15 votes

You have an arch-nemesis. At one point, you manage to capture their sidekick. After you subdue them, they bitterly tell you that your arch-nemesis always speaks of you as the one that got away.

Additional info, only if it helps: you have no idea of your arch-nemesis's secret identity, and seemingly neither does their sidekick.

8 comments

  1. penguin_starborn
    Link
    Initially, there was a lot of screaming. People are like that, when you tie them up and hang them upside down from the ceiling of a cyclopean sewer divert hall whose bottom is full of storming...

    Initially, there was a lot of screaming. People are like that, when you tie them up and hang them upside down from the ceiling of a cyclopean sewer divert hall whose bottom is full of storming water, mines, razorblades and alligators.

    After a few hours I cut off the water. The alligators had been cut up before that.

    He had stopped screaming, too. People that do that while I'm still in the room are either very brave or very, very stupid.

    You could make an argument for the second. You wouldn't need to, for the first.

    "He'll come", he gasped.

    "For you", I said.

    "For you", he said, water falling off his face, a long long way down to the pool, to mix with the red alligator froth. "He always comes for you."

    He --- too many men here, let's just say I am the Prince, my captive is the Boy, and the third, our everpresent shadow, is the... Mouse. A timid nighttime creature that makes the ladies scream with terror.

    The Mouse always comes for me. We dance the ballet of explosive wiffle bats, he kisses my face with his knuckles, and they tie me up at the Screaming Sanatorium and do things to me until one of them is a mistake, and then we start again. Again and again.

    "He wants you", the Boy whispers. "Hasn't he ever told you?"

    The problem with hanging people upside down is they tend to start raving.

    That, and they don't die as fast as when hung the right side up. But speaking of which --- "What do you mean, little songbird?"

    "What does it matter? You're crazy." There's a pause, more pregnant than a very pregnant person. "Both of you."

    I spread my arms in confusion. A knife falls from one sleeve, extending to a three-foot saber as it falls, "THIS IS REACHING" written on the blade. On hitting the water, it explodes into pink soap bubbles. "Crazy? Why do people keep telling me that?"

    "You don't remember!" he screams. Screaming is good; people don't lie when they scream. "How many times have you done this? You don't even remember how it started. These aren't even fights, these are your idea of dates!"

    I blush. "Why, what are you saying?"

    "I was out! I was out, you stupid murder comic freak! I quit it and now... now he's going to come and... say... see, you still need training, go fight Sandpaper Face... God, don't you see? You were both out playing like children and ran into each other the first time and you found this... hobby! Now you've infected this whole city, country, world with your street theater of death! I'm tired of being your wing man. I want out! I have goals in life, I want a wife, children, a real job, a motorcycle without rocket launchers you rubber-faced eternally self-repeating assholes!"

    "No no", I start. "I have serious goals in life. Firstly the divisions in this country need to be mended with coming together and laughing together... wait, are you saying robbing banks and killing people is a hobby now?"

    He glares at me. "Or your dance. Your sex replacement. Whatever. He always says you were his first. He can't bear to let you go, let you be locked away and made dim and dull. God, sometimes I think he helps you escape."

    "No no, don't be silly, I am a master of... several very arcane fields of escapology... whose names I can't recall right now. And I like him too, you must know I do."

    "That makes it worse, not better. You two need... help."

    I whistle. "How about a trained psychiatrist? Yoo hoo!"

    My own sidekick steps from the shadows, red and black and swaying and wide-eyed and breathing too fast. "Darling, this here strange fruit hanging from the ceiling thinks I'm... a bit weird in the head. What do you say?"

    She runs gloved fingers along my back, in a way that I suppose could be called sensual. "You're positively batty, puddin'."

    I try to keep the laughter in but fail, as usual. And the laughter, in big bright chunky letters, covers all of life's little worries.

    8 votes
  2. [7]
    cfabbro
    (edited )
    Link
    One thing that I always really liked about /r/writingprompts was their rule that all top-level comments needed to be stories and any off-topic discussion needed to be done as replies, either to a...

    One thing that I always really liked about /r/writingprompts was their rule that all top-level comments needed to be stories and any off-topic discussion needed to be done as replies, either to a story itself or to the pinned "Off-Topic Discussion" comment made by the subreddit's bot. And while we don't have pinned comments yet or comment folding for replies, I still think it's a good idea to do something similar here so as to not clutter the place up with top-level comments that aren't stories. So for this thread, my comment here can probably serve as that and in future maybe OPs can be encouraged to include an "off-topic discussion" comment themselves. Thoughts on this?

    p.s. Awesome prompt @Janey. I can't wait to see what people come up with!

    6 votes
    1. [4]
      Comment deleted by author
      Link Parent
      1. [3]
        cfabbro
        Link Parent
        The entire point of my comment was to suggest a way to force the focus of writing prompt threads to that of the story submissions themselves and avoid a ton of "off-topic" comments like mine...

        The entire point of my comment was to suggest a way to force the focus of writing prompt threads to that of the story submissions themselves and avoid a ton of "off-topic" comments like mine cluttering up the top-level in the future. So... what is your point exactly? How could I have made my suggestion and solicited feedback any other way?

        2 votes
        1. [3]
          Comment deleted by author
          Link Parent
          1. [2]
            cfabbro
            Link Parent
            Ah, sorry... I am completely oblivious to sarcasm (even in person). It leads me into a lot of awkward situations like this. :( My bad.

            Ah, sorry... I am completely oblivious to sarcasm (even in person). It leads me into a lot of awkward situations like this. :( My bad.

            2 votes
            1. [2]
              Comment deleted by author
              Link Parent
              1. cfabbro
                Link Parent
                Yeah /s helps for sure. And when comment tags come back I have even suggested letting people tag their own comments with sarcasm as well. I need all the help I can get! ;)

                Yeah /s helps for sure. And when comment tags come back I have even suggested letting people tag their own comments with sarcasm as well. I need all the help I can get! ;)

                2 votes
    2. [3]
      Janey
      Link Parent
      I wasn't ever on reddit, so I don't understand a lot of the lingo. Is the recommendation that I do a similar title, but put a story in the text field? Not sure what an "off-topic discussion"...

      I wasn't ever on reddit, so I don't understand a lot of the lingo. Is the recommendation that I do a similar title, but put a story in the text field? Not sure what an "off-topic discussion" comment is.

      Happy to comply, but would need the request explained in a little more detail as I'm a newbie. In other words, I have the title, link, text, and tags fields when I post a new topic. How should I revise my future entries using those fields?

      TIA

      2 votes
      1. [2]
        cfabbro
        (edited )
        Link Parent
        Yeah sorry about that, I can see how the jargon can get a bit confusing to someone not familiar with /r/writingprompts or reddit. On the writing prompts community on reddit, every "top-level"...

        Yeah sorry about that, I can see how the jargon can get a bit confusing to someone not familiar with /r/writingprompts or reddit.

        On the writing prompts community on reddit, every "top-level" comment (which is the first comment in a chain, as opposed to replies) needed to be a story submission, and "Off-topic" discussion in that case simply meant anything not a story submission. So basically all comments that were not story submissions needed to be made as replies to the stories they were discussing or to the specifically created "off-topic", "top-level" comment created by a "bot" (automated script).

        Here is an example. The top comment there by WritingPromptsRobot is the "off-topic discussion" comment and it's been "stickied" by the moderators there (which just means it will always remain at the top of the comment section regardless of the votes it receives). And all the "off-topic" replies to it are automatically "folded" under it (which just means they have been "folded" together into a singular package, and hidden by default) but can be seen by those who desire by simply clicking that "load more comments (19 replies)" text.

        It's really not super important and you definitely didn't do anything wrong with this submission, I was just suggesting that we maybe do something similar here so that the comments section on writing prompt posts don't get cluttered up with "top-level" comments that aren't story submissions.

        2 votes
        1. Janey
          Link Parent
          Got it - thx.

          Got it - thx.

          2 votes