noonereally | 5+1 open prompt post.

Entry tags:

5+1 open prompt post.

So, here you can request drabbles/shortfic or at least throw prompts at my head until I write. Specifically of the 5+1 format, and it'd help if I was familiar with the characters. Don't all have to be mine though, of course. Results get posted here too of course, so this'll be a go-to post for any future 5+1 requests I fill, too.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Five things that set Jim Moriarty on his path, and one that could've saved him.

You're young. You know in theory that you are a child, that you should be like the other children, but in your reality you're already smarter than the adults, and the others just play the same boring things over and over and over again. Anything new is fun as long as it remains a challenge, and that never lasts for you, even when you try to make it. You try to play with the others, and you're clever, so they like that, but sometimes you push your limits until someone ends up crying. They stop liking you for being clever soon enough, but at least you've learned something new. Something more true than playing soccer or playing house, deeper, more important.

You hoard secrets. They're the best keepsakes.

You grow a little bit, and at some point, people start laughing. The less dumb ones whisper and shun you silently. It hurts, even though you don't really understand the reason why. You shouldn't need them, you shouldn't care, so you stop. It takes practice, but in the end it's the only sensible thing to do. Spilled drinks and torn bags and gym class from hell, ruined clothes, skinned knees. Nobody pushed you of course, God forbid, and haha, how funny, you should watch your step. When something happens to you, they laugh, so you pretend not to care until you succeed at it.

It takes a bit of time until you manage, but you do, as you always do. After all, you've never belonged with these people, they're just sheep who can't so much as think for themselves. There are lessons to be learned here, besides: stepping quietly and not drawing attention to yourself. Keeping your head down, pretending to be sick, pretending to be unhurt, or pretending to be hurt, pretending to be dangerous until you make it true. It's a matter of a few years until you can fool anyone. You don't yet realize how well this will serve you later.

The first time you kill someone, you're not there to witness it. You're in town because you have to be, because you have a tiny little risk to eliminate that you overlooked at first. But you're not even from the same city. That's as it should be though, because you can't have a connection to him. He laughed at you, but he's laughed at a lot of people, and you've got no reason to care about a life like his, after all, he wouldn't have cared if he'd accidentally drowned you, either. You and Carl, you're worlds apart. You grow the botulinum yourself, and the neighbour's cat dies a sad, painful and comparably swift death as you test it before injecting it into the boy's medicine.

There's some satisfaction to be gained from reading the paper the next morning, smiling to yourself, and pretending, when people talk about his death at school, never to have even heard his name. A part of you wonders if somewhere out there, another boy like you sees what happened, and will one day come looking for who took Carl's shoes, and you smile silently at the thought of a message in a bottle, one genius seeking another in oceans and oceans of people who don't think.
Maybe you'll send a few more, just to be safe.

People don't come to you with their problems much. Why should they? You've made a few friends, or at least they think that's what they are, and they say, sometimes, that you give good advice. It's really not advice, though. You see people and you see patterns and traits and plausibilities, and working out the best course of action in any situation is like solving an equation. Simple. Not very neat, with all the variables involved, but it serves you well, and they never notice that you deal with them like numbers.

When one of your 'friends' gives you a knife for your birthday, he says, "So you can look after yourself." You smile sharply. He never finds out what you use it for.

Some days, in fact, most days, you prefer numbers over people. Simple or complicated, equations can always be solved, always make sense, are always perfectly neat. Studying mathematics is only the logical next step. Maybe you'll even teach, someday soon, because nothing you set your mind to has ever taken you long.

Once in a while, you can fool yourself into thinking you can do that for the rest of your life, even though you know any career in academia, even in math, will always to some extent expose you to people as well. The numbers are the only thing you won't grow tired of.

Maybe it'll be enough.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

5+1 open prompt post.

BOX

1;

2;

3;

4;

5;

+1