hypothesis | by any other | spelling

[sideways]

Title: Hypothesis
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 100
Genre: Modern/horror
Remarks: fiction_drabbles prompt - pain

The slap of the newspaper against the desk is loud in the small room, and his scoff equally so. Studies prove that removing a band aid slowly is indeed more painful than removing it quickly. The state of science in the modern day appalls him. Over and over, millions of dollars are poured into plumped-up institutions of supposed education to better allow them to drone out conclusions so utterly banal it hurts.

Doctors and paramedics and survivalists quote every day the results of Nazi experiments.

They would, he feels, palming the knife again, do far better to fund his work.
 

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Title: By Any Other
Rating: G
Wordcount: 100
Genre: Supernatural
Remarks: fiction_drabbles prompt - menace

She tilted the skull to the side, admiring the sharp ridges, the smooth dips, the almost heart-shaped hollow where a nose would go in life, and glanced over to where her companion was still paging through the book, perpetual frown darkening his features. “So what do you call him? Grim? Black Shuck? Baskerville?”

“Don’t be dramatic,” he muttered. “I call him…” He paused, seemed to think a moment, and then said, “Dog.”

She and the skull shared a look. “Terrifying,” she observed dryly.

“That’s the first time I’ve heard him use a capital for it,” the skull replied. “It’s progress.”
 

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Title: Spelling
Rating: G
Wordcount: 100
Genre: Supernatural
Remarks: fiction_drabbles prompt - sign

She sweeps her hands in parallel widening spirals, and then deftly tugs the invisible line between them taut, and a month later a hurricane flattens three towns and scars a dozen others.

She pulls a clenched fist from her chest in a short, sharp motion, like drawing a blade free from her heart, and a week later her professor staggers and falls from the lectern, gasping through blue lips.

She does not know when it started; she does not know when it will stop.

She tries finger-spelling, quickly, desperately, tremulously, and by the next day he has forgotten her name.