TEEN: - Ongoing Pilosophos' miscellany

[pilosophos]

MATURE Themes

1. No MATURE Themes Apply

TEEN Themes

1. Substance Usage

EVERYONE Themes

1. No EVERYONE Themes Apply

Other Content Warnings

None

Zoned Out [Rating: Everyone]​

Marley arrived at the Safari Zone quite dumbfounded.

It was only about a half hour earlier that he'd been at the bar. He'd had a couple of beers, and told the guy next to him that he was on a quest to catch all the Pokémon, that it was for a very important mission, and that he needed someone to tell him "where all the cool Pokémon were."

He had been with entrusted this mission― or so he believed― by a certain Professor Oak. When the Professor had finished giving a lecture at Marley's community college a few months ago, Marley had approached him excitedly and asked quite persistently if the Professor would give him a free Pokédex.

Though Marley had no sense of decorum and would often find himself thrown out of places if he didn't make sure to duct tape his mouth shut (whether literally or metaphorically), on this occasion it actually got him what he wanted, because Professor Oak pulled out an old Pokédex from the bottom of his bag and pressed it into Marley's hand. "If you'll just leave me alone," he said, "You can have it."

And so this was how Marley became one of Professor Oak's venerable Dex Holders. With this new treasure in hand, he fantasized himself into believing that the Professor wanted him to fill it with data on all Pokémon, because that's just the kind of thing that people with Pokédexes do.

Marley walked through the automatic doors of the Safari Zone, which had a big flashy sign out front saying "This is where all the Pokémon are!", and went up to the big man behind the counter. He asked, somewhat meekly, "Mrgh?" which, in his head, was supposed to mean "How does this place work?"

"Can I help you?" replied the man behind the counter with a big smile and bald head. This man was the owner of the Safari Zone. Not all the Safari Zones, mind you. That man was a very rich and very much hairful man, and who always wore an extraordinarily fancy sports jacket that cost more than the Safari Zone that this bald man owned.

"Um…" Marley replied, trying to collect himself, "They told me there were cool Pokémon here."

"Well, there are Pokémon here, certainly," replied the bald man whose establishment was worth less than a sports jacket. "It's Ꝑ500 for thirty Safari Balls. How about it?"

"Sorry? Safari…"

"Safari Balls, yes," said the bald man, pulling out a wire basket piled high with the things and stuffing them into Marley's pockets, "You take these, and you throw 'em at the Pokémon."

"Just like that?"

"Sometimes it takes a few balls, but you can always come back to buy some more. Now, that'll be Ꝑ500."

"Er, right…" replied Marley, still not quite understanding the system, but nonetheless feeling pressured to go with what the big man was saying now that there were balls in his pockets. He pulled out a few bills from his wallet with equal measures of apprehension and bewilderment. "Now what?"

"Just step right though the door. Have fun!"

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Statistics
Generated words used: safari, jacket, understand
Generated words ignored: south, solution, siege, coverage, kinship, freckle, robot
Length: 517 words

 

[pilosophos]

Ok, I cheated a little on this one and I think the rewriting time was like 40 minutes, but I think it's worth it. Plus, they're my rules anyway, and there's nobody who can stop me.

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Private Property [Rating: Teen]​

Simon Blackburne groaned awake as the light flittered through the blinds and cast a ray of sun directly into his eyelids on a Saturday morning. He blinked twice, and sighed once. He had been planning to sleep late today, but in just the few brief moments of awakening, he could feel a difficult-to-ignore back ache starting up.

This back pain had been bugging him for many years now. Not for any particular reason, mind you. He hadn't lifted anything heavy or strained himself the other day or anything. Back pain is just something you get when you're 56.

He decided he'd get out of bed before noon after all.

The truth was, Simon would have been cranky whether or not he received a rude awakening from the sun, because he was perennially the least sunny person imaginable. He was so unsunny that he could make a vampire who watched the last of his non-vampire family leave the Earth centuries ago look like one of those people in commercials for antidepressants. Unlike the back pain, this was for a particular reason, and that reason was simply that he had chronic back pain.

That, and being a 56 year old divorcée.

He had been to the doctor's on many occasions, but none of the medications he was prescribed seemed to make the back pain go away, and the doctor didn't really have luck curing a divorce either. But there was one thing that he knew would make every day slightly more bearable, which he had partaken in every time he woke up for the last twenty two years. An addiction? You could call it that, maybe. But for him, it was a lifeline.

Simon self-medicated on the most powerful drug of all― Coffee.

His dependence on coffee was so great that before his first cup of the day, Simon's eyelids refused to open at all. Luckily, Simon knew by heart the path from his bed to the coffee machine in the kitchen and could stumble slowly down the house and brew himself a cuppa without thinking a single thought other than "urgh." Morning Simon was, in many ways, not unlike a zombie.

But this morning, as he trundled down the hallway he had been down thousands of times before, he bumped his toe into a misplaced chair and howled with such great volume that the Pidgeottos in perched on the trees outside leapt comically into the air, forgot to fly, and dropped right to the ground in shock. Simon's eyes bolted open to a hallway full of cotton balls.

Equal parts fuming and bewildered, he cursed the chair and stomped towards the kitchen once again. The kitchen, too, was filled with cotton balls. But he didn't have time for this. He just needed coffee. If he had coffee, everything would be right with the world again. There would be no more cotton balls, no more chairs in hallways, just him and his coffee.

He fiddled with his coffee machine as he always did, put the mug under the spout, and pressed the button.

But nothing happened.

This was the worst Saturday ever.

Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the Whimsicott, grinning as it leapt out the window.

"Why you!" he tried to say, but only a confused grunt left his mouth as he tried to catch Whimsicott, tripped, fell, and rolled out the window onto the adjoining footpath. With a final jeer, the Whimsicott skipped away into the distance.

Simon blinked twice, and sighed once. Maybe it would be best just to remain here, lying in the dirt, for the rest of the day, he thought, defeated.

An hour later, a boy appeared, no older than ten or eleven, humming merrily to himself as he strolled down the footpath without a care in the world. The boy's carefree attitude only made Simon crankier.

Soon, the boy approached Simon. Simon, still laying there, frowned.

"I absolutely forbid you from going through here!" Simon yelled, mustering all the rage bottled up inside him, "This is private property!"

Spoiler: A visual aid

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Statistics
Generated words used: chair, misplace, coffee, dependence
Generated words ignored: visible, prey, acute, strict, burn, glove
Length: 654 words