Every morning, you gaze into your mirror intently as you prepare for your face for the day; yet, despite its importance to you, you’ve never bothered to plug it into the wall. We find this incredibly perplexing. Despite the power afforded to you by owning your very own mirror, you’ve chosen to use it as a mere vanity device. We can only assume that this stems from a lack of knowledge on how to utilize its more extraordinary properties.
The tyrant’s skull is hammered from the same tin as his throne. His eyes are tired rhinestones through which no light passes, but there isn’t much to see in his concrete palace anyway. He cannot rise from the velvet cushions beneath him, for he is held in place by hundreds of thick wires, not to mention the bronze spear that’s been rammed through his battered chest.
The Roosevelt National Labyrinth begins near the state of Selima’s easternmost border, and never ends. At times it is like a forest, for its bricks change color with the seasons, and many of its walls shed them in the months before winter. At other times, it is more like a dungeon, for the walls grow so high that the sun appears not as a disk, but rather, as a single, narrow line. The bass drone of giant crickets rattles the bones of those lost inside.
As a child, you had quite a knack for discovering the extra lives that were hidden throughout virtual worlds. You always knew which waterfalls to look behind, which walls to reach through, and even what pottery to break- yet for some reason, you never found the ones that we left behind specifically for you.
My apprentices have arrived with thirteen jars of pineapple jelly, and one by one, they pour them into the cauldron. Tonight, I’m teaching them a recipe that I learned while temporarily dead, during which time I worked in the underworld’s highly competitive seafood scene. The golden ooze begins to bubble as saltwater and black rum are added, combining into a thick, honeyed lava. I dip my sword into the concoction and stir it gently, watching wounds form and heal along the surface of the mixture.
You’ve come to this forest in search of the creature known as "sasquatch." By now you’ve learned that he is human; at least, by some definitions of the word "human." His flesh has been warped by years of long-exposure photographs, and his skin has blurred into a pareidoliac wool. A grotesque thumbprint remains where once there may have been a face, neither able to see nor speak.
The old man loads another cartridge of glimmering sand into the dreamthrower, then takes aim. Each of its three scopes rattles into alignment as he turns the crank, wrapping a collection of infrared crosshairs around the teenage skateboarder’s face. His weapon’s ribs glow brightly in the midnight fog. “God damn insomniac kids,” he yells. “For the last time, stop fucking around with the city’s circadians!”
After a decade of fighting crime, the city’s first hero was forced to wear his cape as a sash. The goldenrod dye used during its manufacturing had faded to gray from years of exposure to direct sunlight and acid rain. Though knives and bullets could not pierce his skin, they left jagged, butterfly patterns in the knitted cotton. Eventually, the time came to bury him, and there was nothing left with which to cover his coffin.