(no subject)
TITLE: Untitled #1
AUTHOR: amy-vic
RATING: PG
WORD COUNT: 796
FEEDBACK: On || FEEDBACK TYPE: Nice or tactful crit, please
WARNING: none
SUMMARY: It's like being trapped in a horror movie, but with cookies.
PROMPTS: fever dreams
A/N: An original piece, written for thewritinggame. This is 51% insane and 49% brilliant. Or the other way around, I’m not sure. (Your math may vary.) Also, if anyone has suggestions for a proper title, I’m all ears.
There's a tiger cub in the kitchen. It looks at her when she walks in, and they stare at each other for a minute, but neither of them are a threat to the other, so she walks to the fridge to get a glass of milk, while the cub continues washing her paws in the sink.
As soon as she steps into the living room, a girl with a handheld radio and a clipboard under one sparkly purple arm rushes up to her. "Oh my god, where have you been, we're three and a half minutes late, and you still have to get you blues glued down!"
"There was a problem with the data," she says, pulling the cheap plastic tiara out of her hair and settling it on the girl's face like sunglasses. "Will that help at all?"
The girl shakes her head and sits down, crying with both hands covering her face. Just as she reaches out to the girl, tell her that she'll wear green instead, someone else grabs hold of her shoulders then and spins her around. She doesn't have a chance to really look, see who it is, before she gets shoved forward and stumbles. There's grit in her eyes, sand in her mouth as she pushes herself up on her hands to look. She's in the middle of a zoo, full of real animals (bears and lions and tigers, holy shit!), but all the cages are made of plywood and cheap paint, like a film from sixty years ago. The director, she can see now, is sitting in a chair next to the polar bear's post office, and he's waving a green and yellow striped flag with a blue star on it. "More grapes!" he yells. "And for the love of strawberries would someone please get me the puppy I asked for? I swear, it’s like you people want me to have a breakdown!"
Someone yells at her from far away, except they're yelling in Italian, and she doesn't understand a word of Italian other than to order coffee, but she knows that they're yelling for her to get up and move. There's a heavy pounding noise coming from somewhere behind her, and even though it sounds far away, it also sounds big and fast, so she doesn't even really get off her knees before she's running, just gets the toes of her sneakers under her like an Olympic sprinter and shoves her body up and away. She doesn't see when the zoo disappears, but at some point, colours shift, and the ground beneath her feet turns from hard-packed dirt to bare, scruffy grass, and then finally to cracked and faded asphalt. She can't hear any animals, so she slows down to catch her breath and get a drink of water from the bottle clipped to her belt. The water isn't very cold, but it feels good when she drinks some, and then tips her face back and pours some water over her head, then shakes like a dog.
Once her hair is dry, her seventh-grade history teacher is standing in front of her. "The science is wrong!" he yells, shaking a candy cane at her. "The numbers don't add up; three plus seven is always one hundred and two, why can't you ever remember that?"
"Because you didn't teach me," she says, and takes the candy cane. It must be stale, because it tastes like cough syrup mint rather than candy cane mint. She hands it back. "Listen, I don't have time to argue with you. The olives are attacking, and I have to go make sure everyone has enough cocktail swords. Will you be okay without me?"
"Of course, I'll be fine," he says. He digs around in his pockets for a moment, then pulls out a hardcover book and hands it to her. It's heavy and awkward in her hands. There's no title on the front, just a silver drawing of a peach. "Take this, though, you'll need it; triple the martini recipe on page eighty-six if you need to, but whatever you do, do not make the coconut macaroons on page eleven. They always expand too much when you bake them, and that's why the elves have to work out of a tree now."
"But I didn't turn the oven on!" she says, panicked. The sheets are wrapped around her legs, and she can't get out of them.
"Hey, hey, relax, it's okay," a voice says, and she has to blink a few times before she can see that the voice is actually attached to a face. She's also aware that she's lying down, not standing up like she was a second ago. "You've been out for about a day, but you're going to be fine."
AUTHOR: amy-vic
RATING: PG
WORD COUNT: 796
FEEDBACK: On || FEEDBACK TYPE: Nice or tactful crit, please
WARNING: none
SUMMARY: It's like being trapped in a horror movie, but with cookies.
PROMPTS: fever dreams
A/N: An original piece, written for thewritinggame. This is 51% insane and 49% brilliant. Or the other way around, I’m not sure. (Your math may vary.) Also, if anyone has suggestions for a proper title, I’m all ears.
There's a tiger cub in the kitchen. It looks at her when she walks in, and they stare at each other for a minute, but neither of them are a threat to the other, so she walks to the fridge to get a glass of milk, while the cub continues washing her paws in the sink.
As soon as she steps into the living room, a girl with a handheld radio and a clipboard under one sparkly purple arm rushes up to her. "Oh my god, where have you been, we're three and a half minutes late, and you still have to get you blues glued down!"
"There was a problem with the data," she says, pulling the cheap plastic tiara out of her hair and settling it on the girl's face like sunglasses. "Will that help at all?"
The girl shakes her head and sits down, crying with both hands covering her face. Just as she reaches out to the girl, tell her that she'll wear green instead, someone else grabs hold of her shoulders then and spins her around. She doesn't have a chance to really look, see who it is, before she gets shoved forward and stumbles. There's grit in her eyes, sand in her mouth as she pushes herself up on her hands to look. She's in the middle of a zoo, full of real animals (bears and lions and tigers, holy shit!), but all the cages are made of plywood and cheap paint, like a film from sixty years ago. The director, she can see now, is sitting in a chair next to the polar bear's post office, and he's waving a green and yellow striped flag with a blue star on it. "More grapes!" he yells. "And for the love of strawberries would someone please get me the puppy I asked for? I swear, it’s like you people want me to have a breakdown!"
Someone yells at her from far away, except they're yelling in Italian, and she doesn't understand a word of Italian other than to order coffee, but she knows that they're yelling for her to get up and move. There's a heavy pounding noise coming from somewhere behind her, and even though it sounds far away, it also sounds big and fast, so she doesn't even really get off her knees before she's running, just gets the toes of her sneakers under her like an Olympic sprinter and shoves her body up and away. She doesn't see when the zoo disappears, but at some point, colours shift, and the ground beneath her feet turns from hard-packed dirt to bare, scruffy grass, and then finally to cracked and faded asphalt. She can't hear any animals, so she slows down to catch her breath and get a drink of water from the bottle clipped to her belt. The water isn't very cold, but it feels good when she drinks some, and then tips her face back and pours some water over her head, then shakes like a dog.
Once her hair is dry, her seventh-grade history teacher is standing in front of her. "The science is wrong!" he yells, shaking a candy cane at her. "The numbers don't add up; three plus seven is always one hundred and two, why can't you ever remember that?"
"Because you didn't teach me," she says, and takes the candy cane. It must be stale, because it tastes like cough syrup mint rather than candy cane mint. She hands it back. "Listen, I don't have time to argue with you. The olives are attacking, and I have to go make sure everyone has enough cocktail swords. Will you be okay without me?"
"Of course, I'll be fine," he says. He digs around in his pockets for a moment, then pulls out a hardcover book and hands it to her. It's heavy and awkward in her hands. There's no title on the front, just a silver drawing of a peach. "Take this, though, you'll need it; triple the martini recipe on page eighty-six if you need to, but whatever you do, do not make the coconut macaroons on page eleven. They always expand too much when you bake them, and that's why the elves have to work out of a tree now."
"But I didn't turn the oven on!" she says, panicked. The sheets are wrapped around her legs, and she can't get out of them.
"Hey, hey, relax, it's okay," a voice says, and she has to blink a few times before she can see that the voice is actually attached to a face. She's also aware that she's lying down, not standing up like she was a second ago. "You've been out for about a day, but you're going to be fine."