I have a type.

Yeah, most women do. And no, it's not necessarily the Hollywood ideal. That's not saying that I don't think heartthrobs aren't aesthetically pleasing; yeah, they're handsome, sure, but when I choose a guy to go after I'm not looking for a magazine cover. Well, maybe Mojo.

I like to kid myself and say I'm trying to be a muse to musicians, but really I just like their hands. Strong, calloused, that sound when a bassist runs those tips down the stockings you wore to his show, the tight grip of a drummer as he wraps you up in his arms. It's their passion made manifest in flesh, and it makes me melt in ways I just can't explain in words.

With Anders the melting came to a boil. I found him busking near the Trinity fountain in the middle of the City, coins and bills falling as passerby stopped to hear him bend that old battered fiddle. He had a crooked smile and skin pale as milk that should have burned to a crisp even in the soft sun of that dreary summer day. He wore his dark hair long, a soft crumpled white shirt over a pair of dingy grey trousers, and a hat that would have repulsed me on any other man sitting half-cocked jauntily on his head.

I was smitten. Me. I asked him to tea, in broad daylight. I loved the way he sat his violin back into its battered case, kissing his fingers as he put the bow back and tucking her in like a lover leaving his beloved behind. He took my hand, bold yet somehow old-fashioned, and we walked the waterfront for hours talking about music and life and past loves and then the sunset then his lips and my hands and our hurried rush to my flat and then...

He was good. A magic man, and I was under his spell.

What started there ascended to an actual relationship. We found that my mother's and his families came from the same small region of Sweden, our ancestors just a few bends away from each other on the calm run of the Dalälven river. He had been born there, coming across the Atlantic when times got tough for his mother and his father long away roaming as a fiddler himself. The faint lilt of his accent made me beg him to speak in Swedish, and he would laugh as I swooned over his description of a fanciful cow or the story of a cat in our shared native tongue.

The days turned to weeks, then months, and finally Maja Sanford had a boyfriend. A real boyfriend, for the first time since my lonely days in college. My friends loved him for me, and while they all stared and fawned? I never felt worried that they would take my magic man away. Life was good, and we spent long lazy days in bed between his busking and my work from home, and life was wonderful.

And then I learned the truth, and my world changed.

We all gotta start somewhere. And a lot of times? You're gonna find something big you wanna write and then find it's small or vice versa.

Write stories about stuff that has happened in your life. Write little fables. Write just to write, and come back to the big ones. It's like leveling in a video game: you're at level 1, bash a couple of rats and upgrade your equipment, the boss will still be there when you're ready.

Your UN and post make me think you are a younger writer or someone who is just starting to write. So forgive me, but I'm not gonna judge your story. Instead, I'm going to say what I needed to hear when I first started writing, and hope it helps you.

There's no such thing as a bad story. A story is a story, it has a beginning, middle, and end, rising and falling action, and comes from your mind.

Don't worry about the audience or marketability. If you continue writing you will write dozens, hundreds, thousands of stories. Some will be for wide release, and some will be for just one person. Sometimes that one person is you and you don't realize it.

But writing is like a tightrope. It requires discipline, and not fearing the rope. If you're about to walk across that rope and you're worrying about how it will come out? You'll get the yips, get discouraged, and fall. Sometimes the fall is short. Sometimes it hurts. And while the fall and getting back up is part of the process, I'd suggest learning closer to the ground.

Try a couple of the following prompts to start:

• Have a conversation between two people, where one is trying to hide a secret.

• Go outside to a quiet place and describe the world around you in detail.

• Write the day in the life of an animal you love.

I used to use a series of these types of short prompts to limber up. Now I limber up by writing here.

If you ever have questions or need somebody to read something you wrote? Tag me or shoot me a message. I'm a bit crippled and may be slow, but I'll listen.

Beyond that, good luck! Your story's got bones. Now you gotta dig and find them.

Reminds me of the Canyonero

No, she read to some kids years ago. She's a twitch streamer now?

Headline: Rogue AI 'could kill everyone,' scientists warn.

Yes, and Sasha Grey could decide to become a nun, but I think either event is very unlikely.

More realistic headline: 'Congressman delegates low-level speechwriter position to machine, demonstrating AI superiority over starving Georgetown intern".

It does take a master to defeat a master. If the country that brought us covering up Unit 731 and millions of war crime victims can't put down a little misinfo what is the world coming to?

You know you're in a bad relationship when the breakup is met with 'Yeah, that's fair, not even gonna try, good luck!'

It feels more of a plot than a prompt. You've set up a pretty complex prompt for it to be manageable within microfiction, and so it's just very hard to get any sort of engagement.

Prompts don't have to necessarily be simple, but you've setup the entire plot of a long short story, which makes it very hard for a writer to extend off that path. Just a heads up on future prompts.

Ok. But realistically how is it resolving in 100-1000 words?

I'm always kinda surprised by prompts like this... as it's a novella length prompt, it seems like a lot.

Cheese puns are terrible, casein point.

Ever try to make a person out of sticky rice?

The trap was simple. Spirits are often attracted to offerings. In the case of guardians like the Ma Gà that meant food and incense. Some Nag Champa from my backseat was burning in the little hands of the rice creature we had shaped, and in the middle of its chest was droplets of Jim's blood. The old man was sitting sharpening a wicked looking knife with a thick blade, its edge gleaming in the headlights. The bolo was a favored weapon of a lot of guys who fought over in Nam, better made to handle the necessary brushwork of the thick jungle than the American machetes GIs were given by Uncle Sam.

I was given a shotgun loaded with allspice rounds. We call em allspices because they have a little bit of everything, and we're perfect when you weren't sure what would hurt your target. Rosary beads, silver shot, salt, lead, Palo wood... Bumps would hate something in that mix, and for a dumb hunter that was good enough. I'd done a little bit of shooting growing up, so Jim had trusted I wouldn't blow his head off in the heat of the moment.

The lot was abandoned, high fencing marking it for development by the local college into dorms. The steel structures were a good cover spot, and if I'd have known anything at the time I wouldn't have been near pissing my pants in fear. I'll give myself some credit: this was a trial by fire, and like it or not I made it out alive.

"You ever kill one of these?" I asked, checking my shirt pockets to make sure the shells were still there.

"A Ma Gà?" Jim replied, stopping his sharpening and testing the blade. "No. I've got a few Bumps under my belt. A bogeyman while I was still drinking, a creeper during that camping trip. Dried out a Llorona down near the border when I took that Josie boy to his folks a few months ago."

"Bumps?"

"Things that go Bump in the night. There's a whole list of them. Dream-thiefs and bogeymen, creeps and doubles, false mothers... there's a lot of things out there."

I kept quiet, rubbing my hands to keep them warm. Dammit, I should have brought gloves. It was damn near frosty out at 3am, and the whole world had settled into quiet.

I heard the rush overhead and saw the thing pounce on our decoy. It looked... almost like a chicken, but with the body of a hulking man. Bloodstained feathers jutted out at its spine and hips, and the beak that tore into the decoy was serrated and ready to tear flesh.

I brought my gun in low, and fired both barrels.

I might as well have kissed it on the head good night. The Ma Gà took the shot and turned towards me, its misshapen bird head ducking and weaving like a raptor choking down prey.

It was on me in a flash, claws digging towards my flesh, its eyes filled with hate. The Guardian wakened, and I was its meal. I tried to struggle, keeping the shotgun between us, but I knew I was a goner. One more push and it was through my guard, and I would —

I didn't even hear the old man creep up. I did feel the blood that gouted out of the creature's stump neck after the bolo went through clean. It collapsed its full weight on me, and Jim pulled it off with some effort.

And so that was the start of it. I got my license and started teaching in schools no sane teacher would go to. The schools for kids with problems. Over the years I've hunted down dozens of these monsters, using the tricks I learned from Jim. I'm happy with my life, and will continue doing it until the coroner comes to claim me.

Nancy stayed with us for six months. A very long stretch, but she got out and found a relative. She never wrote or thanked me, but I found her on social media and checked in. Two happy kids, a good wife. I hope the nightmares went away.

As for Jim? Dead almost thirty years now. After getting the thing that killed his family he found peace. He had enough time to mentor me, but I guess the missus was calling.

There are strange things out there. Some of them hurt kids. For the beasts that wear human faces? Call the cops.

But if there's a Bump in the night? Find the nightlight.

"You're coming with me, man." Jim shouted to me as he rustled in the storage room after putting Nancy to bed.

"What the fuck did she mean, Jim? What is it? She's probably just stressed, if it was half as bad as Tony said it was it's gotta —"

Jim came at me from the storage in a rush. I heard my teeth click as he slammed me against the wall, a hell of a lot of strength for a dying man.

"She knew my name, man."

"Everybody knows your name Jimmy." I said, far calmer than I should have been.

"No. She knew my real name, one I ain't heard in twenty years."

We sat down as he told me a story.

I served. I was in it before the hippies came, before the real bad shit started. I was part of that bad shit, and I took it home with me.

We were in a village, VC occupied territory. They had killed three of our guys so we went to find three of theirs. But it wasn't easy. Anybody could be the enemy. They hid in plain sight out there, and so my captain? He comes up with an idea.

We went to the headman's house. We... all of them. The dude was into animism, collecting demons and spirits. He had a big pot he called a chicken pot. We hung him up over the thing and gutted him like a fish.

There was something in that pot, man. When I got back, and all of it happened? I asked around, amongst the Viet in the City. They call them Ma Gà. Guardian spirits. They live in those urns, big unseeing spirits. They protect their house.

When I got home, my wife and kid were waiting. Must've taken it some time to find me, as it was. I was down. South then, but it didn't matter where I was. That Ma Gà found me, found my wife and kid. It... it near killed me. I didn't do a damned thing. It murdered my wife and child, and I threw a bottle North and crawled into it.

"And the thing that got Nancy's family? It finally caught up to me. And since I didn't have the decency to die already, it's making an example until I do."

I was confused. Hell, I was terrified. This half-dead guy I knew for six months told me demons are real and that they killed two families, but we gotta go looking for it and kill it? Seemed a bit much.

And that's why I called for someone to cover for me and left out the door with a pot of rice to shove between my knees as we took Jim's rust bucket Caddy to find a demon.

Jim had Nancy sitting with him in the kitchen as he polished silverware, and the girl's face had gone from set in stone to a small smile.

"And so the duck asks the bartender, 'hey, you got any nails?'" Jim said, his deadpan giving away to a little bit of humorous twist. He was always shit at telling jokes.

"And the bartender says no. So the duck asks 'well, you got any grapes?'" I finished for him, wondering why Jim was shining flatware around midnight. The best thing about having an eccentric former matron? The dishes in Dirch House were top notch. While the whole setup was a bitch to clean, we staff prided ourselves on serving the best slop our limited bed count allowed on fine china and silverware. It made for a pain when a kid tried to sneak it off, but we always got it back. Even the sleaziest pawnbroker in the City wouldn't accept Dirch House cutlery, seeing as plenty of the criminal element had spent some fond time with us.

Nancy's laugh at the joke turned into a sob which began a shaking cry. Jim did what we were taught then; he maintained a presence, within reach if she needed to, but not trying to hug or touch the kid. With the things that had happened to many of our kids it was not a great idea to go grabbing, even if it was to comfort.

She put one arm around Jim and he accepted it, patting her hand as he sat down the fork he had been polishing. When she wrapped her arms around his neck and cried into his shoulder he gave me a look that was part empathy and part rage. Whatever happened, Nancy didn't deserve any of it. And if the cops didn't find who had done it? She'd always be looking, scared.

Jim put a hand on Nancy's head and stroked her hair, a fatherly gesture. Jim didn't talk about his family, and probably for good reason. He seemed a bit of a loner, and didn't want anything to do with people much outside of the Ditch. I could see him struggling there but wouldn't interfere, because these moments were for the kid and not us.

Then Nancy moved her head up to Jim's ear, and that dying skin blanched as his eyes went wide.

"What did you say Nancy?" Jim asked, backing away from the girl.

"It, it said it misses you Jimmy. And that your son wants you to come and play."

I guess some of the idiot undergrads decided to roam. I sprinted out of the office grabbing a baseball bat along the way, only to find Beta Phi pricks standing outside laughing. The one who had banged on the window was decked out in some creature feature makeup, his upper body grey and black and fangs in the mouth.

I was charitable. I hit him dead on in the solar plexus with the grip of the bat, pushing him off the back wrapped porch like a bull making moves on a matador. He fell on his ass and the drunk frat guys laughed, then I heard them dummy up as footsteps fell behind me. Tony, eyes dry and ready to raise Hell.

"I know which house is yours, boys. These kids aren't monkeys to rile up in cages! Get all of your asses off Dirch House property or I'll bring you in for drunk and disorderly and get a warrant for your damned frat!" Tony was fired up, one hand on his nightstick as the other shone the Mag-Lite of shame across quickly sobering faces.

"He hit Darryl!" a chubby degenerate dressed in a bedsheet toga cried.

"Darryl's lucky. There's a girl in... I didn't see it, it didn't happen. Get out, NOW!"

The frat boys scattered and Tony sat in a caneback rocker on the porch, feeling for a pack of smokes in his vest pockets and offering me one.

"That kid? She needs a nightlight." Tony proclaimed after taking a few drags to calm his nerves.

"We've got a few in the house, I'll be sure to get her one Tone."

The cop looked me up and down, then out at the night. "I would have thought you'd. Nope, none of my business. Jimmy's in with her now. I gotta get back, there's some sort of dust up at the Hop, but, kid? That girl needs you tonight. Sit up and talk to her. She's going through it."

"I will Tone. Go, catch some idiots." I smiled as I stubbed out the butt half-smoked, doing the dirt bag move and sticking it behind my ear. We shook hands and I went back into the Ditch, confused about what Tony was talking about.

It was the coldest Halloween I remembered. At that point I was 24, 25? Not a long memory, sad to say. Trick or Treaters bundled up in heavy coats against the cold, and the campus parties were going to be rowdy. As a grad student with clinical hours to complete I wouldn't be out chasing undergrads, so the cold weather was a good karmic payback to all the guys I RA'd for mocking me. They'd be drinking in their dorms wishing they could see some skin, and I'd be here...

Last Ditch. Aka The Lara Dirch House. Named for the Dirch family heiress that decided to start collecting orphans like 19th century Pokémon, and needed a place to shove them. The kids who had passed through gave us our nickname on account that we were the final stop before juvie or a psych placement for most of our clients. Even so, I liked it. Last ditch effort, make it count kids.

Yellow Jim was working dinner and showers, so I knew I had time to burn one before settling in for night shift. 15 minute rounds, making sure no one was bed-hopping or had snuck a length or rope or something sharp to put themselves out of their misery. The Ditch wasn't my worst placement during my licensing, but it was rough on the kids. A lot of them had been through serious shit to get them there. Mental health crises, runaways, criminal cases, sometimes all three.

Then there were the hard calls. They came in smelling of smoke and blood, patched up in the County ER. Dad got drunk and decided to paint the apartment with Mom, or their older brother treated them like a punching bag for not being a good sibling and letting him have what he wanted. They all had that glassy sedated stare as we filed them away. These weren't frequent flyers; Hell, half the time they were great kids, straight As and all that. The world just broke under their feet that day, and here we were.

"You got anything left in that bat?" Jim asked, a tone that really meant why are you getting stoned on property. Jim was clean and sober, but nobody told his liver he was out of the game. He got the Yellow nickname from his eyes, always jaundiced, his skin that sickly near green cast you get in end stage failure. "I got some drops in the office, spray yourself down. We got an intake coming in hot in 30."

Shit. Shit shit shit. What little buzz I got from the crap I confiscated off a freshman left me as I rushed into the staff bathroom, washing my face and brushing my teeth with the cheap throwaways we kept for kids whose parents didn't have money or care to send one with them. Two blasts of Visine and some gum made me look tired rather than high, and I sat down to take review just as Nancy walked in.

She was pretty. I don't mean that in a weird way, she was just a pretty kid. The kind boys chased after and thought about as the Girl Next Door. Clear skin, tall, a tomboy haircut, an ugly duckling who just came into her swandom. Sixteen on Halloween, and sitting out her birthday in the loving embrace of Dirch House. Tony brought her in, and the old cop's eyes told me this one was bad before we even got her settled into the tank to await intake.

"Damn place was a bloodbath Jimmy." Tony was the only guy I know who had the seniority to call Yellow Jim Jimmy around here. "Her sister, mother, two little brothers..." the old man. Heh. Old man. Tony couldn't be much older than I am now, and 50 is the new 30. "Whatever happened, it was bad. They found the littlest's head... it was bad Jimmy."

Jim put a hand on Tony's shoulder as the beat cop wept into his hat. Those Yellow eyes stared a hole in my chest, telling me to get in and check on the girl, and I bolted out of there as fast as toxic masculinity could carry me. It was the 90s, and I wasn't exactly touchy feely when it came to male emotions.

Nancy was holding herself in what I came to know as the EF post. Everything's fu... well, you know. Her knees were to her chin, arms wrapped around them, her fingers idly picking at the hospital scrub pants she was wearing. If she was in scrubs they had to take her clothes. I don't know if you've ever been unfortunate enough to be stripped in a vulnerable moment, but it hurts. Our clothes are like our armor to the world, and the oversized City Hospital shirt and scrubs were salt laid on an open wound. I treated my new intake like any case, giving her a wide berth and flopping into the leather chair behind our desk. I checked the file Tony had sat beside him and dug in looking for a wedge.

"So, Nancy. You go to Clairmont? My roommate in college went to Clairmont, class of 89. Good guy, you were the Cardinals right?"

She pulled her head out of the EF and stared at me. There was no glassy sheen of comforting medication behind those eyes. She was stone sober, pillar to post. Her life was crashing down around her and I was the idiot who was half-buzzed trying to make it better.

I filled out the intake forms in uneasy silence, Nancy not responding to me at all. I'd glance up at her every once in awhile, as silence was louder than screams when it came to dangerous things with a traumatized teenager. I was looking at her when the window creaked, and Nancy let out a loud scream.

Growing up in foster care sucks. The constant moving, the waiting, the hoping for adoption? It all wears on you. Sometimes you listen to the stories these kids tell, and you can't help but grieve how they lost their innocence. The human predators? The dad who beat them, the uncle who touched them? We make a case, assign a Guardian ad Litem, and move on.

But every once in awhile, when the cops bring in some runaway or a kid who won't talk to them? They tell you things. They talk about the monster under the bed that tore their memaw to shreds, or the evil witch who cursed her family and the cops marked it off as a gas leak.

That's when you call for the Custodians.

They're out there. That old drunk at the bar that watched too many Hammer flicks. That snake-handling preacher who spits hellfire at the pulpit but makes sure the kids without have what they need. Babysitters, teachers, hippie witches and old grannies in their dressing gowns.

They're the night lights in a world of darkness. They know their five S's: Scorch, Steel, Silver, Salt, or Sorcery. When we call, they answit.They're there for when guys like you had a night like you just had, and need someone to fix it

I used to not believe in any of it. Thought it was all just a bunch of malarkey. I was a new social worker then, doing intake for crisis housing. We had a big old Victorian boarding house converted into holding cells for teenage dreams, a safe space for kids who needed a spot when no one would take them in.

And then I met Nancy Harlow, and my entire world changed.

Aww, thank you so much! If you wanna check out my other stuff I have other prompts in my profile!

What am I being congratulated for? 😄

>Are you suggesting that Persephone the Bringer of Death, Goddess of Spring, and Queen of the Underworld would be wearing anything short of the finest silks?

Yes, I am. This is my telling, and how I framed it for this story. In another story she may wear silk. She may cuckold Hades with Charon, or be a skeleton animated by Hades inability to love living flesh. Perhaps she'll be a he, or not even there.

The gods, or any mythological representation, is to provide a frame. You didn't have an issue with Medea being represented with a dandelion crown, which would have a much different sociocultural meaning in Greek lore but was utilized to represent joy in spring (and would have been more fitting of Persephone). The amount of changes between the myths of the ancient Greeks and modern understanding is wide and ranging, and in some retellings the relationship is not all wine and roses.

I, as any writer not producing historical fiction, use these archetypes as needed to portray a story. It's kinda irksome when someone rushes in to correct rather than accepting that a story is a story, not a myth.

I leave it open-ended as to whether it's the case but wanted to give the reincarnation vibe as a little nod to the concept of the eternal champion.

Thanks! It was a fun prompt to write.

It struck like a lightning bolt.

"I love you. "

The nymph looked at me with alarm.

"You don't seek death, meliae. You seek love. Purpose. The sickness you saw in your Michael? It's in the City. There are shelters, clinics, places where a healer who has seen the worst and best of men and gods could do good. You have been far too long wandering in your woods. Come out and enjoy life, for a year and a day, then return to me. It will be the day we celebrate our dead then... if you wish to join them? I will not make demands."

The spirit looked beaten, then determined. She didn't say a word, though I was ready to invoke the innkeeper's privilege.

I set the date, knowing I wanted to be at work. This wasn't a Service I wanted to be surprised about.

I took the double on Halloween. Children and adults all dressed in their scary costumes, while all I got was a spooky button. Divine blood doesn't stop corporate. I had moved up in the world a bit, to a manager's position, so the scheduling wasn't a problem. I put myself on for the whole day and enjoyed the view.

I felt her coming again, and sat watching the plants dance to greet their beloved. I nervously felt for the Well, fumbling a drink order as the last of my late rush wrapped.

My nymph walked in dressed in green finery. Leaves of a hundred shades of green and gold trailed down the long dress she wore, with butterflies flapping their wings.

She hadn't come alone. A tall stocky man in his thirties, dressed in a pirate's puffy shirt and leather pants held her hand, his other held by a little girl in a blue and white dress and snowflakes. I walked around the counter to greet my last three customers, a slight bow to the nymph.

"Well met, weary traveler. What is your desire?"

Her hug was the best tip I got all night.