The Case of The Onceler

I'm rewriting The Lorax by Dr.Suess into a detective story.

Night Terrors

There's the screaming again, it's my turn tonight. I walk into her room and calm her. She won't take her eyes off of her closet. To reassure her I open it, step inside, and fall. The darkness envelopes me, swallows me. Limbs reach from the walls of the chute, grasping at me as I fall, my speed growing. I begin to see glimpses of light at the bottom as the temperature rises. My skin begins to blister and burn, the velocity sucking the air from my lungs. My skin peels away, revealing muscle tissue, blood pouring out. Why aren't I dead? I should be dead, the pain oh gods the pain. Help me somebody, save me. Wake me up! Where am I? I just keep falling, the light gets brighter and the temperature hotter! I flail and kick through the air, I'm on fire now. Save me! Help Me! It hurts, it burns, I can feel my muscles exploding with the heat. Kill me dammit! HELP!

I watch my flaming bones hit the bottom. Past the burning light, past all pain now. I am safe. Reborn in the light. I and others before me, we wait for another to fall.

This one kinda sucks huh?

Poison

It's a poison. This feeling, this evil. A fire coursing through my veins. Boiling my blood, it rises to my face. A crimson red appears just underneath my skin. Nobody shows that they see, and now I realize, they never did. I'm a shadow, a dark spot in the background of a photograph. The only reason I exist is to emphasize the people around me. But she noticed. Brought me out of the background. At least to me. Rarely speaking in person, especially when around other "friends". But I didn't care.. at first. Then something happened. Nothing changed. Nothing was supposed to, otherwise it would have. She's a poison, one that I willingly take daily. Killing me daily. It's murder, the way she makes me feel. The way she kills me. Makes me believe, then I begin to doubt, and with the wrong words she unknowingly ends me. Am I a poison to anyone, do I make them hurt with good intentions? Do I kill them the way she kills me? Or now that she's been gone, have I faded back into the background again?

So, did I mention I have a thing for sentence fragments?

Mr.Brown

Riding the bus home from school today I saw an old man pushing a shopping cart down the side-walk. I started thinking of everything that could happen to that old man, and this was the end result.

The day started off like any other day for Mr.Brown. Wake up, get dressed, get coffee, walk to work. But it wasn't just any other day for him, it was the 15th anniversary of his wife's death. Brokenhearted after her untimely end, he put everything that reminded him of her in one room in their old house, bought another lot, moved in there. Every year on this day he visits that room and sleeps in their bed once again. He had just left the grocery store with a cart full of canned foods and snacks loaded with preservatives and was nearing the house when he heard yelling.

It was some younger boys, in their late teens, drinking and partying on the lawn of The House! Enraged, Mr.Brown speeds up to the teens only to be shoved to the ground as the begin to set fire to his house. All of his wife's things, her memory and her ashes, destroyed by a bunch of drunk teens.

When the Boys looked back, Mr.Brown was lying dead on the ground.

Ok, so this one kind of sucks. Actually, it really sucks, don't even read it.

too late.

Daydreamer

I stare down at the math work in front of me. College grade, simple, boring. The teachers machine-like voice droning on about how horrible her students are. The world melts away to reveal it was all fake, a simulation created by some alien technology. They begin to speak in some strange gargling language, yet I understood every word.

"We're not getting anything out of this one, let's dump him with the others."

A hatch opens at my feet and I fall. Claws sprout from my fingers and dig into the wall of the chute. Digging in to the wall I start to climb back up. I emerge into the light of the forest, those damn trappers caught me by accident. They approach me, guns firing in sequence with their steps and heartbeats. Bullets bounce off my metallic skin, one hits a trapper in the head and he falls to the ground. The other is left to me. He drops his weapon and begins to run, the desert sand slowing him down and filling his shoes. I walk calmly behind, loading my gun. The last soldier. The last life that needs to end in this war. After this, it's over. He trips and falls, spits sand out of his mouth, and turns around to see me standing over him. I raise my sword, and plunge it into his chest. My quest for revenge starts here, with the death of my murderer. The organization behind the experiments on my daughter thought I was dead after they sent that assassin. They were sorely mistaken, you can't kill a vampire with anything less than a beheading. As I watch his blood flow out of the open wound, I struggle to restrain myself. When he looks up I jump back, sword drawn and ready.

"Wake up James, it's your turn to answer." the corpse tells me.

"Answer what demon? I have little patience for riddles."

"James! Wake up!"

I quickly look up and see the teacher glaring at me from across the classroom. Damn these dreams.

Dethroned (End of The Darkbringer)

Just a quick note from me, this is told as the original Darkbringers were written, in the p.o.v. of The Darkbringer. In this final Darkbringer story, Aslin confronts Darkbringer and brings his demon reign to an end. Now that I've spoiled the ending, have fun reading it.

THE ViRUS

The doors to my quarters burst open in a flash of light. Turning I see one of my Devil-Guards surrounded in a dark blue aura.

"Guard, I requested no assistance, return to the fight with the human resistance." But he keeps walking. As the demon walks into the light his flesh begins to hiss and smoke, and the blue aura fades from his body. It is then I see who has invaded my private quarters. Aslin, a creation I long thought dead from my elite troops. A human I sought to change, a human that had the will to resist the mental changes, yet could not stop his body from morphing into that of some strange man-beast hybrid. Yet he looked more like my son than any of my other creations.

"You're going to die today." He tells me. He destroys my army, invades my home, and claims that he's come to kill me? Foolish half-blood.

"Is that so? Did you bring any of my other escaped creations with you? No? How then do you plan to "kill" your own father, without the rest of your family?" Taunting him.

"You are not my father. My father was a farmer, you killed them along with everyone else I cared about a long time ago."

"And I thought I killed you too, or at least that my Elites did."

"No such luck." He says and charges at me, the blue aura returning to his body.

I easily sidestep to avoid his attack, and get tripped by the Young demons tail. I did not expect his transformation to go this far after he escaped, without a supply of demon blood.....

"How are you that far along in your changes?! After you escaped there was nothing with the same effects as what we were giving you in that forest!"

"Until you sent your Demonic Elites after me." He spat back

So he figured out what we were giving him, I had underestimated his intelligence. Not waiting for me to finish my thoughts, such a rude halfling, he attacks. This time I'm ready. Grabbing his clawed and deformed hands in one swift catch, and his tail in my other hand, I easily throw the boy into the next room. As I slowly walk through the dust and rubble I'm hit with a blast of heat. Flames erupted from the boys paw-like left hand and he hurled them at me repeatedly.

I don't understand! This was not a standard transformation, demons can't touch fire without it rapidly covering their bodies. We are not born of flames as the humans think we are, our homeland is a desert iceland. Flames ripped apart my wings and right arm, before I could extinguish them. Lying on the ground bleeding out, I look up to see the halflings fanged-smile.

"I thought you'd be harder than a guard. Guess I was wrong."

I want to rip that smile off his face.

"Y'know I probably should be thanking you, without the transformation, I would have never been able to defeat you. But before I kill you, where is the cure. I know you have one, enough for two people."

"You think I'd just tell you? You have all that power and you want to get rid of it, I'm not going to waste it on you!" The nerve of this one!

"No, I'm going to use it on your daughter. She set me free, gave me the strength, told me you had a cure. You're going to die, your army is nothing. Give your one true child a chance at a life when all of this is over."

Looking into his eyes I see he has spoken the truth. Sighing, I rip apart the changed and deformed flesh holding my chest together, and hand him two vials.

"One for each of you. Your reward for besting me and my army, and one to save my daughter."

The boy just smiles, takes them, and heads up the stairs to my daughters chamber. He was right, I'm going to die, but not by his hand. By drinking the vial meant for him, he will return to his original state, mostly. I hear the screams of pain as the changes start. I let out one last victorious laugh, then it all goes black.

The End

well, could've been better.

THE ViRUS

The Dream

"SOLDIER GET YOUR ASS DOWN HERE!!!" I awake to the screaming of a man in green combat armor, holding his helmet in one arm and a balancing a gun in the other. I jump out of my cot and grab my guitar. Blue, stained with the blood of thousands of enemies, and yet it still plays like new. I put on my suit and run into the battlefield as my guitars form shifts into that of a gun. Pulling it apart into two identical firearms, I blast away at the first two machines that cross my path, hot oil covering my arms and chest as their mechanical limbs explode in a storm of hot metal and lead. I flip a switch on my guns and slam them back together as a blade sprouts from the barrel of what was once the finest gun in the library. Slashing through the forest to get at my enemy I am reminded again of what it means to be the Hero. The man I trusted most in this world, the man who taught me everything I know, is now my greatest adversary. Killing my father was acceptable, for he was a vile man and deserved what he got, but killing Elizabeth was to set an example. One that I hated him for. Years of serving in his army, of learning every tactic he employed, I was ready to make my move. I slam to the ground as something attacks me from above. Rolling over I see the bastard brother of my Heroic father. The bane of the colonies, my Uncle. Is this how it all ends? After spending a lifetime in a prison for a crime I didn't commit, a lifetime of training for this moment, I am to be wiped off the map by a sneak attack? No, I kick my unholy Uncle's legs out from under him and spring on top. Shooting off his hands and feet with my energy blasts, I am faced with a decision, do I kill the innocent boy, or turn my back on this life of hatred? I am the most wanted man in all of the galaxy, it's not too late to turn myself in. No, using my powers of creation I restore the boys limbs, smiling as he stands from his wheelchair. I turn to see the crowds cheering. The savior of the U.S. they call me. All of this made possible by a freak accident in my underground lab. Years I was kept in a glass dome, studied by the worlds greatest minds. The biblical, ethical, and political effects of letting me live were too great, so they thought to eliminate me. Tearing my limbs from my body, and burning them in hopes that they had finally killed the Wizard. These people are failures, and they deserve what is coming to them. Using my last bit of magic before my life ended, I called upon the forces of nature to reap my revenge. My arms and legs severely burned, I hear my love calling my name.

"James! James wake up!" I hear her, barely.

"Jane, Jane is that you?"

"Wake up James, it's time for school."

Oh shit, it was all a dream. Sliding out of bed I see burn marks on the ceiling, new scars all over my chest and god knows how many on my back. Burns on my arms, the palms of my hands are black and crackling with electricity. Looking at my face in the mirror I see my eyes are now a dark red. What happened last night?

Later Drones.