface of the apple before finding purchase and breaking the skin with a mild popping sensation. You savor the resistance from the fruit as your teeth move through the flesh. With a sudden release of pressure, the bite is in your mouth and no longer attached to the fruit. You use your tongue to push the bite to the left side of your mouth and secure it between your teeth. As your teeth come together, you can feel the fruit collapse beneath the force, condensing. The apple bleeds. It tastes sweet and tart. You pulverize the bite and drink the juice, then swallow the fruit. You can feel it slide down your throat.

You take a second bite. It doesn’t taste as interesting, the memory of the last bite still fresh in your mouth. It becomes less of a pleasure and more of a way to satisfy your hunger. You rotate the apple and chew around it counter-clockwise. When you are left with only the core, you turn it so the bottom faces you and bite into it. It’s wasteful to not eat the core. You reach the center of the core; it’s studded with seeds. After a moment of deliberation, you bite into it. The seeds are hard pellets in your mouth. The contrast between the texture of the seeds and the fruit interests you. You are not bothered enough to spit out the seeds. You crush them between your teeth and a bitter, fruity taste coats your mouth. It is not entirely unpleasant. You quite enjoy it. You think about the amygdalin in the seeds turning into cyanide inside your body. You wonder how many seeds you’d need to eat for it to kill you. You reach the stem of the apple. You look at it for a moment then put it in your mouth. You chew vigorously but fail to break the rubbery stem. You spit it out and put it in the pile of chewed apple stems in the corner that you’ve been meaning to clean out.

Warning: The calorie-free diet may lead to malnutrition, starvation, and death.

---

Connect with me on Twitter @arachnid_weaver

My New Year's resolution is to achieve maximum efficiency. I will eliminate all relaxation, enjoyment, and sleep. I aspire to be a machine. Wish me luck.

— Arachnid Weaver (@arachnid_weaver) January 1, 2020

---

Photo by Ella Olsson from Pexels

A Study of High School | Fiction

Today’s lesson will cover the fascinating human subculture of ‘high school’ in our continuing study of life on Earth. In the geographical location labeled “America” on your Earth maps, high school is a rite of passage for offspring. Through extensive observation, we have recorded many intriguing behaviors in this collection of young humans.

A Study in Self Destruction

A near-universal element of high school life is the Pseudo-Telepathic Prism, known as the ‘cell phone’ on Earth. The Prism is a rudimentary enhancement meant to compensate for the shortcomings of the human body, which include limited knowledge and an inability to receive or transmit telepathic communication. The Prism appears to be permanently attached to these young humans’ hands. Removal of a Prism is possible but excruciating, so it rarely occurs.

This is a beautiful example of a species causing its own demise. Giving a human creation the power to destroy humanity was the greatest mistake in human history.

Exhibit A: The Death of Social Interaction

The Prism limits social interaction, which is apparently necessary for continued human existence. We noticed that during the scheduled Feeding and Watering of young humans, many interact with their Prisms instead of each other. Prisms are clever in their thievery. Like consuming ash that looks and tastes like food, Prisms trick humans into believing that texting (which is pseudo-telepathy with written language and pictograms) and Snapchat (the details of which our anthropologists have yet to discover) are filling their daily quota for social interaction while the void of loneliness leisurely devours them. Dissections of young humans have shown there are miniature black holes inside many of them.

Exhibit B: A Scarcity of Self Esteem

The parasitic Prism has an efficient energy source: the self-esteem of its hosts. Self-esteem is the inflated idea humans hold of themselves. It often overestimates self-importance and underestimates or denies the uncaring nature of the universe, but self-esteem may be a kind fantasy. It has been found that high levels of self-esteem are necessary for continued human existence. The Pseudo-Telepathic Prism drains self-esteem. Humans use Prisms in a misguided attempt to fulfill their requirement for social interaction, but the more they use the Prism, the more their self-esteem level drops, removing natural protections and allowing the Prism to siphon self-esteem at exponential rates, making itself more vibrant and attractive and further absorbing the human in a vicious, inescapable cycle. It has been found that lower self-esteem levels correlate with more massive interior black holes.

Exhibit C: Oblivion

The use of Prisms leaves humans in a state we call ‘Oblivion’ where all consciousness is absorbed by the Prism, leaving them weak and vulnerable to any outside factors. This can lead to some amusing situations. For example, one of our anthropologists witnessed one young human so absorbed in their Prism while walking in the high school’s transport channel that they unknowingly stepped in a repulsive bodily fluid that recently exited the feeding hole of another nearby young human. The anthropologists wrote an exciting paper about this particular situation, which I am assigning for tonight’s reading. The Prism frequently leads to more deadly scenarios as well. Death by transport vehicle is a common occurrence among young humans. Even unfettered by the Prism, humans lack the concentration necessary to properly control these unwieldy high-speed beasts, but they still usually arrive at their destinations unscathed and unaware of the fragility of life. When focus is crippled by Prisms, however, humans are overconfident in their control and infantile in their ability to steer. The transport vehicle is piloted only by the blind hands of chance.

Anthropologists predict that it will be the individual destruction caused by the Pseudo-Telepathic Prism that will lead to the inevitable doom of the human race, not climate change or nuclear warfare or asteroids or any other event of mass destruction that humans are so concerned about. Destruction by Prism is slow and stealthy. It leaves its victims existing, but not alive. We watch raptly as humans tear themselves apart. Let them be a reminder of why we minimize self-destructive behaviors through careful surveillance.

A student has just telepathically asked why humans are worried about climate change since it isn’t real. For those of you not taking Interterrestrial Studies, we will provide context: we are certain that climate change will not destroy Earth because it is actually a conspiracy begun by our subterranean allies, the Martians, to persuade humans to flee their planet, giving the Martians an easy invasion. In contrast to popular human belief, Mars is a wasteland not because of climate change, but because of nuclear warfare prompted by mass destruction caused by a stray asteroid. We are, of course, very supportive of the Martians’ endeavor and encourage their quest for a new home because we are tired of them leeching our resources.

The College Admissions Committee and Competitive Bubble-Filling

The humans of high school live under the glaring eyes and iron fists of the College Admissions Committee (CAC). CAC is similar to The Dictator of the Highly Advanced Alien Species in this way. (Long rule The Dictator with a brutal, merciful hand. May many flowers bloom under her rule and may she crush the airways of all who oppose her.)

The anthropologists discovered that CAC lives in the clouds at the peak of a mountain in an ominous castle. They scrutinize and judge the behavior of human youth through their ‘college applications,’ which is a document that contains the essence of a human in various numerical measures of competency and brief written statements that measure the adequacy of one’s personality. CAC uses these “apps” to determine whether human youth are worthy of a successful life. With a bored wave of their hands, the fates of humans are charted, their destinies immutable. With their futures resting in the unpredictable hands of the committee, human youth accordingly conduct every thought and action with CAC at the forefront of their minds to increase their probability of completing the predetermined course to success.

Unlike our Supreme Leader, CAC cannot directly control the thoughts or behaviors of their subjects. Nonetheless, they exert heavy influence. Humans will often choose to study subjects that will “look good on their college apps” instead of something they are passionate about or join many extracurriculars they do not like to increase the value of the numerical measures of competency on their college applications. The All-Powerful Overlord endorses this influence because it stimulates altruistic volunteerism and encourages mind-expanding behaviors. Some anthropologists meekly argue that the oversight of CAC results in a dispassionate generation of humans, floating half-asleep through life doing what is expected and eager for short-cuts. We must pray that the Mighty Ruler has enough forgiveness for these divergent anthropologists and their airways remain minimally intact.

An important numerical measure of competency on college applications is one’s proficiency in competitive bubble-filling. Multiple times during an Earth year, human high schoolers around the country gather in grand, drafty chambers to participate in the national bubble-filling competition. This competition appears to be a test of which humans can sit silently for the longest time and arbitrarily fill the most bubbles on a paper array of circles. Humans who fill the most bubbles correctly according to a predetermined pattern are deemed to be more competent and more likely to be successful than their peers who were not able to properly color in the correct bubbles.

Suggestions for human improvement: Monitor thoughts carefully with telepathy to determine the most competent humans, not the most successful bubble-fillers.

Worship of the Educational Institution

Worship of the Educational Institution, or ‘school spirit,’ is the subtle process of fostering solidarity among humans of one high school and encouraging animosity between different high schools (especially with ‘rivals,’ which require more animosity than what’s typically needed). Worship of the Educational Institution, however, is not as volatile as other manifestations of blind devotion because it is theoretically contained to competitive activities, especially organized physical exertion, or ‘sports.’

Humans are very emotionally invested in organized physical exertion. It usually consists of two globs of humans fighting over a sometimes-spherical object that is not useful, cannot be eaten, and has no monetary value. If one glob succeeds in moving the object to a specific location despite the attempts of the opposing glob to prevent this event, then one-half of the spectators will scream wildly to expel their extreme positive emotions. Our anthropologists are uncertain why chasing spherical objects elicits such a massive response among humans who are not directly involved in the success of the glob in the pointless exercise of moving a sometimes-spherical object to a particular location. We have no plausible hypothesis either.

Because victory of a chosen glob in organized physical exertion is so important to human happiness, humans enjoy proving their devotion to their chosen sports glob. Dedication to a young human’s high school is intertwined with dedication to their high school’s sports globs. This leads to the concept of ‘pep’ or ‘spirit,’ which is the outward demonstration of devotion to a high school and their sports globs. Pep often takes the form of coordinating daily color variations in skin coverings, loudly expelling positive emotion, participating in embarrassing games, or other normally socially unacceptable activities. Pep is a “voluntary” behavior, as humans who choose not to participate are seen as disloyal, uncommitted, or an outsider.

The Great Leader seeks to implement pep among our species in global pep assemblies so we may better display our unwavering loyalty to her Mightiness. Please open your telepathy to Global Communications in one week for further details.

A Sense of Doom

Our anthropologists noticed that humans in high school tend to be very ‘stressed.’ This is a human emotional state that could be described as a buzzing background tone of constant low-grade fear. It is akin to the feeling of increased pressure when our arm-vents are submerged in water. In human youth, stress results in raised pitch in verbal communication, frantic arm flapping, restlessness, a shortening of the distance between the eyebrows, a deficiency in logical reasoning, etc.

Anthropologists hypothesized that stress is highly contagious because it is a widespread condition among humans and the frantic hand waving and raised pitch seemed to jump from person to person. To confirm their hypothesis, anthropologists worked with botanists to create the Human Emotion Detecting Flower by modifying the Highly Advanced Alien Emotion Detecting Flower (used to monitor our species for adequate emotion levels). The anthropologists dispersed this microscopic feat of biological engineering in the air, free to be breathed in by humans and to send all data to the anthropologists telepathically. The results were fascinating. The plants not ingested by humans, the ones left floating in the air, also detected high levels of stress. This means that stress does not go neatly through undetectable threads, like verbal communication; instead, humans exude stress in clouds from their pores. These clouds are then absorbed by other humans, causing them to discharge more stress, perpetuating this cycle.

As stress is such an unpleasant feeling, humans expend a great deal of energy attempting to alleviate it. There are generally two methods to do so. The first method evolves from the hypothesis that stress can be assuaged by removing the source of stress. In practice, this involves attempts to frantically complete all work before enjoying oneself. However, to-do lists stretch indefinitely and work is never complete. In fact, the amount of work increases with available time so there is rarely excess time for enjoyable activities. This method of relieving stress tends to increase it; however, humans who follow this method of constant efficiency and vigilance are deemed to have a ‘strong work ethic’ are applauded for their stress-perpetuating behaviors. The second method, ‘procrastination,’ involves spending maximum time doing enjoyable activities before completing work frantically in a brief window of time. In theory, this minimizes stress most of the time at the cost of enduring incomprehensible amounts of stress for relatively short periods. However, it has been found that procrastination actually induces more stress on account of the procrastination itself, resulting in stress all the time regardless. This is because procrastination is generally seen as socially unacceptable and irresponsible. As both methods of reducing stress are ineffective, we conclude that stress is unavoidable.

Homework

Adult humans are encouraged not to bring work home and to not let work interfere with their “actual” lives (we are uncertain if this is merely a myth or if people truly follow this suggestion). Young humans, in contrast, are required to bring their school work home. Human youth will frequently spend all of their “free time” frenziedly completing their homework and drowning in a sea of paper. Homework often causes sleep deprivation and stimulates the expansion of stress clouds. There are no detectable health benefits to homework.

Anthropologists hypothesize that the discrepancy in ideology between the homework of adult humans and young humans is due to the common belief that unoccupied human youth will entertain their bored minds with unscrupulous behaviors, such as defacing property, throwing raucous parties, absorbing toxic substances, being public nuisances, committing petty theft, or participating in other general misdemeanors. Incredible amounts of homework are assigned to human youth in order to protect the world from their undeveloped moral compasses (which are literal compasses located in the left ankle of fully-grown humans) until they can tentatively be released into the world as adults responsible enough to correctly select socially acceptable behaviors for their free time.

A similar concept is expressed in our species in the grueling thirty-six hours a day feral criminals spend painting rocks to look like beetles for the Earth collection of the World Museums in our behavioral reeducation program. Without any time to conduct illegal or immoral acts, our global crime rate has become almost nonexistent and our World Museums are overflowing with delightful fake beetles.

Sleep Deprivation and Exhaustion

A common condition among human high schoolers, usually caused by homework, is sleep deprivation. Unlike ourselves, humans are required to spend a third of their day in unproductive unconsciousness. Humans seem to despise sleep for its hefty time requirement and love it for staving off sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation is an unpleasant state where a human’s sight organs droop closed against their will, their limbs flop about limply, they drift into stupors, and they cannot focus. We believe that humans need the quiet darkness of sleep for a plant, a type of moss, to grow in their sight organs, limbs, and cognitive structures. This symbiotic relationship between moss and human provides the support necessary for humans to function properly. However, it wears down over the day with use, resulting in sagging sight organs, noodly limbs, and a lagging thought process. Even so, the moss theory is a hot topic in the anthropology world. It has not yet been proven by our dissections, although we think that the state of death may inhibit humans’ ability to produce the plants. We plan to conduct live dissections next month to settle this debate.

Sleep deprivation often results in sub-par productivity. Human youth appear to be trapped in a self-sabotaging cycle of skipping sleep to complete homework, reducing their efficiency the following day so they must once more stay up late, perpetuating sleep deprivation. They seem to have a silly notion that one can “catch up” on sleep later as if it were a ‘television show.’ However, one cannot shore up their moss past maximum moss levels to save for a busy day. Moss restoration is required every day and is good for the following day only.

Sleep-deprived humans often crave coffee and tea, which contain a stimulant called ‘caffeine’ that protects against sleep deprivation. We hypothesize that caffeine masks sleep deprivation by temporarily buffering the plant scaffolding in humans. Our anthropologists experimented with caffeine and found that dousing our skin in caffeine may cause pleasant hallucinations of unknown, indescribable colors diffusing through the atmosphere and drifting clumps of puffy fluff because of its unique interactions with our Highly Advanced Alien physiology. This discovery, while fascinating in the realm of science, has had devastating effects on our species as a whole. With the increased popularity of caffeine among our population, there has been rampant smuggling of tea and coffee from Earth since we have not yet been able to synthesize the compound in our labs. The smugglers risk exposure and the endangerment of our entire race. In addition, caffeine may be dangerous. With this mysterious Earthly compound being so new, its long-term effects on our health have not been adequately studied. We cannot confirm whether or not caffeine is safe for Highly Advanced Aliens. We insist you avoid any contact with caffeine before research is complete and to report any caffeine users in your family or community to trusted officials for immediate nutritional reeducation.

Suggestions for human improvement: Hire another human to sleep for oneself, then surgically transplant their moss stores to one’s own body, eliminating the need for sleep.

Agenda for Future Lessons

We will continue our discussion of these fascinating creatures for the following month, after which we will move on to the microscopic civilized societies of Europa’s oceans in our ongoing study of other lifeforms in the Milky Way galaxy. Please get your permission slips for the human dissection next week signed. We will identify liquid stress, the source of gaseous stress clouds. For tonight’s homework, in addition to the reading, please prepare two suggestions for human improvement and reflect on what our species can learn from humanity’s errors.

---

Image by Pixabay on Pexels

Connect with me on Twitter @arachnid_weaver

All I Want for Christmas is a Salmon-Pink Chainsaw | Satire

On Christmas morning, Margarine skipped down the steps in her Disney princess pajamas, pink fairy wings on her back and plastic wand in her hand. She raced into the living room, gasping at sight of the overwhelming mountains of wrapped presents. They were heaped underneath the four Christmas trees necessary to contain them all. The branches of the trees sagged against the boxes, their boughs heavy with ornaments. Margarine’s seven stockings, strung across the mantel, were overflowing with sweets and flowers.

Margarine’s parents stood next to the fireplace. Her mother’s face was glossy with sweat. A bead rolled down her forehead and dripped off her nose. Her father was wringing his hands and slightly bouncing on his feet. They were trembling.

“We hope you are satisfied with your presents this year, Margarine,” her mother tentatively said.

“We’ll see,” Margarine replied vaguely.

Her parents’ terror was audible.

Margarine set to the meticulous work of shredding wrapping paper and carefully checking her gifts against her twelve-foot long wish list. Dresses, hoverboard, dolls, knives, etc. Her parents watched the procedure with wide eyes, clutching each other. Their fate was in little Margarine’s hands.

It was going surprisingly well. Some hours later, Margarine unwrapped the final present underneath the fourth Christmas tree and her parents released the tension in their chests when she showed no reaction. It was over. Against all odds, they had survived their fifth Christmas with Margarine.

She squinted at the last gift, her head tilted in contemplation. “This,” Margarine said quietly, chillingly, “is a peach-pink chainsaw. I wanted a salmon-pink chainsaw.”

Her father’s face grew pale. He sweated profusely. “I—I thought it was salmon…”

“This is not a salmon-pink chainsaw.”

Her mother began sobbing, her arms wrapped around herself. Her father dropped to his knees and crawled to Margarine to beg. She was repulsed by the tears splashing on her bunny-slippered feet.

His hands enveloped hers. “Sweet Margarine, darling Margarine, I will get you a salmon-pink chainsaw. Dear girl, I will mortgage my house to do it.”

“It is too late. You have failed.”

“Please, give me another chance.”

“No.”

“Margarine, please.”

Margarine walked to the peach-pink chainsaw, flicked it on, the sound deafening, and decapitated each of the four trees. The glass ornaments shattered as the tops of the trees crashed to the ground and the floor sparkled with the fragments.

She turned off the chainsaw and returned to her father, still on his knees, his hands at his throat. She pressed the chainsaw against his chest and shrieked, “You ruined Christmas!”

Photo by Giftpundits.com from Pexels

The Money Tree | Satire

Greetings, creatures of the universe!

About two weeks ago, I entered a writing contest. *Bites nails nervously.* I’m really proud of the piece so crossed fingers. *Hides beneath bed, anxiously waiting for the results in February.*

I’ve used the occasion to dust off some old files and I’ve found the piece that I wrote last year for the same contest. I am usually too afraid to read my old work, but after two cups of tea and some procrastination, I worked up the courage to read “The Money Tree”.

*Cringes.*

Looking at old work is a good way to demonstrate improvement.

Despite not really liking this piece, I’m going to post it anyway. Next time, I’ll show you guys the one I entered this year, and hopefully we’ll all agree that it’s a smidge better.

Enough stalling. Here we go. *Tosses “The Money Tree” at you and runs far, far away.*

---

Dear Lucky Future Customer Who Also Happens To Be My Favorite Human Being In The Universe, Which Is No Small Feat Because I Generally Dislike Human Beings,

Congratulations!

Now, you may be sitting there, scratching your head because you have no idea why I’m congratulating you. You don’t remember doing anything noteworthy recently. You suppose you took out the trash without anyone yelling at you. But only the person who usually yells at you actually cares that you took out the trash without being yelled at, so why would I, a random stranger, be congratulating you for taking out the trash if I’m not the person who usually yells at you and therefore do not care if you took out the trash without being yelled at?

Good question. I will answer it in a moment, after a brief dramatic pause. *Dramatic pause* I’m not the person who usually yells at you to take out the trash.

And now I’ll answer the question you didn’t ask. Why am I congratulating you, you ask? (You didn’t ask but I’ll answer anyway). Because you are the proud, future owner of the grand, the amazing, the patent-pending, totally legitimate, completely functional, original *Dramatic pause* MONEY TREE™. *Cue confetti, infinite happiness, and fireworks*

Yes, that’s right, you read the previous statement correctly. You are the future owner of a real-life MONEY TREE™.

Our professional team of professional scientists at Totally Not Working From the Basement Co. has done the impossible. We’ve turned fiction into fact. We’ve grown a MONEY TREE™, and now it’s your chance to own one.

Through the careful use of sciencey stuff, we’ve managed to alter the DNA of the uselessly average cedar tree that generally does nothing but create oxygen so it can grow money. That’s right, our MONEY TREE™ grows legitimate, totally functional, and definitely not counterfeit money. And the amazing MONEY TREE™ will grow any type of currency! To make your MONEY TREE™ grow the currency of a particular nation, all you have to do is plant your MONEY TREE™ seed within the borders of that particular nation and your MONEY TREE™ will do the rest. Is it magic, you might ask? No, it’s not, dear [INSERT YOUR NAME HERE], it’s our simple and effective Legitimate Science. Each seed is preprogrammed with comprehensive maps, which allows it to select the proper form of currency from its built-in currency catalog upon sprouting.

So what does this all mean? Free money! That’s right, I said FREE MONEY! Shout it from the rooftops and add as many exclamation points as you want because it’s FREE MONEY!!!!

Have you ever heard such a delightful phrase? It makes me giddy, like I’ve just won the lottery, or my friend, who I’ve been in love with for the past twenty-four years, has just confessed her feelings for me, or I’ve just murdered someone.

However, don’t actually shout it from the rooftops, because if everyone had a MONEY TREE™, it would cause serious inflation.

BUT. You are a generous person, aren’t you, dear customer? You want to share this gift with all your friends and family so they can marinate in the awesomeness that is the MONEY TREE™ (At no cost to yourself, of course. They can have their own MONEY TREE™. It won’t be your money they’re leeching). And we’ll make it even easier for you. Every time you recommend us to someone, you get a 10% discount! (For a maximum of 10% off).

And what does that mean? It means you can get your very own MONEY TREE™ for A LOT OF PERCENTS off your already low, low cost and you get to have group marination sessions swimming in money with all of your favorite friends and family! You’ll get to live the MONEY TREE Lifestyle™ and not be terribly lonely, isolated from all of humanity as a result of your sudden wealth and your former friends’ and family’s bitter jealousy.

Still not convinced? The MONEY TREE™ could be yours for only a few monthly payments of $99.99 for an indefinite amount of time. Less than a hundred dollars a month for your very own MONEY TREE™! Talk about a good investment. (And I’ll remind you that the MONEY TREE™ will be producing money as soon as it hits puberty.)

You’re My Favorite Customer™, so as an exclusive offer Just. For. You. I’m going to give you 50% off, that’s right, you heard me, 50% off, if you do me an itty bitty favor. I know you’re just itching to get your hands on that MONEY TREE™, especially with that super special, extra exclusive discount I’m only offering you, [INSERT YOUR NAME HERE]. Let me scratch that itch for you.

The small, little favor you need to do for me.

The favor that will get you the MONEY TREE™ half-off.

Is.

…

*Cue drumroll*

*Cue dramatic music*

So, [INSERT YOUR NAME HERE]. I’m going to be candid for a second. I’m not supposed to tell you this, but EVERYONE’s itching for a MONEY TREE™, not just you. Everyone’s greedy. It’s not a particularly rare trait.

And not only is everyone greedy, but they’re also lazy. They want their money fast and easy, and nothing makes it faster or easier than a MONEY TREE™. The only thing you have to do is place an order online and plop a seed in a hole. And bam. Free money. Easy. Simple. No reason to get your hands dirty or *shudders* do hard work.

I’m sure you can imagine why our product is so popular.

We can’t keep up with the demand. It’s a long, complicated, sciencey process to produce even one MONEY TREE™, and our production rate is uncharacteristically low for such a large, legitimate company.

Millions of people will order their MONEY TREEs™ and wait. And wait. And wait. And pay us. And pay us some more. There simply aren’t enough to go around.

So what can you do to get a MONEY TREE™ when it’s oh so difficult to get ahold of one? Because honestly, the only people who get MONEY TREEs™ are celebrities and other powerful people that already have way more money than they could ever spend in a lifetime. And these already-rich people view the MONEY TREE™ as a novelty, don’t they? For you it means so much more. It’s the ticket to your dreams! You need it so much more than them, don’t you? You deserve it so much more.

And let’s face it. You want one. You really want one. You’ve never wanted anything more. Think of everything the MONEY TREE™ would entail. No more backbreaking, mind-numbing work. No more running to the clock’s whims and passing fancies. No more taking orders from someone you secretly loathe and imagine murdering through various gruesome means as you drift off into sleep every night. You can have everything you’ve ever wanted. You can do everything you’ve ever dreamed of. You can make bigger, better dreams once you grow tired of the ones you chase now.

It’s tantalizing, isn’t it? You can taste that future. You can feel it at your fingertips.

There’s only one way to guarantee it. And that’s my final offer.

And it’s the small favor.

But before we get into what the favor is, let me tell you a story. My story. And let me warn you, it’s a classic sob story. In fact, a lot of people think I made it up to gain sympathy, and nothing hurts my heart more. To take my suffering and pretend it never happened. But you wouldn’t do that, would you? Because you’re a Decent Human Being™.

My life was full of death before it even began. My father died in a car accident before I was born. I never met him. He never met me. I only ever saw pictures. And I don’t imagine it’s the same, is it? But I wouldn’t know.

My mother was an amazing woman. She raised me and my adopted younger sister on her own. She never fell in love again and she never remarried.

She did, however, die. It was a car accident. I was thirteen. My sister was six.

We were put in foster care and bounced around from house to house. We never had a home. Nobody wanted to take siblings, and no one wanted an older child, especially a boy. They did want my sister, though. It was just me they didn’t want. We decided that even if we had to be separated, it would be better for her to have a home and a family.

My sister died less than three months later in a car crash on the way to the hospital to visit her adoptive grandma, who was dying of severe injuries she had sustained from a traumatic car accident.

And then I was alone.

No one ever adopted me. But I graduated high school and went to college. I studied science, and as soon as I was out of college, I helped create the MONEY TREE™.

But while I was in college, I found out that my mother’s diamond wedding ring, her most prized possession, the ring she never took off, had gone to her parents. I knew it wasn’t what my mother would’ve wanted. She despised her parents, and her parents despised her. They never wanted her to be happy, and they never supported her dreams of becoming a professional mime. So she ran away with my father as soon as she could and she never spoke to her parents again. For her only remaining token from her love to go to the parents that hated her, that is atrocious.

I know she’d want her ring to go to her children. I wrote a letter to my grandparents, begging for the ring. They refused.

As it turns out, my grandparents live in [INSERT THE NAME OF YOUR TOWN HERE]. They live in that large, generic brick house. I’m sure you recognize it. And if you return my mother’s ring to me, I will guarantee you a MONEY TREE™, and your dreams.

If you want to help a sad orphan and receive a MONEY TREE™ for your efforts, please send an envelope with your name, address, date of birth, and social security number along with your banking information (and my mother’s ring if you want that super special, extra exclusive offer) to the same address you send donations to your estranged distant relative the Nigerian Prince. (No returns or refunds available.)

Customer Reviews

Fred Doeson

★☆☆☆☆ || Unreliable Delivery

I’d give this negative stars if I could! At first, I was simply irritated with their delivery. It took five months. But I was like, “Okay. They did say they have super high demand. Five months isn’t that long.” So I got this seed, and I waited for it to grow. After about a year, it wasn’t growing any money. And then I was like, “Uhh… This looks like a normal cedar tree.” So I called them, and the dude was like, “Yes, yes. We get calls like this all the time from impatient customers. Your tree just hasn’t reached puberty yet. It will soon, I assure you, and you’ll have all the money you could imagine.” So I went with it. Waited another year. Still nothing. I called again. They said they’d replace it. Must’ve been a malfunction, they said.

Well. It’s been six years since I originally ordered it, and I still don’t have one. I occasionally call them, and they keep making excuses. Oh, they have too many orders. Oh, they have to prioritize people in poverty. Oh, they have to get through the orders of the rich and powerful. I’m telling you they’re against the middle class!

And, oh yeah. I’ve been giving them $99.99 every month for the last six years! They won’t let me cancel. Whenever I try, they tell me they’re working on my order and there’s no reason to cancel, especially since I’ll recover all the money I’ve lost once the money tree arrives. And whenever I try to get more forceful with them, they just hang up!

John Johnson

★★★★★ || The anticipation is killing me

I just got my seed and I’m so excited for my life to ooze with money that doesn’t require effort! I planted it yesterday and I can’t wait for it to grow! Obviously, as it hasn’t sprouted yet, I haven’t gotten any money from it, but I’m sure it will make me a millionaire once it hits puberty!

I saw Fred Doeson’s review up there, but I’m pretty sure his case was a fluke. The packaging seemed legitimate, so I know the company is real. Packaging never lies. And they said themselves they’re legitimate!

I also participated in the Extra Special Offer for 50% off, and I don’t know what you were talking about, man, but your grandparents are the sweetest! They invited me in for hot chocolate and wine and we talked for hours. It was so much fun! And your grandma is amazing at drinking games! Afterward, I asked for the ring, and she just agreed. Slipped it right off her finger and handed it to me. Lovely woman.

They seemed like terrific people to me. Maybe they just have a thing against mimes.

Ruby Delawareson

★★★☆☆ || Meh

Eh. The MONEY TREE isn’t as life-changing as they imply. It’s pretty much a standard cedar tree.

Kélly Jaysón

★★★★☆ || Pretty good!

I’m hard to impress, but I’m moderately pleased with this product. It looks very seed-like.

I also participated in the Exclusive Offer, but I disagree with John Johnson’s claim that the grandparents are nice people. And I would know. I’ve been their next-door-neighbor for almost seven years.

When you talked about how awful your grandparents are and how they live in a generic brick house, I knew precisely who you were talking about. My neighbors fit that exact description.

They constantly complain that my parties are too “rowdy,” and they went so far as to call the cops on one of my parties, actually! Parties must be loud to be spectacular, and I throw the spectacularist of parties. They’re also horribly picky. I baked them muffins once, and they refused to accept them because of a so-called “gluten allergy.” Can you believe them? Making up allergies in order to insult my baking! Like, what even is gluten?

They’re exactly the kind of people to disown their own daughter who only wants a chance to reach her dreams.

So I decided to do the right thing and correct an injustice (and get a 50% discount). So I broke in and stole the diamond, just like you wanted me to, random internet stranger (The cost to ship something to Nigeria is ridiculous. Good thing I have a Money Tree to cover the expenses ;). Well, as soon as it hatches). I also might’ve trashed the place to get revenge on that party incident.

Patty Thompson

★★☆☆☆ || Navigational issues

I got one. Turned out to be a regular tree. Called. They replaced it. Regular tree again. I still have hope. I also have a forest, and I’m having trouble navigating my tiny NYC apartment.

Knotte A. Skammer

★★★★★★ || Marvelous! Spectacular! You should get this life-changing tree!

My life is divided into two parts. Before the MONEY TREE™, and after the MONEY TREE™. Before, I was a miserable human. I worked in a factory, canning beans from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. I hated my job and my life. When I was young, I thought I was going to be something. I thought was going to change the world. I thought I was going to have color and excitement and pizzazz in my life. I thought I was going to be that one in a million. But I was wrong. 

The canning factory sucked the life out of you. I wasn’t a person anymore. I was a shell. Or an empty can.

After I got the MONEY TREE™, my life changed. It was even better than what I dreamed of as a kid. I quit my job at the factory and I got my life back! It was like taking a breath of fresh air after being stuck inside a bean canning factory. It was like I finally existed. I now spend my days doing things I actually like. I live in a mansion. I get to eat in expensive restaurants whenever I want. If I wake up one day and I feel like doing nothing, I’ll do nothing. There’s no mind-numbing job that I’m required to go to no matter what. I’m happy. I’m free from the clutches of the heinous 9-to-5 job.

It’s turned my life around and made it what I’ve always wanted it to be. And the MONEY TREE™ grew so much more money than what I paid for it. Honestly, this is the best investment I’ve ever made. They say money’s the key to happiness, but really, it’s not. It’s the MONEY TREE™.

Image by Snapwire

The Sleepwalker | Flash Fiction

Hello, peeps of the universe. Today, or tomorrow, or whenever I find the time (what is time, anyway?), I’ll be doing a writing prompt! (Is “doing” an accurate verb? I’m not really “doing” a writing prompt. I’m writing an explosion based on the fuse that is the writing prompt. But actually, I’m just rambling.)

This writing prompt will be done with no prior planning. Basically, it will be word vomit. But hopefully, it’ll be entertaining word vomit. Either way, it will help me sharpen my writing sword to a lethal point so I can viciously stab all the fictional villains. [Insert mental image of Arachnid trying to press buttons on her laptop with a ginormous sword.]

---

The prompt: What started off as a sleepwalking problem leads to a night of adventure when Dane gets behind the wheel and does what he was too afraid to do when he was awake. (This prompt was stolen from BookFox.)

Diana carefully watched Dane across the table from her in the small cafe. It was nearly closing time and there were no other customers, only a waiter cleaning up the nearby table and willing them to leave so he could go home.

“Look, I love you, Diana, but you have no idea what you’re talking about. So what if I sleepwalk? I don’t have a problem. It’s harmless.”

Diana leaned forward, her voice dropping to a whisper even as anger laced her words. “Harmless? Do you even know what happened last night? Have you seen the news?”

Dane slowly shook his head.

“An unidentified man let all the butterflies out of the zoo.”

Dane barked a laugh. He had braced for something terrible to come out of Diana’s lovely mouth, like vandalism or arson or murder. “That’s all? So what if a few more butterflies are flitting around the city? Let them be free.”

Diana shook her head in disgust. “You don’t understand. It always starts small, and you tell yourself it’s nothing, and maybe it is then. But it escalates and you don’t even notice. This is bad, Dane. You need help. You could do something you’d regret.”

He drank the rest of his tea while Diana’s words rolled around inside his head. “Diana, trust me, it’s nothing.”

She abruptly stood up. “It seems you don’t have to even be asleep to say things you’ll regret.”

***

Hours later, the night was blue and sleeping. Dane was only a lump under the covers, Diana’s scathing accusations forgotten in the fog of sleep. The world breathed softly, the wind brushing the curtains in greeting, and the floorboards creaked as Dane’s feet thudded softly against them.

He didn’t fit neatly in the world anymore. He was outside of the calm and his body outside the control of his mind.

***

The garage door rumbled open. A car rolled out, Dane behind the wheel. The car lurched onto the empty street, weaving in and out of the lane like it was drunk, occasionally careening onto the sidewalk.

The car coasted to a stop after a while, half on a lawn and leaning against a precariously tilting mailbox. Dane clumsily stepped onto the pavement and stumbled to the door. He rang the bell, and when no one answered, he rang it again. Again, the door remained closed, the night still and quiet. He broke the silence and pounded against the door.

A moment later, Diana opened the door, wearing purple pajamas and glaring both furiously and sleepily. She rubbed her eyes. “What do you want?” She noticed his glassy-eyed stare. “Dane.”

Dane dropped to his knees and pulled a slightly squished cinnamon bun out of his pocket and held it out to Diana in an offering. He mumbled, “I love you. Marry me?”

Diana, usually unshakeable, was shocked. This was unexpected, to say the least. She thought that his sleepwalking would culminate in various criminal activities, not a proposal. “What? No. Goodnight, Dane.” She closed her front door, rolled her eyes, and went back to bed. Dane could find his own way home, as he had every night for the past few weeks.

***

Diana slid into the chair across from Dane the next afternoon and folded her arms. “Do you know what you did last night?”

Dane looked surprised. “I sleepwalked again? But I woke up in bed this morning.”

“You proposed to me. With a cinnamon bun.”

Dane flushed. “I—You were dreaming,” he spluttered.

Lord of the Flies || A Book Review

Lord of the Flies by William Golding || 3/5

At the dawn of the next world war, a plane crashes on an uncharted island, stranding a group of schoolboys. At first, with no adult supervision, their freedom is something to celebrate; this far from civilization the boys can do anything they want. Anything. They attempt to forge their own society, failing, however, in the face of terror, sin and evil. And as order collapses, as strange howls echo in the night, as terror begins its reign, the hope of adventure seems as far from reality as the hope of being rescued. Labeled a parable, an allegory, a myth, a morality tale, a parody, a political treatise, even a vision of the apocalypse, Lord of the Flies is perhaps our most memorable tale about “the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart.”

---

• By terms of symbolic meaning, this book is a masterpiece
  • I love how it portrays humans as savage animals
• Entertainment-wise, it’s a resounding meh.
• The pacing is slow.
• The characters are shallow and two-dimensional. They have one or two defining characteristics, but that’s it. They exist to be symbols, not people.
• I kept forgetting characters. They all have interchangeable names, especially Roger and Robert.
• The writing takes some getting used to, but once you get in the flow of it, it’s fine. It doesn’t really stand out, though.
• The ending was jarring. It didn’t flow from the rest of the book. It’s like, alright, now things have gone too far. Cue madness. Cue chaos. Okay. Let’s end it right now and tie it with a pretty pink bow.
• It was boring, and I didn’t care about the characters or what happened to them.

Vengeful || A Book Review

Vengeful by V.E. Schwab || 5/5

Sydney once had Serena—beloved sister, betrayed enemy, powerful ally. But now she is alone, except for her thrice-dead dog, Dol, and then there’s Victor, who thinks Sydney doesn’t know about his most recent act of vengeance.

Victor himself is under the radar these days—being buried and re-animated can strike concern even if one has superhuman powers. But despite his own worries, his anger remains. And Eli Ever still has yet to pay for the evil he has done.

---

• The writing style is lovely, as always.
• The characters are amazing. I love them so much, especially Victor, and I just want to lock them away in a safe house and keep anything bad from happening to them.
• But, I liked Vicious, the first book in the series, a tiny bit better.
• The events were difficult to keep track of chronologically. In Vicious, there were only two main time periods, so it was easy enough to keep everything straight. However, in Vengeful, there are so many different times and places and characters, so it was hard to piece together what was happening.
• I love the characters that were established in the first book, and I loved finding out what happened to them next. And I admired the new characters in this book, but I didn’t get quite as attached to them.
• I didn’t understand June’s motives toward Sydney, but June was a really mysterious character. We know almost nothing about her. Which is interesting and all, but it made me confused as to June’s purpose.
• After finishing the book, I still had questions. So hopefully there will be another book in the series.

Read 10-7-2018 to 10-12-2018

Vicious by V.E. Schwab || A Book Review

This Savage Song by Victoria Schwab || A Book Review

Bridge of Clay || A Book Review

Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak || 3.5/5

The breathtaking story of five brothers who bring each other up in a world run by their own rules. As the Dunbar boys love and fight and learn to reckon with the adult world, they discover the moving secret behind their father’s disappearance. 

At the center of the Dunbar family is Clay, a boy who will build a bridge—for his family, for his past, for greatness, for his sins, for a miracle. 

The question is, how far is Clay willing to go? And how much can he overcome?

---

• It’s beautifully written.
• The characters are developed and complex.
• I love the story.
• But it’s very slow. It drags and meanders quite a bit.
• I spent the majority of the book very confused.
• I finished, and I was still confused.
• And it didn’t make me feel anything.
• The shocking moments weren’t very shocking. I kept thinking, That’s it?
• I love how conclusive the ending is.
• While the writing is very beautiful, I had to read almost two hundred pages before I got used to it. During those two hundred pages, I kept having to reread portions to understand what was happening.
• A lot of seemingly unimportant details turned out to be important much later. Because I’d initially thought they were unimportant, I struggled to remember them later, which added to the confusion.
• The book struggled to hold my attention. It wasn’t captivating.

Read 10-24-2018 to 11-3-2018

Book Review of I Am The Messenger

Mirror, Mirror || A Very Short Story

45. Mirror, Mirror: What if your mirror started talking to you? What might the mirror say?

Jenny stood in front of the mirror, adjusting her makeup, when her reflection screamed. Jenny, of course, screamed in return. And cursed a bit as well.

“You look atrocious!” the mirror exclaimed.

Jenny, bewildered, couldn’t form a reply.

“Well, come on, don’t just stand there like a pebble or a lilypad or some other immovable object. Don’t tell me you’re incompetent as well as ugly!”

“What are you?” Jenny breathed, concerned that she might be going crazy.

“This is unbelievable. You really can’t recognize me?”

“Well, you look just like me…” Jenny replied.

“You’re very good at stating the obvious,” her reflection replied.

Jenny rolled her eyes. “You haven’t answered my question.”

“You still can’t guess? I’m your self-esteem.”

Vicious || Book Review

Victor and Eli started out as college roommates—brilliant, arrogant, lonely boys who recognized the same sharpness and ambition in each other. In their senior year, a shared research interest in adrenaline, near-death experiences, and seemingly supernatural events reveals an intriguing possibility: that under the right conditions, someone could develop extraordinary abilities. But when their thesis moves from the academic to the experimental, things go horribly wrong.

Ten years later, Victor breaks out of prison, determined to catch up to his old friend (now foe), aided by a young girl whose reserved nature obscures a stunning ability. Meanwhile, Eli is on a mission to eradicate every other super-powered person that he can find—aside from his sidekick, an enigmatic woman with an unbreakable will. Armed with terrible power on both sides, driven by the memory of betrayal and loss, the archnemeses have set a course for revenge—but who will be left alive at the end?

---

Vicious by V.E. Schwab || 5/5

• It was a page-turner. I couldn’t stop reading, and my homework definitely suffered.
• It wasn’t in chronological order, but it wasn’t hard to keep track of what was going on.
• I fell in love with the characters.
  • It was interesting to read a story where everyone is morally gray. There’s no clear hero, and there’s no clear villain.
  • So who should you root for?
  • What if someone’s doing the right thing for the wrong reasons? Or the wrong thing for the right reasons?
  • I loved getting into the heads of the villains. And finding them relatable. Usually, you’re supposed to despise the villain. You’re supposed to gasp and go “How could they do something so atrocious?” But what if you know how and why? Do things change?
• The writing style is beautiful, the characters are believable.
• I was constantly asking questions and I was fully sucked into the world of Vicious.
• Overall, I HIGHLY recommend this book. Go read it. Right now. You’ll thank me later.

Read 9/23/2018 to 9/26/2018

---

Read More: Review of This Savage Song by Victoria Schwab

---

Also, I think this song pairs nicely with Vicious.

Eye Contact: A Writing Prompt

6. Eye Contact: Write about two people seeing each other for the first time.

 

The park’s loud, but the only thing I can hear is the scratch of my pen and the distant echo of an epic dragon war. There are knights with clashing swords and a blazing fire and medieval princesses that save themselves, and then the knights. It seems like most people need absolute quiet for their writing. And honestly, maybe if I was writing in a silent place, my stories wouldn’t be so horrid, but it’s not like I’ll find silence anywhere at my house. The park’s not quiet, but it’s the kind of loud where you can’t hear anything. Which is an improvement.

Currently, in my head, the hero is standing in the dragon’s jaws, about to retrieve the queen’s crown from its stomach (which is where the dragons in my story hide their hoards. It’s like a weird second stomach. More like a pouch or something, I suppose, since there aren’t any digestive juices.) But. However. My pen’s run out of ink.

I’m rooting around in my bag in the hopes that I brought another one (which I know for a fact that I didn’t) when a roller skater, screaming/laughing (I can’t really tell) jumps/falls/crashes into the bench. Like the comet in my book that started the fires the allowed the dragon population to explode. But on a smaller scale and less catastrophic.

But still kind of catastrophic because all of my papers fly everyone and rain all over the place. It’s not windy, luckily. But ughhh. It’s going to be a pain to reorder everything. I should’ve added page numbers.

She pulls herself off the bench and brushes some dirt from her shirt. There are grass stains on her knees. I don’t think this is the first time she’s fallen. She sticks out her hand to help me up. I wasn’t planning to stand up, but what is one to do? Be excessively rude and not take the offered hand?

“Sorry. You wouldn’t believe how many times this has happened. I must be setting some record. I’m exceptionally bad at skating, but I decide to do it anyway, all the time. I have no idea why. Am I talking too much? I feel like I’m talking too much, especially since I just ran you over. Sorry. I like talking. And skating. And writing. I just felt like putting a third thing in there because it seems evener. Even though three is an odd number. And you were writing, and I like writing. So I feel like we’re connecting. We’re basically best friends already.”

I don’t think she takes a single breath, and she talks in that too-much-sugar sort of way.

“Hi,” I say.

She’s picking out some leaves that got tangled up in her hair, but then she looks up and meets my eyes and I get kind of distracted. She has very big, very brown eyes.

She’s an exact replica of Naila, the knight-saving, dragon-fighting princess from my story.

The Traitor’s Game || Book Review

The Traitor’s Game by Jennifer A. Nielsen || 3/5

Nothing is as it seems in the kingdom of Antora. Kestra Dallisor has spent three years in exile in the Lava Fields, but that won’t stop her from being drawn back into her father’s palace politics. He’s the right hand man of the cruel king, Lord Endrick, which makes Kestra a valuable bargaining chip. A group of rebels knows this all too well – and they snatch Kestra from her carriage as she reluctantly travels home.The kidnappers want her to retrieve the lost Olden Blade, the only object that can destroy the immortal king, but Kestra is not the obedient captive they expected. Simon, one of her kidnappers, will have his hands full as Kestra tries to foil their plot, by force, cunning, or any means necessary. As motives shift and secrets emerge, both will have to decide what – and who – it is they’re fighting for.

»»§««

• Lots of exposition dumping at the beginning that distracts from the story.
• The romance is VERY forced.
• It says that Kestra has been training, is violent, and dangerous, but she never really does anything to prove these claims.
• A Super Random Observation: There’s a character named Basil. In The False Prince, there’s a character named Sage. Is there a character named Sage. Is there a herb theme going on here?
• The fight scenes aren’t done well. To support Kestra’s supposed combative prowess, it seems as though all her opponents are unskilled, despite being trained and experienced soldiers.
• Kestra’s says that she cares a great deal about her servants, but there are almost no interactions between them. Their relationship isn’t fleshed out and Kestra’s situation, therefore, doesn’t seem as dire as it supposedly is.
• Kestra and Simon’s relationship is forced and unrealistic. Despite thinking about each other all the time and being attracted to each other, they constantly fight when they’re together. They are risking far too much for each other than is practical or advisable. They are planning a hypothetical future for themselves (if only their love wasn’t forbidden. *Dramatic sigh*) after only having been reunited for three days. It’s honestly kind of ludicrous that they’d “fall in love” after days. Especially since they originally hated each other.
• Overdramatic and not suspenseful.
• I enjoyed the ending, though the twists were not particularly surprising.
• The antagonist was undeveloped and we only saw them once. The antagonist was portrayed more as a looming evil force.

This book was rather disappointing, especially considering how much I adored The False Prince. I most likely will not read the sequel to this book, but I will try other books by Nielsen. Overall, this book was rather forgettable. Nothing stuck out. The worst part was the romance. I don’t mind a well-done romance that is integral to the plot, but this one didn’t add anything to the story and was highly impractical. And I know love is supposedly not about practicality but *shudders* feelings. But this was such a non-romance that I was gagging at not rooting for that the impracticality took the spotlight.

Read 8/15/2018 – 8/21/2018

Currently Reading Vengeful by V.E. Schwab.

Fahrenheit 451 ||Book Review

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury || 2.5/5

Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden.

Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television ‘family’. But then he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people did not live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television.

When Mildred attempts suicide and Clarisse suddenly disappears, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known.

»»ℵ««

I have super mixed feelings about this book. For one, the message is lovely. But entertainment wise? I was not entertained.

• There is little-to-no character development. True, Mildred and the others are meant to be shallow characters, but what about people like Clarisse? She starts the avalanche of events, but she has very little page time. Even Montag is not quite fully developed.
• I love beautiful prose and metaphors. But at some point, you reach too much, and the prose just muddies the readability of the work. Fahrenheit 451 reached that point a long time ago.
• The pacing was off. The beginning and middle were quite slow and it seemed as though all the action was stuffed into the ending. I’d probably be happier without the action at the end. It didn’t fit the rest of the book.
• The plot didn’t make complete sense or fit together. Some parts jumped without fully filling in the gaps between.
• I really like the message. I bet most bookdragons would. It’s very applicable to life today. Like peeps. Get off your phones when your REAL LIFE FRIENDS ARE WITH YOU. Here’s a post I wrote about that a while ago about my frustrations with this. It isn’t even my friends. It’s just walking down the hallway and noticing other people doing it.

Read 7/28/2018 – 7/29/2018 and Reread 8/29/2018 – 9/3/2018

Currently Reading: Shadow Scale by Rachel Hartman

Caring for Your Unicorn Master

TheWebWeavers is actually our second blog. Both Spinette and I had our own individual “first blogs” that didn’t really work. They were both unicorn-based. (This was not planned. We just both love unicorns). My blog, Unicornia, was a guide for the measly human attempting to move to Unicornia. Spinette’s blog, Unicorn Sightings, was about all things unicorn. Unicornia had three followers (two of which were Spinette and me) and Unicorn Sightings had seven (two of which were Spinette and me).

Both of these blogs still exist on the internet, but they haven’t been active for ages. I think the reason that they didn’t work was that the topics were too restrictive and it wasn’t interesting to write on over and over again. TheWebWeavers is a lot more fun because we can write about whatever we want.

However, despite being inactive, the posts on the blogs are still somewhat funny (especially Spinette’s) so they will be reshared on TheWebWeavers for everyone to read and judge. You can also determine how much we’ve improved. 😉

Here’s the second segment of the Unicornia Series, Caring for Your Unicorn Master. It was originally published on November 19, 2016.

 

Growing your unicorn is not the end of the long and tedious process of entering Unicornia. You must also care for your unicorn so they will accept you as their life-long faithful servant and follower.

When you have warmed the Magical Kernel with the bottled purple dragon breath, it will pop into a baby unicorn, similar to the way Ordinary Kernels pop into the delicious treat known as “popcorn”.

Since unicorns are the perfect creatures, they expect their servants to be perfect too. Unicorns live on a diet of chocolate, candy, and fruit. You must feed your Unicorn Master four meals a day. They normally eat about five pounds of food a meal. You must use chocolate, candy, and fruit to make creative meals every day. Unicorns are picky eaters and if you want them to accept you, you must give them good food to eat (organic, nutritious, sustainably-sourced, low calorie, etc.). Something you never want is a hungry unicorn. They will eat anything and everything. Including you.

Unicorns don’t sleep very well on Earth, so be prepared to wake up in the middle of the night (Unicorns’ sleeping patterns are similar to that of a fidgety newborn baby). Give your Unicorn Master a spacious bedroom with a lakeside view. Always tell them a bedtime story. They love stories in which unicorns are the heroes.

Even though Unicorns don’t wear clothes, they like to have a full closet. Buy your Unicorn Master lots of colorful clothing they can hang up and organize.

Every unicorn is different and they have different preferences. Get to know your Unicorn Master and eat, sleep, and breathe their likes and dislikes so you know how to care for your Unicorn Master.

Caring for your Unicorn Master is a difficult task. They expect you to be perfect at all times. There is never time for rest. If your unicorn likes and accepts you, once they get older, they will take you with them to Unicornia. In Unicornia, they will build a beautiful house for themselves and permit you to live in the stables.

Growing a Unicorn Master

Hey, peeps! You hopefully may have noticed my absence over the past week or so. This was due to my corner of the world exploding. Over the past week, I met a Holocaust Survivor (she is so sweet), participated in a Science Olympiad tournament (I won two medals!), and skinned a rat (I would post pictures, but I feel like that would be too gory for this blog).

So, you may or may not know, but TheWebWeavers is our second blog. Both Spinette and I had our own individual “first blogs” that didn’t really work. They were both unicorn-based. (This was not planned. We just both love unicorns). My blog, Unicornia, was a guide for the measly human attempting to move to Unicornia. Spinette’s blog, Unicorn Sightings, was about all things unicorn. Unicornia had three followers (two of which were Spinette and me) and Unicorn Sightings had seven (two of which were Spinette and me).

Both of these blogs still exist on the internet, but they haven’t been active in ages. I think the reason that they didn’t work was that the topics were too restrictive and it wasn’t interesting to write on over and over again. TheWebWeavers is a lot more fun because we can write about whatever we want.

However, despite being inactive, the posts on the blogs are still somewhat funny (especially Spinette’s) so they will be reshared on TheWebWeavers for everyone to read and judge. You can also determine how much we’ve improved. 😉

Here’s the first segment of the Unicornia Series, Growing a Unicorn Master. It was originally published on November 18, 2016.

---

Before you escape to Unicornia from this wretched world, you must know about their world. Unicorns are born from magical kernels of corn. Every corn stalk has the potential of growing a unicorn if it is cared for the right way.

Many people try to grow a unicorn before going to Unicornia. If you have a Unicorn Master, you will be more respected in your new home, and the elders will be more likely to accept you.

Growing and caring for a Unicorn Master is no easy task. Many people have tried and lost their lives in the process, but it is worth it because your amazing life in Unicornia will be much better than your boring and dull life here.

The first step in growing a Unicorn Master is finding the perfect corn seed to plant. This one of the most difficult things you will have to do. If you choose the right one, you will soon have a Unicorn Master to guide you in your new life. If you choose wrong, you may lose everything. Unicorn Kernels must be warmed by the bottled breath of a purple dragon to pop into a baby unicorn. If an Ordinary Kernel is popped by the bottled breath of a purple dragon, it will grow into a dark donkey and devour you.

The perfect corn seed is difficult to find. There is only one perfect corn seed in 4,538,862 ordinary corn seeds. The perfect one will glow a light pink in the light of an Alaskan sunrise. Always check to see if you have the right corn seed! Many brave and courageous people have lost their lives because they didn’t notice that their corn seed was glowing magenta instead of pink.

Once you have found the magical seed, grow it and nurture it. Soon the corn plant will grow. The Pink Kernel is the magic one. Heat it with the breath of a purple dragon and it will become your Unicorn Master!

---

Do you have any topics that you want us to talk about in a post? Leave a suggestion in the comments.

It’s Raining Book Reviews!

I think I’m starting to get a hang of this book reviewing business! I still have to start reviewing books immediately after finishing them, though. Oops.

---

A Conjuring of Light by V.E. Schwab || 5/5

This is an amazing series! The world-building and plot are amazing, but I think that the most impressive part of this trilogy is the characters. They’re all so unique and flawed and they all have their own motivations. Schwab tackled multiple point-of-views really well and she was really good at creating suspense. I was terrified on behalf of the characters. This book definitely took a more tense turn and it wasn’t as carefree as the second book, A Gathering of Shadows. (But that wasn’t very carefree, to begin with.)

Plus pirates. There were pirates. I love pirates.

---

The Rose Society by Marie Lu || 3/5

Most of this book was boring for me and I had trouble finishing it. The end was great, though. The minor characters weren’t developed and the romance was weird and unplausible. I think the book would’ve been better without it, but I guess you can’t have a YA book without romance, right? There was a love triangle, too. I don’t usually have anything against love triangles, but I wasn’t a fan of the romance at all. I thought it was strange for not one, but two peoples to fall in love with Adelina. Also, the characters’ decisions were occasionally random and illogical without reason (A reason could be that they were heartbroken by the fact that they were planning to propose to their longtime boyfriend, but the engagement ring that they spent months saving up for was swallowed by a rogue seagull. This heartbroken-ness can cause a person to make illogical decisions.)

My least favorite part of this book was the planning sessions. I thought the plans were weak and undetailed. They were mostly winging it. And yet, usually, nothing went wrong.

I loved Lu’s writing style, though, which was apparent in her other book, Warcross.

There are two things that will usually make me instantly love a book: Pirates and anti-heroes. This book had anti-heroes, but I still didn’t like it.

---

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee || 5/5

This book was great! I can’t believe I haven’t read it before now. My favorite part of this book was the various characters. They were all lovely, especially Atticus. The writing was beautiful and there were many amazing quotes.

I’m not planning to read Go Set A Watchmen, though. I don’t want my precious Scout to grow up.

---

They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera || 5/5

This book takes place in a world that’s mostly like our own, but with one difference: Death-Cast will call you at (about) midnight the day you die.

So first, I want to talk about the idea of being alerted the day you’re going to die (if someone is going to die that day, they’re called a “Decker”). I feel like this is a paradox, sort of like time travel.

So, assume that you are an avid mountain climber and you are supposed to die on June 4 because your harness snaps and you fall down the cliff-side to your doom.

But at 12:05 a.m. on June 4, Death-Cast calls you and tells you that you’re going to die, so you decide not to go mountain-climbing because tumbling down a cliff seems like a painful and unappealing way to die. Instead, you decide to not leave your bed and just drink peppermint tea all day. Super safe.

You don’t die.

And because you didn’t die, Death-Cast didn’t call you that morning.

And because Death-Cast didn’t call you on June 4, you didn’t die on June 4.

You went mountain climbing and your harness didn’t break and you had a grand ole time.

Therefore, is everybody’s life extended just by the existence of Death-Cast?

Or would you have died on June 4 anyway by some other method? For example, by drowning in your peppermint tea?

Okay, let’s get to the review now.

I love the message of this book, which is to take risks and live life to the fullest because you never know how much time you have left.

My favorite part of this book was the characters. I loved Mateo and Rufus. The title (They Both Die at the End) is a huge spoiler and since I knew that they were going to die, I tried not to get attached. I failed.

The writing was amazing and there were a lot of quotable parts. (I thought it was weird that teenagers were coming up with these beautiful and poetic quotes about life and death, though. But I guess they’re dying. They have a reason to be profound.)

Silvera was great at writing suspenseful parts and light-hearted parts and I was smiling through a lot of the book, even though I knew what was coming (intense sadnesses). The characters were just so lovable. Silvera did well with multiple point-of-views, as well. I always knew which chapters were Mateo’s and which were Rufus’s based on what they said and how they said it.

---

Crooked Kingdom || 13/5

This one was a reread, but I don’t think I’ve reviewed it before. THIS IS MY FAVORITE BOOK. THE CHARACTERS! THE CHARACTERS ARE AMAZING! I love how much they grow throughout the course of the series.

Also, I love them.

They’re amazing

SQUEEEEEEEEE.

Sorry, I’m being incoherent.

Read it.

---

Currently Reading

I just finished Crooked Kingdom, and I’m not entirely sure what to read next (nothing seems as good afterward), so I’m trying out different books on my TBR to see what I’m in the mood for, so I’m at the very beginning of both Seraphina and Ready Player One.

---

TBR

1. This Mortal Coil
2. The Midnight Star
3. Red Queen
4. The Unwanteds Quests: Dragon Bones