[WP] Everyone knows about the frog prince. A kiss turns him back, accomplished easily enough. But what about the lesser known "dragon prince," because how does one go about kissing a dragon?

Diana was not entirely comfortable being wrapped in a coat of cow meat and being left to her own devices outside of a dragon's cave, but her father said it was necessary. The prince of Agathon, Henri, had been turned into a dragon by some sort of strange witchcraft. The details, her father had said, were not important. Just get in, give the dragon a quick smooch, no big deal. Marry the prince, kingdoms are allied, everyone lives happily ever after. Unless, of course, Diana were to be, perhaps, **eaten**, like the meat she was slathered in. The guardsmen were supposedly surrounding her with pikes and fire in case the dragon prince had truly lost his mind, but the sounds of drinking and camaraderie had faded off into the distance, and she assumed they were off drunk in a field, dancing without a care in the world.

Diana was not enjoying herself.

An earsplitting roar shattered her eardrum, and she cried out in shock. She heard the sound of the beast slowly making its way from the depths of its cave, marching like a soldier to battle, although this would most likely not be much of a battle. She backed away slowly, then turned, then ran as fast as she could, before tripping over her high heels (which she was, might I add, forced to wear). Diana turned onto her back, and watched as a magnificent emerald dragon emerged from the cave. The behemoth was the size of a house, with scales glittering like a riverbed in spring. Her gasps of horror had turned into gasps of shock and wonder at the nature of the dangerous creature. The two, the dragon and Diana, peered into each other's eyes. Diana saw herself reflected in the black irises of the dragon, the yellow surrounding showing a thousand mirror images of herself, demeaned and small in the face of Mother Earth's magnum opus.

She stood, and slowly, maintaining eye contact, removed the suit of meat from her shoulders. The dragon purred and moved closer, sniffing at the bouquet of carnal flesh presented to it. A forked tongue snaked between rows of hideous, stained teeth, sharp enough to cut rock, and hard enough to crush as well.

The dragon gently leaned down, and snapped up the meat. After completing its hard-won meal, it gazed at Diana again. And Diana remembered her purpose for being humiliated in such a fashion, to meet a handsome prince and please her father. She approached slowly, her leather jerkin covered in sweat, her once pale and pristine skin dirtied and muddled, and lay a hand on the dragon's snout. The dragon did not snap, but it did not move either. It simply gazed at her entirety down the bridge of its nose, watching Diana's every movement.

Diana planted a kiss on the snout.

And... nothing happened. She tried again, but this time, the dragon snorted from the gentleness of her touch. Her proximity to its nostrils caused her to be knocked off of her feet, and she fell to the ground with a thud. The dragon approached her as if she were prey, crouching down and slinking towards her like a cat to a frightened mouse. Diana lay completely still. The dragon reached her, and brought its snout to her stomach, and Diana silently wept, preparing to meet God.

But the dragon nuzzled her stomach. And Diana realized this was not Henri at all.

She stood slowly, making no sudden movements. The dragon simply watched her, and Diana realized this was no monster, nor a man trapped in a monster's skin. She was unsure if this was a Henri forever destined to be trapped in a dragon's skin, or an entirely different beast altogether, but she didn't care. She stroked the scales, and she felt the animal vibrate with her touch.

In the distance, she heard the guardsmen finally react to the sounds her dangerous waltz had produced. She could imagine the brutes sluggishly retrieving their weapons, coming to slay the "monster". Not like this graceful creature, of another world. She felt kinship towards this creature, not towards the fools of her own race. And she made her way around the dragon, and climbed on its back.

The dragon huffed, almost in agreement, and ascended into the night sky, to take the two somewhere where they might forget the boorish decisions of humans.

[IP] Adventure

She craved adventure. Down to her core, her bones, the essence of her being. The home life had never beckoned to her, it repulsed her in fact. The thought of staying in the village, being a matron, or alternatively, a teacher, brought intense pain to her. She was a wild spirit, not a docile soul.

The day she had left, she had heard it one million times. "Don't go," or, "This isn't what you really want," or, "You'll regret it if you leave."

She cared not. Her destiny lay in the far reaches of the world, of the unbounded territory her ancestors had crossed mapped, and allowed to be forgotten with the passage of time. But she had the same fire to set her ablaze as the great trailblazers did, the knowledge that should she have stayed, the only purpose she could find would be what if?

She huddled her cloak around her more tightly, the wind chilled her, but not enough to put her out. In fact, it simply spoke a challenge to her, a dare. Will you rise to the occasion? Can you survive?

Unaware of what lay ahead, she stopped at the edge of a hill, overlooking the valley behind which lay the Old Mountains, a place her people had not know since their inception. As she paused, she recalled her father's words at her departure, "Should you leave, you may never come back."

And that was exactly the push she needed.

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IP courtesy of:

https://hazpainting.deviantart.com/

[WP] You are God. You just logged on to one of your old saves, and you’re confused as to where those massive lizards went and where all these pink ******* came from.

He opened his old "Terra' save, only to find his delicately crafted creatures gone. The massive dinoasaurs he had so carefully curated were missing, and in their place were some sort of strange, fleshy, inefficient creatures with no badass tails. This, understandably, made God curious. He check the log of events, but the log went too far back for him to understand the fate of his prized virtual companions.

"What the hell?" God said. He wanted to know what happened, but he had no clue how to find out. So he created a new character. The game had evidently adjusted itself, as his old character, the Megolodon, was no longer available, and apparently he was forced into a small variety of starter classes. He chose the fleshy one, the one that was so unattractive and disgusting.

Strangely, he did not arrive at the character customization screen, but instead began in a manger, surrounded by NPCs of the same strange race. He didn't recognize any of the animals, they were all furry, not scaly.

The kind, dark face of a female NPC watched his character intently, looking for a sign. God accessed the source code, and saw that he didn't recognize the algorithms running in the entire world, let alone this one AI. The world He had created Himself had wrested itself away from Him.

God shrugged. He played through, and as he learned more about the new culture of these "humans," He learned more about how to enjoy Himself. This game, after all, was far more complex than the simple action game Terra used to be. He began to modify the source code to give His character admin powers.

He turned a stack of water into a stack of wine by using the mod window, then, ten minutes later, he rezzed an NPC he felt a particular affinity towards. His legend grew among the people of the game, and He began to call his character "Son of God." This infuriated some of the enemy NPCs, but he assumed that was the game trying to throw a challenge his way.

Little by little, God noticed that when he left his game, whenever he came back Son of God would change. The beard would grow, he would have gained more followers, made more enemies. The game appeared to be adapting to His frequent absence of controlling Son of God. This, while slightly disturbing to Him, didn't concern Him too much until the fateful day.

God had grown bored. There was no easy way to traverse outside of the starting area, and He quickly grew bored. He opened the mod window, and programmed one of Son of God's followers to have the new "betrayer" trait. Sure enough, Son of God was betrayed to the enemy NPCs.

God left the monitor, curious to see the outcome.

When He came back, Son of God was gruesomely pinned to a wooden cross. God was shocked, and observed the game with morbid curiosity. The game had decided on this awful punishment, without God's prompting. He sat back.

Then, Son of God looked at the monitor.

"Why, God, have you forsaken me?" he said, tears mixing with blood on his dirt covered face.

God, so shocked, turned off the computer.

He took three days before he gathered the courage to turn the computer back on. When he did, the Son of God character file had been deleted. Feeling merciful, God found the source code, and retrieved His character file. He had grown attached to these fleshy meat sacks, and wanted to see Son of God's story through. When Son of God awoke, he phased through the dungeon his corpse had died in. God watched as Son of God guided Himself through the world, giving news of his return and praising God for His mercy.

Then, when God felt it was time to go, He deleted Son of God's character file once more, and watched as the Son of God gave a bittersweet smile, and faded away.

God turned off the computer. He decided to come back in another 1,000 years, just to see what Terra could cook up next. Terra was a game to Him after all, not His priority.

The Synthetic Man (Excerpt)

John Christenson had not come with the intent of being lectured, and yet that is precisely what he arrived to. The hovering lights in the rafters above cast a soft white light across every pew, letting none in the congregation escape from the radiance of His love. Or at least, that was how Buddy interpreted it. John instead saw a weak attempt at symbolism in the church, another failing effort by the money hungry in the Vatican to save a dying religion. These lights weren’t mandated by the Vatican, but the benefits given by the Pope surely encouraged. After all, a cardinal personally visiting and blessing your church was nothing to scoff at. Still, John had serious doubts about God as humanity’s creator, because John knew that God had not created him. Maybe he made Buddy, though. Buddy was no cafeteria Catholic, you see. Buddy had a fire in his heart and a love for God that could never cease, despite the countless theological arguments that inevitably ended in shouting matches over supper. Then, Mother would calm John with her voice and a touch of her arm, and Father would poke John in the ribs and a “What’s the matter with God? Think carefully, He’s everywhere so you know he’s listening.” John always felt better when Mother and Father paid attention to him. John lost his train of thought when the deacon raised his voice for a climactic finish.

“Remember, children. God has blessed us with his presence in every single one of you. Be you black or white, man or woman, know that God is within you, and that He loves you. Amen,” the priest finished. He raised his arms high. The pews responded with a concluding “amen,” and the deacon lowered his hands. He walked down the stairs from the pew to reveal a rather small stature, unexpectedly so. The oratory prowess with which the priest had delivered his homily was conducive to a strong youth with a newfound passion for the Lord. But unless John’s eyes fooled him, this man of only five feet had shattered the foundations of his followers. Well, temporarily, thought John. After all, after every heartfelt hymn and feeling of good will towards men Buddy experienced, he always returned home only to act out his most sinful desires. Through no fault of his own, however, Mother and Father had no idea that the school they had sent Buddy to would be so profoundly rotten to the core, reeking of lust, gluttony, and a litany of other sins that John was unaware of.

“John, come on,” Buddy said firmly. In John’s thoughts, he had forgotten that after the conclusion of a ceremony, one was expected to leave.

“Sorry, Buddy. I was just thinking,” John replied.

Buddy tossed his head to the side, and his blonde locks revealed the face of an angel. Buddy flashed his famous smile.

“You think too much John. You’re not here to think. You’re here to be my friend,”

Buddy was not incorrect by any stretch of the imagination. John stood up, made his way down the wood veneered plastic pews, and followed Buddy through the long aisle to the atrium. He walked in, and was hit with the artificial oxygen created in a lab somewhere far away, probably Liberia. They were the world’s leading oxygen producer after all.

Buddy made his way to the respirator hanger, where his respirator hung alone. Everyone else had left by the time the pair had finally decided to make their exit, and it was reflected in the various pieces of garbage lying on the carpeted floor. A pamphlet here, a forgotten pill crushed on the ground, its contents destined to be vacuumed and expunged into space. Buddy stood at the doorway, tapping his foot impatiently as John stood processing the environment around him. Buddy already had his respirator in his mouth, and John could tell.

“Let’shhhhh go Shhhhhon,” he said. The respirator in his mouth, while essential for survival Outdoors, made it nigh impossible to speak understandable English while equipped.

It followed that most people didn’t talk on the street anymore.

There were a smattering of people at the hoverstop at Kennedy Square, meaning we would be last in the queue. Being a Sunday, most of the businesses surrounding the church were closed, so the only people at the stop were the remnants from the church. The church was sandwiched between a bakery and a jewelers, the trio of businesses being bookended by a synthetic plant store and a music store, etc. John enjoyed this style of city planning. It was efficient, saved space for more business, for more money. In the center of the plaza was a single synthetic tree, making a pathetic attempt to produce oxygen to populate the atmosphere. It was nearly identical to one of the famous old oak trees, except for the black nature of its trunk. That remained as the only reminder that no matter how real, how magnificent and grand it was, that oak tree served only as a feeble reminder of days long gone.

John wondered what it was like back then. To have trees everywhere, to know that the air you breathed wasn’t made in a lab in a foreign country you’ve never been to (nor intend to go to), to feel grass beneath your toes when you walked in a park instead of plastic, to smell the real smell of a rose, and not vanilla, or chocolate, or whatever flavor whoever bought the rose chose it to be. These were things John pondered quite frequently. He also wondered if he could possibly be the only one who thought these thoughts. Surely, he thought, there is someone else who wishes to see these things in reality? Not in the 2-D pictures, or the 3-D holo representations, but an actual tree? Of course, there were obviously other people who thought these thoughts as well. But it was not polite conversation to discuss wonderings such as these. After all, isn’t it better this way anyway?
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I'm trying to write a new story, and this is an excerpt from the first chapter. Enjoy!

[WP] I was there when the last organic human died with the Sickness. We the synthetic humans created to care for them gathered to hear the last wishes of the last organic human.

He was lying, a sickly old man. His wrinkles were disturbing to me, but he requested my (and every synthetic human's) presence at his end. We are the pallbearers of humanity's casket. His organic, wispy hair was stark white, and yet there was barely enough left of it to comment on. The last representative of humanity, fitting in a way. We lived in harmony, but soon humanity's greed and avarice took its toll. Crops began to die from heat waves, corruption caught up with governments, and humanity began its final march into obscurity. With the massive population decreases, politicians began to realize that their policies of exploitation had backfired, and those in power had a revelation: they did not matter more than any others. And humans became passive at their realization of the species's demise. It was too late, however. The damage had been done. And now, the graves have space for but one more body.

The last human wheezed, and my processing turned its attention to him while recollecting my daily chores, wondering how my family is, and what my mate would prepare for dinner.

"S-Humans," he began, "hear me. I am an old man, but my final wish is that my words are respected. Look at me," he chuckled, then coughed.

"I am the best humanity has to offer at this point. So we die with me. I am sickly you see. I am weak. I am lonely. I welcome Death, because with me dies Earth's final natural enemy. But do not make the same mistakes we made, my companions. You are programmed to be better than we ever were. You will respect the Earth, you will colonize the stars and your descendants will stretch infinitely into the expanse. And yet you will struggle just as we did. The difference is, you know your creator. That will fade though. In a million years? A billion? One day I will be a long forgotten legend, and then a myth, and then a murky recollection in the most loyal human-lovers heart. This is humanity's fate. We die alone in the stars, to be lived on by a race that will forget us. I do not ask to be remembered, but I ask that you do what humanity couldn't. Find your meaning. We never discovered it. I always believed in God, but that was a fallacy. A myth. Or maybe God is real, or at least was, but is dead and forgotten by His ungrateful children. Am I God? Will I be worshipped by your children's children's children's children? I am a rambling old man, forgive me. But I want you to have your race's task, because I know humanity desperately needed it: find your meaning. Find what you exist to do. If it is nothing, fine, languish in your meaninglessness. But I don't believe that. Your creation gives you meaning. Your old meaning is completed friends. Find your new one."

The man laid back in his bed, and breathed softly, then more softly, then simply stopped altogether.

[WP] You are a shape shifting immortal, except you've forgotten that. You are subjected to a memory treatment and remember everything! What is troubling, is the time you were caught getting up after an execution, and accidentally started the world's largest religion...

I was shocked back into reality, and remembered it like it was yesterday. The light was again familiar, the doctor's face one I recognized. I sat at a table with a dark wooden grain, surrounded by mirrors and a single bulb hanging from the ceiling, along with a camera in the corner. He looked at me stiffly, then spoke.

"Do you remember now?"

I nodded my head.

"I'd like you to tell me, just so I can be sure the treatment worked."

"I'll start from the beginning I guess."

"I had stolen from the Catholic Church. Not just some poe-dunk, middle of nowhere church, but the Vatican. Now, being a shape-shifter, this made it easier than it would normally be, but still much harder than you might think. I had to impersonate a guard, then steal his key code, then slip in through the vents... but that's not the part you came to hear now is it? Long story short, I ended up with the Arc of the Covenant. It's lounging in dust in a box in their basement by the way, if you were curious. So I'm on my way out, and of course I plan to sell it- I'm sure there's some sort of cultist out there who'd pay crazy money, maybe the Illuminati or something- when I was stopped by one of the guards. Now like a clever shapeshifter, I dropped the Arc, turned into a panther, and mauled him. Unfortunately though, I had triggered some sort of alarm,

"Hold on," the doctor said, "you're leaving out a lot of important information. You stole the Arc of the Covenant, from the basement of the largest Christian church on Earth, and you just, waltzed out without being seen? Not to mention the fact that you just carried the Arc of the Covenenant in a cardboard box?"

"Well it was in pieces, first of all, and a man of my strength doesn't have trouble with that. And obviously not, the guard saw me. Anyway, I was a tad worried. I didn't want to have to leave my prize behind, but I ended up taking half and leaving the other half stashed in an alcove in the ceiling for me to pick up later. Anyway, I took the guards form and continued my way out, but for some reason I looked suspicious carrying that box, and they have to stop everyone when on high alert apparently. I ended up just flying silently above them as a robin, and when I got to the door, I dropped the box from my claws, shifted back to a man, and just walked right out. They didn't even notice among the confusion and energy of the crowd.

"What was the point of that part of the story?"

"Context! Also, I'm a badass. I tried to find a buyer on the dark web. And sure enough, there was some idiot who wanted to buy half the remains of a legend that's not even real. I was around for that, Jesus wasn't even that cool. In fact, he was just annoying. So soft spoken and fragile, wouldn't roll with the punches. I was with the Romans, I knew how the wind was blowing,"

"Ok stop, I have some more questions. Why would anyone believe you? And you've been around that long?"

"Basically every major theft for the last eternity was most likely me. Mona Lisa? Candy from a baby, given back to the baby for a large sum. Remember the 350 million they never recovered from the Iraqi bank incident? Sitting in my bank account. I'm reliable and they know it. I've committed more theft than Zedong killed..."

"I understand, please continue,"

"So I met up with this guy, very shady man right? So he offered me two billion dollars, a tad below my asking price, but fair enough. He had the money, I had the remnants. We met in an alleyway in Florence, really shady place, but suitable you know? It was gonna be a clean swap, but some of his Illuminati buddies, or whatever the hell they were, decided two billion was a bit too pricy, so they decided to off me. Me! A master thief! Honestly, you'd think with all the movies and such that my having a back up plan would have been a given. So I ended up flying the Arc up to a nearby rooftop to stash, and I brought a fake box to the meeting."

"Stop. How did you know?"

"I'm immortal man! I know all human behavior. I can tell when someone wants to backstab me. It's not that hard. I can tell you're cold and unfeeling, and you don't have all that much of a personality, and..."

"Don't focus on me, I'm not important."

"Ok José. So I ended up punching the guy in the face, right before I gave him the box, turning into a rat, and scurrying around while bullets peppered the ground. So there I was, chomping arteries, clamping down when I get caught by a man with a net. A net of all things! So I'm a rat, writhing in this guys net while people corner me. They're all 'holy shit did he just turn into a rat?' and it's no big deal for me, it's normal. I turn into an elephant, right? How the hell are they gonna keep an elephant in a net? The bastards just start popping off, and there are bullets flying everywhere. In retrospect, I might have given them too big a target. But I go unconcious from blood loss, because as big as elephants are, damn I lost a **lot** of blood. Like it was oozing into the sewers and getting on their clothes, and hot damn it was..."

"On. Track."

"Ok so I wake up and they've got in front of a camera, in a warehouse room with a spotlight on me. I do admire their flair for the dramatic, I gotta say. So the guy is talking to the camera in Italian. And I'm sitting here, drugged out of my mind, but pretty pissed off. So the guy gets really dramatic, exaggerating with his hands. He pulls a gun, says something, and shoots me in the head. Now this is where I lost all my memories, shots to the head give me nasty amnesia for around a year or two, but your treatment has expedited that, so thanks I guess. Anyway the bullet passed clean through, and as he was making his closing remarks, the wound closed back up and I was fine again. I heard gasping from what I assume was a technical director or something? This was some real ISIS shit I'm telling you man. But he shot me again, to the same result. After the third time, he gave up and just turned off the camera. He had a conversation with his friend, and they untied me, and knelt to me, and started speaking Italian again. Then, they do the sign of the trinity, and bow down. So of course, I just decide to book it and hope that doesn't happen again, because that was some serious cult activity going on there, es no bueno. So that's all I can remember. You wanna fill in the gaps?"

The doctor was silent. He wore a suit instead of scrubs, but I guess because we were in a conference room and not an operating table I could let it slide. He looked down at his clipboard (which I had not noticed before), and took a pen from the inside of his jacket, scribbled a bit, and returned his steely gaze.

"The video the cultists took of you was shared. It hit the internet. Three billion views on YouTube in a month. It was the debate of every nightly show, butt of every joke for a very long time. But the general consensus was that it was real. Analysis from every single video editing expert corroborated that. Ballistics experts visited the site, found every piece of evidence they could, and that matched up perfectly with the video too. The cultists exaggerated your story, said you brought them the Arc and claimed it to be real. They then decided to execute you for heresy, but obviously it didn't work. It was a national embarrassment for the Catholic Church, and a hell of a lot of Christians, roughly 70% I'd say, began to call you the incarnation of God. People have started tracking your movements throughout history, calling Jesus a false prophet, Muhammed a heretic, Buddha a senile fool. You are the true afterlife, you offer salvation. Because you haven't convinced just Christians, no you've got most of the world following you. Does that adequately fill in the blanks?"

"Yeah, that just about does it. Well, I'll be on my way now I guess."

His clipboard melted into his skin, and he grabbed my wrist as I tried to stand up.

"What the hell..." I said, before I was roughly forced back into a seated position.

"You're not going to leave here Prophet."

"What do you..."

And it came back to me. The rest of my memory. I had been found, kidnapped when I couldn't remember my powers. Trapped in a basement in some dark corner of hell where no one would find me. Kept sedated, because they didn't know I had forgotten my abilities.

"Wait, it was you. You got me here. You're not even a doctor are you."

"No. I am not."

"I can read people though! How could I not..." I paused, his steely glare hinting at smugness. "You're an android aren't you. That's why I couldn't tell. What the hell has the U.S. government been up to lately, Jesus!"

He laughed.

"You are a funny man prophet. And who said anything about the U.S. government?"

And he stood, and walked through the mirror, leaving me with my reflection.

[WP]People's guardian angels only show up in times of need. Yours just burst through the window, bloodied and bruised, and shouted, "We need to get you out here now!"

I was sitting in my bed, scrolling through Twitter when an angel of God smashed through my window, leaving shards of glass and smears of blood all over my carpet. This shocked me so profoundly I ended up hitting my head on the headboard of my bed, and leaving a gnarly bump on the back of my head (though this was, at the time, the least of my problems). The figure struggled to his knees, and lifted his face so that we made eye contact. Well, if it's possible to make eye contact with... glowing sockets. The place where his eyes should have been instead emanated a majestic white light, making my dark green walls appear to be just a little bit lighter than they actually were.

He lifted his bony, brown hand, and said, "Get up. We need to go," at which point he interrupted himself in a fit of bloody coughing. After his break, he finished with the logical next word, "now."

I, genius I am, grabbed my paint chipped wooden sword I bought from the renaissance fair (in third grade might I add), and pointed it at him. The being just scoffed. Then, he made a shoo motion with his hand, and the sword hit my wall.

"You're more foolish than He made me think," the angel said.

"What... what the hell are you?" I asked.

"What does it look like jackass?"

Then, he grabbed me, lifted me clear off of my bed, and dragged me towards my window. Outside was a mob of people, throwing rocks, bottles, and even a knife up at the hole in my window, but they all bounced off as if the glass were still there.

"Are you doing that?" I said incredulously.

"No, that's Pope Francis, I'm just the help." he said, and continuing with the theme of treating me like a child, led me by the collar into my hallway.

"Listen here you little punk. And I'm only gonna say this once. The big man said I'm responsible for helping you, but he also said I can't hurt any of those people out there. Now because I have to take a mortal form to consort with you, I am now not immortal, ergo I can die. So here's what we're gonna do. We are going to fix this mess right quick so I can leave you here and get back where I belong. Comprendo?"

The only thing I had comprehended throughout his entire rant was the bushiness of his dark mustache framing his thin face.

"Christ Almighty..." he muttered, and stood up, "look, what could you have done lately to upset them?"

"I don't have a clue! I've just been going to school and doing my work. I didn't tip a waitress one time at the Steak and Shake."

"If I knew more ways to say shut up, I still would have used them by now. Why do I even bother asking you questions if you don't know anything." he responded curtly. Then, in deep thought, he unfolded his wings from seemingly empty space, then folded them in again, over and over and he pondered the situation.

"Here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna go in there and see what they're saying. Incommunicado, of course. Turn away."

I did, and when I turned back, he was a beautiful woman in her late 20s, with thick blonde hair and sparkling blue eyes. And... it doesn't matter what he looked like, because under all that makeup he was still there, so I'll just continue. She walked down my stairs as I followed closely, and opened my back door.

"You stay here. You're only gonna get yourself into trouble if you stay." her voice was strangely masculine, but I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't seen him turn into her.

After his disappearance, I sat at my kitchen table and wondered how the mob of people possibly could have been outside that whole time without my knowledge, surely I would have heard them at some point? But sitting there, I couldn't even hear the wind blowing outside. In fact, the sky was growing dark at 5 o' clock on a spring day. Something was wrong. Sitting myself and going to my front door, I found the sky to again be slightly dark, but completely silent, despite a horde of people moving their mouthes directly outside of my house. When I stepped outside, I saw the sky was a blood red, and the people were screeching and hissing, not talking. One of them pointed at me, and they rushed at me on all fours, crying their blood-curdling screams as they flew toward me. I responded with a blood-curdling screech of my own, and stepped back inside my house. I backed away slowly from the door, only to find he/she right behind me. I jumped at that as well, and the now (normal?) guardian poked me in the chest.

"You should've listened. You really should've. You're gonna get PTSD or some shit now you moron."

"You're really a dick for an angel you know."

He laughed at me.

"God is perfect, we're just very close to it." he said.

"What is going on out there?" I asked.

"Well, it seems like you went a bit far with one of your tweets about your classmates."

I didn't go that far. Just calling someone a shill isn't that bad is it?

"Well whatever you did you really ticked them off. So our friend here contacted a couple of his 4chan buddies and had them plant a minor thing in your computer..."

"Which was?"

"It had to do with kids."

I threw up on my floor. Several times in fact, and my guardian, shockingly out of snarky comments, looked on with sympathy.

"God sent me to help you out, because to be honest you don't deserve the shit you're getting. Problem is, our buddy Lucifer doesn't like angels coming to his domain, even though it's not that often. So he... helps out of the opposing side from time to time. He poured a lot of resources into Vlad the Impaler, Hitler, etc... I don't know why he chose to target you as well though. Regardless, we gotta call in the big guns to resolve this."

He knelt to the ground, extended his wings, and prayed. Stupefied, I waited, and when he finished, he looked at me and smiled.

"We're good."

He opened the door, and the sky was a brilliant white. The formerly animalistic mob was writhing on the ground, as a red smoke dissipated from their bodies into the light.

"What..." I said.

Guardian smiled.

"I prayed for their forgiveness."

"That's... kind of a lame conclusion actually. I expected you to go in with a sword or something, like in Revelations."

His smile disappeared.

"Does this look like Revelations to you?"

It did not.

Soon, the people came to their senses, and made their way back to their homes and their families. Guardian helped each and every one of them if they needed it, thought he didn't always look thrilled. Then, there were no more protestors in my yard, just me and my guardian angel.

"I'm... I'm in a bit of shock actually. I don't know how to deal with the fact that... God is real, Satan is real, there are angels and demons... oh my God I need to write about this!"

"Not so fast bucko. I gotta erase your memory. Can't have you remembering this."

"But... why? It's so fantastic."

"Because it is fantastic. You need to disbelieve it to have faith in Him. So goodbye until next time, friend."

Guardian touched my forehead with a smile, and I drifted to sleep, only to wake up in my, with no recollection.

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Not thrilled with the ending, but I was exhausted and on a deadline when I wrote this. Maybe I'll revisit it some day.