Hooks; let's write 'em.

[Pravuil]

Julio had been sleeping in his bed, quite peacefully, when the banging began. His parents had left the house for Christmas break and wouldn't be back until eleven that night. Aroused by the noise Julio gently slid the heavy woolen blanket off his body and gave a passing thought as to why the room seemed so cold of a sudden. Breathing heavily Julio tentatively noted the fact that his outake of air formed ominous wisps of halitus..parents must have forgotten to turn on the heater again, thought the boy wryly. Looking to the opposite side of his room the eleven year-old child observed a smooth, silver light pouring into his room, illuminating his bedside in a glow possessed of unsettling undertones. Daring to bring his gaze higher Julio couldn't help but notice his bedroom door slightly ajar....the very door he closed before he went to bed everynight.

With a gulp the boy steadied himself. Through shear force of will and curiosity his frail form rose from the bed and he cautiously padded over to the door, his every move sending pangs of anxiety through his body as the floorboards creaked. The banging stopped and an eerie calm settled over the room as the boy reached the door. . .

 

[Talysia]

I've always been a keen astronomer. When I was a child, I used to take my telescope out into the garden and look at the familiar stars until I'd get tired, and then I'd crawl into bed and dream of them. The hobby stayed with me all my life, and it was whilst I was skywatching one evening that I saw it.

It was moving, in a way that wasn't physically possible for an aircraft, and I marked down the position and time, before taking a photograph of it. The next night it was cloudy, but the night after that I went outside to watch the stars and the pbject was back again. I was ready this time - I had a video camera with me, so I took some footage of it when it appeared, and I watched it until it vanished, several minutes later. Then I went back to my skywatching.

It was only when I saw the events of the news a few days later that I realized what I'd seen.

 

[Sassee]

Something was amiss in my little neighborhood. I couldn't put my finger on it. Everything was in place, every resident was accounted for. The street lamps were all lit and even Mr. Ross could be seen taking his late night stroll with that hound of his. Why, then, did I have an itch between my shoulder blades as though I were being watched? Why was my heart pounding in my chest?

Something was wrong here, and I had to find it before it did any damage.

 

[Talysia]

Everyone hates sleepless nights. The hours drag, and the more you think about it, the more you can't find sleep. Every noise is too loud, and even the clock ticking away in the corner seems to be mocking you. Everyone else is asleep, and yet I can't. It's not fair.

So when I first heard the sound of something tapping against the window, I dismissed it as my sleep deprived mind playing tricks on me. When I heard the noises downstairs, I started paying more attention.

 

[Pravuil]

Don't you hate it when you are about to post something you deem worthwhile and all of your programs close. . .

 

[Talysia]

Everyone thought that Edward was a little odd, eccentric even, but they were willing to overlook it for the stories he wrote. He had been published many times, and his retelling of many historical events - seemingly from the point of view of one who was there - seemed so accurate that even the experts wanted to know what sources he had used. When they asked, he just laughed and shook his head, but there were lots of people willing to share their gossip and rumours. Apparently, he got the facts from the people themselves, as he lived in two worlds - the world of the living, and the world of the dead. According to rumour, of course...

 

[Toby Frost]

Kiminka folded up the spyglass and crept back down the ridge. The wind threw snow into her face, set her scarf flapping like a frightened bird. Gregor Vlast stood with the others around the camp, watching her return. He peered at her face for a sign. She nodded.

"Leth's here," she said. "There's a light on in the big house. Let's go."

They buckled on swords and guns. The clatter of weapons and the crunch of boots was hardly audible above the wind.

 

[buskydudd]

Everybody thought Smudge was just crazy...urine-smelling, greasy-trousered, two-different-shoes mutter mutter mutter about-Lou-Rawls-in-the-banana-patch crazy. Ordinary crazy.

He wasn't.

He was the locus at which an infinity of universes swapped ideas.

Zappo.

Who wouldn't pee in their pants?

 

[Talysia]

I staggered to the foot of a tree and collapsed, unable to go any further. Snow swirled around me, obscuring my vision almost as much as the exhaustion, and I didn't even have the energy to try to keep myself warm. It occurred to me that my life was nearing its end, but that thought was soon lost as my awareness faded. The last thing I saw was that of a figure seeming to float through the drifting snow, hand outstretched towards me.

Looking back, that was when my journey truly started.

 

[Pravuil]

The hellish sun beat down on the golden sands, a sea of grit and dust churned by easterly winds and the beat of hooves--the rage of armies clashing. Amidst the crushing dunes and slender, spiraling remnants of once great limestone towers did these two armies meet, a clash of steel and a maelstrom of sounds as each man braced himself against his brother whom fielded the other armies force. From a vantage point realms away, high in the flustering welkin, did a nebulous visage look down upon the battle, watching as the mortal men fay to die engulfed one another's formations and swarmed over the many sand hills like troupe upon troupe of eager ants, all but the most craven prepared to die for hearth and country.

It was then that Kaylin was aroused and briskly set up in his chair with a start of trepidation...'Another all-nighter' thought the man quaintly as he regarded the libraries study with a slight air of ennui, unchanged as he had left it albeit with a much dimmer tincture to everything.

 

[Talysia]

As usual, Bill was sitting in his local pub, minding his own business and nursing a pint of beer when an excited looking man came over to his table and sat down uninvited. His clothes were muddy and torn, and his hair was dishevelled, but he was clutching an ornate metal box, something that looked both important and valuable.

"You know, being abducted by aliens was the best thing that's ever happened to me," he said cheerfully. "Let me tell you my story."

 

[Imitar]

Hugo was exhausted, his eyebrows looked as catepillars catching the sweat like a raingutter catches rain.

 

[Pravuil]

Joel stood there, a stupid look on his face, staring blankly at the convexial gate before him. Had he just seen what he thought he had seen? Opining his feelings like a gambler at the tables Joel pivoted his head to the side, his eyes meeting that of the pure sable dogs beside him. Glorious was that shaggy pelt of sable, each and every hair's termination aglitter like a dancing light, and even more glorious where those eyes. Lambent orbs of artic blue that would send a shiver down the spine of those to stare too deeply into them. Eyes that were profoundly knowledgeable, moreso than even the most scholarly of humans Joel had ever met, eyes that could articulate the beast's every feeling with the smallest of intention.

For a while the wolf and the man stood looking at each other, then a mercurial smile played across Joel's face. "Did you come from that gate" asked Joel, trying his best to keep the tremble out of his voice with a success that surprised even him.

The wolf cooly admired the human's aver confidence for a brief but intense moment. "Yes, yes I did." replied the wolf.

 

[Lord_Rahl]

Clarence stared in wonder. Not at the strange beauty of the artefact in its physical form, but at what it represented: lots of gold.

“You did a good job John, it shan't be forgotten.”
“I should hope not. In fact it shall be remembered with gold, else you won't be gettin' it.” Clarence pushed a heavy purse across the table. Inside he was sniggering at how much he was undercutting the thief.

With a curt nod, Clarence pocketed the artefact and left the inn. It was night outside and his nerves were shot to pieces. He was just about to take a turn down Treboudar street when something caught on his cloak. A stranger, hooded and quiet, had grabbed a fistful from around the scruff of his neck. The last thing Clarence saw was the glint of steel before the knife punctured home below his rib cage.

 

[Pravuil]

The two troupes marched in juxtapositional rank, the disciplined men lockstepping to their destination without incident. Peering down from the heights of an exceptionally large Tor's mound was the Overlord of the cinatas armies, the brawn under which Hister planned to crush all. The pragmatic man known as Hister, the Overlord of Sheol, took into account every stratagem and contrasted it with the terrain below, spread out before him like a map just waiting to be marked, exploited and erased. With the knowledge needed Hister briskly rounded on his heels, hands clasped behind his back authoritively, and made way for the Commander's Quarters. The universe's date was overdue, the temporal world the first to go in Hister's diabolical and ambitious plans.

 

[buskydudd]

In XY Hall on campus Z,
(caffeine was God and chalk was free),
a young math dork named
Wilberstine
began to toy...with the dark side of sine!

With brain cells afloat on a coffee high,
his intellect began to pry,
at the metaphysic behind the sky!
(he went amoral around the eye).

The sun popped up behind the coast
like thermonuclear waffle toast.
Young Wilberstine'd been up all night,
his mad, mad 'quations taking flight!

and then...

and then...

(dammit, i've run out of creative gas...AGAIN)

 

[Talysia]

Every time it rains, I hear it. The sound of a hundred thousand souls, calling out for someone to avenge them, but I try not to listen. I don't know why I can hear them, nor why I can only hear them when it rains, but it leads me to hate rainy nights. At least during the day I can distract myself with work or something: At night, all I can do is lay in bed and listen to it.

I decided that I could not go on much longer. I needed to find out what was causing these sounds, and why I could only hear it when it rained, else I would never get a good night's sleep again.

 

[Pravuil]

The sky rumbled a deep treble, the notes filling the air like a thundering of great beasts. The hands of amany gods clapped together, the reverberations of their applaud booming for all to here. The blue expanse of firmament clouded over with billowy dark clouds and the starry welkin flattened as Koshchey the Dauntless rode on, his sojourns always to deliver the missives of gods. A dark funnel of sorts descended from the sky to touch earth, the bulk of it a maddening funnel of wind. And within that funnel emmited a crazed cackle--Koshchey the Dauntless rides again.

 

[Talysia]

Every five hundred years or so, a bridge opens up in the heavens, allowing the Celestial Ones to mix with the humans again. Not that anyone paid any attention to the old legends any more: they were more caught up with their own personal lives. All except Seira. She had dreamed of the rainbow bridge for years, and had done a lot of research, hoping that the old tales might prove correct, that something might appear to lift her out of her mundane existence.

When a rainbow appears in the sky above her town, everyone believes it to be just that: a rainbow. Seira, however, believes differently. Convinced that the Celestial Ones are walking the Earth again, she sets out to find them.

 

[buskydudd]

Every time it rains, I hear it. The sound of a hundred thousand souls, calling out for someone to avenge them, but I try not to listen. I don't know why I can hear them, nor why I can only hear them when it rains, but it leads me to hate rainy nights. At least during the day I can distract myself with work or something: At night, all I can do is lay in bed and listen to it.

I decided that I could not go on much longer. I needed to find out what was causing these sounds, and why I could only hear it when it rained, else I would never get a good night's sleep again.

Okay Tal, you've hooked me right through my HP Lovecraft gills. You've gotta finish this one!