Prose Sample - Once Upon a December

Commission: Prose (Hurt/Comfort, Fanfiction -- Hetalia)
Prompt: Russia has been missing his little princess Anastasia...

Once Upon a December

The Russian Perspective

I caught myself thinking again.

This is a dangerous pastime for one like myself, one who crystallizes into a looming mannequin of icy rock and plastic. When they see me like this, frozen and captivated as I relive my histories of blood and ash, I know they can see the faint red stains under my skin. They can see the hollow amethysts that offer me access to the present, how my glassy portals instead reflect the inactive, the feeling of loss in the engine of a film that composes the countless ages I’ve lived. They can see the tapered smile stitched seamlessly in place, uncanny as that of a doll who bears a close resemblance to humanity — a resemblance that, nevertheless, isn’t close enough.

These are a few of the innumerable things that make me unapproachable. However, I came to the conclusion that they are avoidable. And that is why, comrade, I aspire to follow my newest motto: “Why think when you can drink?”

Prose Sample - Amnesia: Remnants of Kalos

Commission: Prose (Horror, Mystery, Fanfiction -- Amnesia: The Dark Descent and Pokemon X and Y)
Prompt: I had a dream where Amnesia met Pokemon because of the ultimate weapon Lysandre made in X and Y and Daniel was the main character. I have no writing experience but can you please write a snippet of something like that for me? I'd like it in first person with present tense.

Amnesia: Remnants of Kalos

I lay splayed on my stomach over cool, hard wood. A crackle of thunder rumbling in the distance rouses me from my aching slumber. As the sigh of the storm fogs the windows, my vision remains as clouded as I imagine the sky to be. My head swims to the pulse of my heart as I sit up, looking from side to side and taking quivering breaths to soothe my throbbing brain. In the dim light, I make out an unmade bed with sheets splayed along the floor, a broken mirror, a toppled closet, and a trail of red and black feathers leading down an oaken staircase.

A sense of overwhelming dread flows through my body like the wind of a cool shadow. It’s in this moment of ethereal recognition that I realize that I can barely recall anything about myself. Clearly, I’m in a house, though whether or not it’s my own, I cannot tell. In the shattered remains of the mirror, I see that I’m an adolescent male with long brown hair and gunmetal eyes. I’m wearing little more than pajamas and my hair is unkempt. Though this penetrating silence makes me nervous, a twinge of remembrance tells me that to go outside wearing such garb would look informal to any passersby.

Something told me I wasn’t alone here.

Poetry Sample - My Friend Plays With a Yoyo While Waiting at the Gas Station

Commission: Poem

Prompt: I want you to write from the perspective of a toy.

My Friend Plays With a Yoyo While Waiting at the Gas Station

You try to flee as far from your source as possible —

spinning — plummeting — jouncing off your leash,

you choke and gasp and flail but the cold white thread

drags you back. If you had hands, you’d cut it, but you don’t.

Your hands are a figment and the cold white thread drags you back.

Your hands are a figment and you’d knot yourself to prove their reality
if only you knew how.

Poetry Sample - The Welcoming Committee of One

Commission: Poem

Prompt: Write about death.

The Welcoming Committee of One

When you see him, he approaches with

black licorice. Quiet, expectant. You

take one to avoid being rude. Satisfied,

he rumbles monotone, sincere congratulations

on your life. When he offers

a shadowy hand, you politely decline.

He shrugs and leafs through tombstones,

picking out your epitaph in this

suburban cemetery, like he’s looking for the

house number on your mailbox.

Before he makes for the door of your new

home, he opens his arms, and you decline

once more. Slow, but not defeated,

he bids you pax tibi and ghosts away,
the gentlest host for reluctant guests.

Poetry Sample - Signifying Nothing

Commission: Poem

Prompt: Write about any of the following pieces of literature: The Sound and the Fury, Moby Dick, Frankenstein.

Signifying Nothing

while reading William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, a masterpiece of literature

as together we hopped in time, seeking

quarters, the bones of our dog, answers to

the absence, where we knew of weddings as cause

for loss, and sickness, and dirtied panties

of our fallen sister, and even though she’s no

longer with us, that didn’t stop him from

bellering ceaselessly, only to get clouted;

You, meanwhile, were dysfunctional, and you knew

it: that the college path wasn’t fit, that

our fallen sister fell alone when falling beside her

was the only answer. Beneath the bridge of the

ticking clock, a million moments later, you followed

after her insidious example: too little; too late.

I, now, the remaining king, squander fortunes, laugh

off the bellering and drowning and defilement

of the fallen sister. But she means nothing more,

not even a name knit to the fruit of her

labor. I cash the checks and run the carriage

past fields of cornflower blue, identical to the

inexperience in his eyes. The house recedes around

the hillside, only for the scraps of us to curve
about and return again. Welcome home.