Writing Prompt

You say you love me But really you don’t. You’d put nothing above me, Except cash, cars, and homes.

You say that you love me But really you don’t, If you really loved me, You’d do the things you just won’t.

You say that you love me, But won’t let me go home, Where it’s happy and lovely Not this hell I’ve always known.

You say you accept me, But I know it isn’t true, Instead you reject me, And play me like a fool,

You say you accept me, But how can you? You weren’t there to protect me, But that’s nothing new.

I’ll get used to it one day, I do not have a choice. I just wish there was a way To make you hear my voice.

In the forest, oh so tall Grew a stick, for one and all Straight and slender, strong and true A stick for dreams, for me and you

Sticks, sticks, all around Helping hands, on common ground Sticks, sticks, simple delight Bringing joy, to our sight

A walking stick, for a hike so fine A stick for fishing, by the vine A stick for crafting, with skill so neat A stick for imagination, can't be beat

Sticks, sticks, all around Helping hands, on common ground Sticks, sticks, simple delight Bringing joy, to our sight

Sticks are good for hitting Sticks are good for sitting Sticks are good for poking peoples eyes Sticks are good for a tree disguise! Sticks sticks sticks

Sticks are good for drawing lines Sticks are good for making signs Sticks are good for planting seeds Sticks are good for natures deeds

You can’t start a fire without a stick Or a very flammable family member Oh you know that I love sticks And your fathers…

I love shoving sticks up my butt And you know who loves the sticks? My mutt! His name is stick and he loves to play But sometimes he kills things

Sticks are my lucky charm I love to hold sticks with my arm! Sticks are fun to laugh and play Especially on a Wednesday!

Lemon Tim is my best friend But I don’t like him because he don’t like sticks Lemon Tim is not very sigma But he loves me like an amoeba

STICKS STICKS STICKS!!!!

“MAUI?!?!?!?” He lifts his head slowly, dark brown curls gently falling over his shoulder. “What..?” I jump onto the table and grab his ear, “MAUI DEMI-GOD OF THE WIND AND SEA!” “What the crap!” He yanks away quickly and holds a chair between me and himself. “I AM MOANAAAAAAA!!!” Fear fills his eyes as my usual sweatshirt and jeans shifts into a grass skirt and beaded tube top and my chain changes for a pendant. “No- James you are not Moana your a 15 year old boy.” I stare at him with blank dead eyes. “I AM MOANA OF DENVER COLORADO, YOU WILL GET INTO MY HONDA MINI-VAN DRIVE DOWN STATE STREET AND BUY ME TACO-BELL.” He blinks back at me. “No.”

We hadn’t been friends since childhood but I thought we were close to count as such. Or, at least, I respected him, he respected me, and we were both mutual on that. I considered that enough back then. Maybe if I had known better, I would have done more of an effort to join him on his escapades, journey along.. not just simply meet monthly at a rickety tavern in the town we first met in.

When we last met, I should’ve expected what I saw on his arms; he had always acted first and acted brash, ending him up in fights aplenty, but that meant he never slept in practically anything but a hospital bed. That’s just the way he is (was?), that blatant swagger he had drawed me in, and knocked me up onto the simple list of people that could pay for shelter and a meal for him. He trusted all those people easily, just like how I trusted him. That’s just the way it was.

“What’s up with your arms?” “Mh, nothing. Nothing at all,” he replied nonchalant, moving only his head and a nudge of the hand soon after to call a waitress over. But I could see, lifting my head down to glance at the ink beneath his sleeves, sparing a glimpse to the marks. I could see them wriggling, letters and creatures tattooed on his skin. I could see them.

I could see the marks on his arms. The story that they told about him wasn’t pretty. And if only I had said anything about it, then I could’ve stopped him from dissapearing with a man the tattoo told me about.

Images Move And disappear As the day Ends Thy don’t mend But begin Again And grow So Don’t know If you know That your tattoos Have become You

Shy sun rays peaked around the sheer curtains. Reeking of sex and gutted candles, the bedroom was early morning quiet. Lucy, making a sleep moan, stirred in beneath the sheets. Dark cherry curls, her hair fanned against Danny’s arm. Danny gazed on his secret crush’s face and repressed the overwhelming desire to give himself a high five.

I slept with Lucy, Danny thought, me I slept with Lucy. He laughed that weird too high laugh he did when he was nervous or happy. Danny clapped his hand over his mouth. Restless, Lucy flung off the sheet. Danny watched her loveliness. Smooth freckled skin, an intricate tattoo sleeve, ripe breasts, Lucy’s body surpassed his dreams. And he had dreamt of Lucy a whole lot.

Danny had bounced at Alchemy for six years, a part time gig during school that turned into a rut. He’d seen his share of hot chick bartenders at the bar. Danny knew that hot chick bartenders were the bar’s late night bread and butter, but Lucy was something else. She had only been working at Alchemy a couple of weeks. Pouring shots and professional flirting, Lucy became his obsession at first sight. Danny couldn’t stop watching her.

Customers and staff alike, everyone hit on Lucy. Sassy behind the bar, Lucy was a cold fish off the clock. Even Pedro couldn’t get her digits. Yet last night after closing Lucy sat next to him as the bartenders, barbacks, and bouncers drank vodka and vaped on Alchemy’s patio. Lucy rested her hand on his knee and traced the seams of his jeans. Flinging her arm over his chest, Lucy stirred again. He traced her tattoos with an adorning finger. There was a sliver of moon and a trio of black wolves with golden eyes. In the weak light of her bedroom window, the tattoos looked different, very different. Instead of three wolves inked on her arm there were five no thirteen wolves tangled under a nearly full moon.

Danny scratched his head. They’d had a lot to drink. What is important is Lucy wants me, Danny thought. Lightning fast, Lucy sat up full awake.

“Yes I do want you,” Lucy said.

She looked fierce and then laughed. Instead of one sleeve Lucy now had two sleeves of tattoos, packs of wolves. Screaming Danny tried to squirm away. Catlike, Lucy pounced on Danny’s arms and legs.

“Relax Danno don’t be afraid.”

She laughed. Danny felt an uneasy laugh pulled from him. On Lucy’s arms there were now too many wolves to count. Her lovely freckled skin was a rustling moonlit forest hundreds of eyes. Glowing yellow eyes of wolves stared at Danny from Lucy’s torso. They blinked. Danny thrashed. The headboard bashed the plaster. Lucy held his six foot muscled frame fast.

“Is this a trick, Lucy? Like a magic trick. Please.”

The wolf tattoos moved up Lucy’s neck. One of the tattoos bared its fangs. A wolf’s howl filled the bedroom. Lucy laughed. Danny laughed and cried. Slender claws stretched from her fingers and toes pinning Danny to the bed.

“Are you a werewolf?” He blubbered.

“No, werewolves are males. Silly creatures, weak. I’m something else.”

He dived into the water. I took a huge swig of my cocktail. He was way hotter than I remember. We were childhood friends and he reached out to me to meet on this blissfully hot summer night. As he used his hands to push himself out of the pool, I couldn’t but help observe the markings on his body. Upon his legs, lines crossed around like the lines on a tree trunk whereby you can see how many lines correlated to how old the tree is. My eyes glanced at his upper body, now glistening wet in the moonlit sky. There the artistry was of skulls. Simple yet sad looking.

He is wiping off the water off his body and the alcohol might be hitting me as I feel like the markings on his body move. Maybe it’s the light playing tricks on me. I glare deeper and yet the lines seem to twist and turn harshly, the skulls are definitely moving and the emotions feel varying.

“Your… tattoos…” I stutter.

“Yes, I was marked by a priest when I was a child.” He looked down at the shifting imagery as if in shame. “They wanted to warn those around me of my potential.”

I gulped my cocktail. Eyes unmoving in contrast to what I was seeing.

“Each notch represents the year I have been alive on this world. Each skull represents each person I have consumed.”

I put my glass down and grasped my towel. I looked for the closest exit and unfortunately, I would not to be able to outrun him.

“I reached out to you to see if you wanted to join me.” He smiled albeit forced and strange looking, but revealing his fangs.

I saw no choice. I nod.

It was a mishap, I learned later.

The Time Traveler had tapped in the wrong date and gone backwards 200 years instead of forward.

She emerged from her vehicle and took a deep breath of air.

“Oh hello,” she said to me. I had been delivering vegetables to the next town from mine. She just walked out into the road. Strange clothes. Holding an odd device. Her skin radiated with symbols and pictures they swarmed in and out of focus.

“Could you tell me what year it is?”

I looked at her incredulously. “It be 1750,” I replied. “Why are the tattoos on your skin moving?”

The tall confident woman looked down at her arms. “Oh these things? They aren’t tattoos at all. Or at least, not any more.”

“They’re instructions,” she continued. “I have electrodes imprinted under my skin and I can manipulate them —“

Suddenly the strange woman vanished!

For the rest of the day I thought I might have been seeing things.

Then she came back.

He had markings along his forearms and his neck, across the backs of his hands and into his abdomen. They weren’t scars, nor were they tattoos. They were stories.

When she first met him, she saw nothing unusual. He looked like an ordinary person. But as time passed and their hearts grew fonder, she could see a light glowing from within his blood, dancing and singing out to her.

His left bicep told her about a man who had fled his country, and could not go home and see his family until fifty years later, when the war was over. His wife had re-married. He didn’t recognize his children.

His back said the tale of a woman who had braved the seas to forge a better life for her family, a new life in her stomach. She had dreams and hopes and aspirations.

His collarbone contained the adventures of a girl who found that family was not blood, but who you chose to be with. Every day was his to make, every choice was his to decide.

There was nothing on his neck. It was a blank page, yet to be filled with ups and downs and lows and highs. But some nights if she squinted hard enough, she could see the glowing symbols start to form, and she learned about a boy who had stories in his blood that only his true love could read.

It’s a horrible day. A horrible, fated day.

**Heart racing, eyes burning with tears, teeth clenched as I try to understand. I open my mouth in that moment, to say something, anything just to be with him. **

I know he isn’t safe; I want him anyway. The only thing I have.

But the price that I will have to pay is—

——

**_Before

_**“Brett?” A voice whispered into my ear suddenly, hot breath tickling the shell of my ear.

I startled quickly, jerking back from the source. Tayln stared at me, eyes wide at my strange reaction, but then his face crumpled into amusement.

He laughed. “Where were you this time? All throughout the meeting you were staring into space and nodding at random times.” Tayln scooted closer to me in the space pod until our legs were snug against each other. Space was dark outside of us; a swirling void of ice and rock floating around it helplessly.

We were leaving from the home planet for the Emperic Rebellion: Garth. There we had a meeting with a few other leaders who had joined our cause. It was less than satisfactory, as many of them were just there to decline the invitation to the rebellion and were less than respectful, but swore to keep the secret. I ignored them all, leaving Tayln to communicate to them. I had other things to worry about.

“See, you did it again,” Tayln frowned at me when I finally looked at him, eyes clear and focused, “What’s on your mind?”

I ignored his question and instead asked one of my own. “When will we be getting home?”

Tayln’s frown grew deeper, but he allowed the conversation to change. He faced forward where the ship’s autopilot system took place. “About thirty minutes; why?”

I shake my head, trying to will myself to be patient. “We need to get there faster.”

“I swear your mom will be fine. It’s not the the Emperor is going to attack a neutral planet any time soon.”

I turn to him sharply, teeth gritting together. “You don’t know that! She could be gardening one day and—_POW! _Bombed! You don’t know anything, so will me to be cautious.”

Tayln opened his mouth, as if he was going to correct me, but then decided against it. Of course, he knew I was right. The only way someone knew about the plans is if he was the Emperor himself.

And Tayln, my husband and my life of three long years, definitely was not that crude man.

My eyes widened as I something strange on his arm that I knew wasn’t there before. It seemed to be a strange tattoo, an animated one. Now it wasn’t strange to see animated tattoos in this day and age, but what was strange was the indecision of it. It wasn’t just one image, it seemed to be a swirled, black combination of multiple ones.

I shook my head, confused and entranced at the same by it. Just at that moment, I realized that Tayln was staring me with a deep intensity. He looked away we I stared back though, leaving me wondering.

It had taken us a little over thirty minutes to arrive at the port, and by the time we got to my mother’s little house near the entrance of the contained bio-life, it had been close to an hour.

I was tense and anxious as I hurried over down the crosswalk, pushing past the busy people of Metro Street. Tayln wasn’t with me at the time, he didn’t really like my mother as much as he should have; mother, for all her sweet self, didn’t appreciate him much either.

When I finally saw the white fence that I knew so well, I sighed in relief.

There she was, white hair twisted into thick braids and a pretty pink dress to her knees. My mother was quite small, wrinkled, and rather forgetful sometimes, but she was my everything—not including Tayln.

Her back was towards me as she watered her plants in her tiny, makeshift garden, but she quickly stopped and turned when she heard my voice. I unlocked the fence to meet my mother’s open arms.

“Brett!” She exclaimed, voice hoarse and shaky, but nonetheless hers. She kissed my cheeks softly, and upon inhaling I smelled her fresh scent of lavender and peppermint. Even after all these advancements, wars, and hardships, my mother was the same.

It felt quite nice.

Of course, it felt quite nice.

I** **kissed her in response. “How are you doing, Mom?”

Mom jutted out her lip. “I would be better if you weren’t to busy with that husband of yours.”

I laughed, holding onto her arm as I made my way to the house. “That’s not all what I’m busy with, I have work too.” My mother did not know of my assistance with the rebellion. Or that I was a chief of a section here. Precautionary measures.

“But he’s still some of it,” Mom seemed as though she was not going to change her mind on that one, “Has he broken your heart yet? It has to be soon.”

I shook my head and chuckled as opened the door. “I know you don’t like him, but please try not to curse me, Mom.” I let go of her arm, stepping inside, then startling as a firm grip caught my sleeve.

“Mom?”

“I’m serious, boy.” Her face was thunder, eyes suddenly dark, pale hair stray and rough. My heart picked up in that moment. What she said couldn’t be true; no. “I just have this bad feeling—“

“Mom,” I take my sleeve out of her hand then grab both of them gently. “I promise you. Nothing bad is going to happen.”

……

That night, the day after we left,

** ships, the Emperor’s Army, **

** were found around the planet**

**I—I don’t know what I was expecting **

I really don’t know.

……

Sleep had evaded me that night. Though the warm was bed with Tayln’s shared warmth, it felt cold. I felt cold.

My sweet mother.

Tayln looked guilty for some reason. Eyes cast down as he laid in the bed facing me.

“I’m sorry, Brett,” he whispered, taking placing a hand on the side of my face. I closed my eyes. He was sorry? Why should he be sorry? It wasn’t his fault.

“I’m going to kill him.”

“What?” Tayln’s voice sounded hoarse.

I opened my eye. “I’m going to kill that bastard of an Emeperor.”

Tayln’s hand grew hard on my face. He bit his lip. “I love you so much, but I’m afraid I can’t let you do that. He has plans you see.”

Everything went blank.

A tranquilizer—he was ready for me.

Honestly, I should have questioned him about that tattoo when I saw it.

How deceptive. How—horrible.

**The Rebellion started 4 years ago. It seemed that the Emperor knew of it even when it was scraps of some fueled anger. He sent someone he trusted, his personal guard, to monitor it. **

By chance, that someone found me and fell in love.

Why me?

**_Why him?

Out of EVERYONE, EVERYTHING, EVERY UNIVERSE?

_****His face is a unemotional as I fall into his arms. The Emperor is watching, thin and frail, but all powerful.**

“Why?” I whisper into his ear. “Just a little playing around while you did your thing, huh?”

**I feel him stiffen at my words. At least he reacts. **

**“Th-that’s not it—“ The Emperor claps loudly, interrupting his sentence. **

**Strong hands grab my arms tightly, pulling me away from my world, practically dragging me to my death in live hologram. **

**Tayln stares off at me. He looks near to tears. I wish I could offer him comfort. **

But I steel my feelings as I see the Emperor on his throne directly behind him. Like a master and his dog.

I stop resisting and let them take me.

_(I dunno, I just wrote some shit probably. I had this idea in my mind, that forgot it in the middle then remembered it when I was close to finishing, so I was like, “I ain’t starting this over.” Soooo. _

Thanks for reading and have a good day!)