Other stories for this prompt

"Hello."
"What?"
"Hi."
"Who are you? No, wait. Where are you?"
"Look up."
"You're in the sky?"
"We are."
"You're..."
"Butterflies. Yes. Does this bother you?"
"To be honest, less than it should."
"We have been watching you. We saw that you were different. We chose you."
"Chose me for what?"
"The time is coming and we are here to warn you. To warn all of you."
"Warn us? What are you, some sort of prophet."
"We are of God, if that is what you mean."
"Ah."
"We bring you a message from the depths of chaos, the heart of...

"Stop. Look around you. What can you see? The nearest human is over ten miles away. You are alone. Quite possibly more alone than you have been your whole life. There's a physical aspect to this feeling you're having, this aloneness. It's relaxing. Take a moment. Feel yourself relax. Feel your heartbeat slow. Feel you mind de-clutter and expand into a space no longer populated by others. Feel those invisible boundaries dissolve."

The voice paused and Karen became conscious of the slow drum beat that she must have been hearing for some time. She could hear the rhythm of her...

The drugs were beginning to wear off. Minute by minute the butterflies, those glorious, evanescent, friendly butterflies, were fading. She pressed the earpiece of her headphones to her ear. Pink Floyd were sounding like a noisy nightmare. As she gazed out across the valley, with its endless vista of trees, trees and more trees, she came down to earth with a bump. She should get back to work - artificial props might give her a brief respite, but she had a deadline to meet and a quota to make. Sighing, she pressed stop and slipped her headphones down round her...

In the far reaches of outer space, nobody can hear you cry.
On the fringe of the Grafeus nebula a small space-egg cracks open and a tiny creature stirs within. The creature is a baby space-wyrm, beings which when fully grown are one of the most horrendous known scourges of the galaxy. However, this young space-wyrm was abandoned and alone with nobody to care for it during it's critical stages of infancy was surely doomed to an early grave.
A starship drifting nearby picked up a living organism on their scanners, Officer Kraal a young sensitive woman from the planet...

Looking out across the fields, Hannah smiled to herself. She had never felt more of a success, than she did right now. She almost wanted to laugh in the faces of the people who had told her she couldn't do it. All the ones who had sneered and ridiculed her dreams. Where were they now? Still back in the City, with their boring lives; working nine 'til five just to pay the bills; stuck in the drudgery of modern living.
Hannah was well free of all of that. Not ever twelve months ago, she had been one of them. High-flying...

It was a shock to the system, moving out of the city. I had always thought I belonged there, amongst the grime and the noise and the grey. It seemed right to wake in the morning to the sound of garbage trucks and too-loud television.

Adam had been right. I knew that as I turned off my iPod and, lifting my headphones, listened to a beautiful moment of silence. The air was still and cool, the day clear and bright. I wondered if there were other people somewhere in the valley below, hidden by the trees. Perhaps I was alone...

Rose stopped short, skidding slightly along the crumbly, dusty mountain path on which she had been jogging, happily listening to her music, enjoying the warmth of the day on her back. She blinked a few times, tried to catch her breath, and then walked back a few feet to where she had thought she had seen the strange sight, the one that had stopped her morning run rather abruptly.

And there it still was. Two enormous pink butterflies playing together in the sunshine, flitting back and forth, their wings glinting, both beautiful.

Rose watched for some time, unable to believe...

Headphones on, gazing far out into the horizon, the tops of the Adirondacks at her feet, flowing out into the valley like waves, going for miles. He was behind her. Her father had fallen on the path up to this point. He had clutched his chest and complained of shooting pains down the arm, but she hadn't listened. She was at that age, the precipice of adulthood teetering before her, and she was certain she no longer needed to listen to her father, not about this, not about anything. But when they reached the crest of the hill, she looked...

The viel of morning haze parted and she could see clearly now their large felt wings beating against the breeze. Pressing a hand to the headphone to try to pick up a sound, however faint. Quiet now, her breath held tightly. "Damn wont the wind stop just for a second." Finally, and she was not sure if it was even being picked up by the recorder, no time to check. Might miss my chance if I fiddle with it, I just hope its on. The sound was so soft it might be imagined. A voice, then a response. So small...

The last time she'd seen pink butterflies, she'd burned down the church.

She told them the headphones helped with the hallucinations.

She lied.

Dr. Weber had first suggested the headphones, and he'd told her to compile a playlist and to choose the songs based on certain lyrics and words, and to use those lyrics and words as cues to control the hallucinations. If she couldn't completely erase them now, she could at least learn how to hold them back, get that subconscious moving until the scary ones became mildly disturbing and then from there they would lower in degree until...