Our story begins its course in Northeast
where one of you starts to assemble our beast.The virtuous, wicked, Northeast-Dwelling witchwill set out our story, and then, flip the switchto the equally virtuous witch of Northwest,your wick...
Metapromptomorphosis
The presumably Russo-Lusophone man---the very one who had earlier delivered the canary colored envelope---opened the front door now without knocking. He was grinning, but it wasn’t obvious behind his cardinal red ...
Misters -ZS and ZS -
We are in receipt of a memorandum from Pétros. He has requested our assistance in distributing it. However, he also asked us to please wait a few more days before jumping in, because he has some team-specific per...
ÆVÆÆ
At that, Emma tucked her index finger into her lower gums, as one might do with tobacco 'dip'. She smiled for a few seconds, and then, without ceremony, warning, nor explanation, she collapsed onto the floor, her head just barely...
ÆVI
And wait they did. Smoking and drinking while the chafing dish, with its candle, did whatever it was supposed to be doing. Emma knew, but Chuck still felt clueless. Time passed, until finally smoke began to curl out from under th...
ÆV
Emma, ever the Taoist at heart, knew of course that what it says, what was written, what it is on the page as what wasn't. She knew Zhuangzi's tale of the Butcher Ting as one would their name. Ting had in nineteen years, never sha...
ÆÆÆÆ
Emma tapped the knife tip gently against her left thigh a few times as she rattled off the possibilities while staring emptily ahead. As if browsing a card catalog in her head, she rattled off the entries softly to herself as sh...
ÆÆÆ
Emma drew out the tension the same way she drew smoke from the hand-rolled cigarette: excruciatingly slow. Finally, she extinguished the cigarette; squashed in a ceramic ashtray, it faded away from existing ember by ember. And wh...
ÆÆ
Due tomorrow? That was everything by the time we talked about it. I still hadn't decided if that was irritating or freeing. Sure we were always in a rush but that's when we were working. I wouldn't be willing to trade the lazy aft...
The Metaprompt
April-May 2020
by Z Shihab of The Metaprompt Guild
"Let's do one on Coronavirus!" I said while Emma wandered over to the wet bar in my basement. We were responsible for coming up with a "writing prompt" for a collabor...
