“Black Metal,” about a soldier’s arm replaced with a black metal gun.
“Glitch Hop,” about a hopscotch game gone wrong.
Let’s take weird music genres and turn them into stories!
During the last stream, a subscriber requested that we do a prompt based on a weird, obscure music genre.
Watch the highlights here or scroll down to see what we wrote.
Chat had 30 weird music genres to choose from, with options including “deep house,” vaporwave,” “horrocore,” and more.
They voted on “death metal,” so we wrote a story with that title… that had nothing to do with music.
Here’s what we wrote:
“Death Metal”
I’d done something wrong, and now daddy had to punish me. It’s not that he wanted to, it’s that if he didn’t, I’d never learn. So he brought out the death metal.
He carried the small scraps of iron and steel into my room in the palm of his hand, then sat down on my bed next to me. They looked like little pieces of popcorn, shiny and crinkled, and he jingled them in front of me, holding them right up to my mouth.
As always, I picked them up one by one and swallowed them whole. There was no point in chewing, I’d just crack my teeth, and the less time the sharp, metallic taste stayed on my tongue, the better. They tasted like blood in your gums when you haven’t flossed in a long time, and I gagged them down one by one. Gulp, choke, swallow, then repeat, not daring to spit even one of them out.
When I’d finished the last one, daddy wiped his hands, patted me on the back, and said I’d done a good job.
Then the “death” hit me. I fell over on my pillow, and I couldn’t move at all except for my arms and legs twitching on their own, until they stopped too. All I could do was lie there, stomach churning, muscles tightened so hard they feel like concrete, unable to even blink as I stared out the window of my room.
Daddy patted me again and sat up to leave, to go prepare for later. Lying there, that was the only thing I looked forward to. When I’d wake up from my death, we’d have dinner together, celebrate, and forget about the pain for a while.
But this time, something strange happened. My window snapped open and someone climbed in. It was a man, like daddy, but he looked angry. And he was holding a gun. He yelled something to daddy, but I could only hear them like I was underwater. Daddy took out his phone, yelled something back, then the gunshots went off like muffled firecrackers and daddy fell to the floor.
I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t do anything as the man slipped his hands under me, then heaved me over his shoulder and ran. My head bounced flaccidly against his shoulder as we left my room, and all I wanted was to grab my Bun-bun rabbit and my Buttons bear but daddy was bleeding on the carpet and we were already down the hall.
The man took me outside and ran, saying words I couldn’t understand. Lights were flashing and sirens were wailing and the man slowed down as my eyes began to close. The death metal sleep was almost here. The last thing I saw before I faded away was him setting me down in the yard, then dashing away.
When I woke up, I was at the police station. They gave me cookies and hot chocolate and they tasted way better than death metal. The nice officer lady asked me how I was feeling, and if I could help them find out who had hurt daddy. I told them of course. I loved daddy, he helped me grow, and I wanted to help him now too.
They brought me to a room where I looked at a bunch of men lined up against a wall. I didn’t know four of them, but one was the man who had hurt daddy.
Just as I was about to point him out, the officer lady spoke up. She said that the man who hurt daddy claimed he was trying to help me. That daddy had been hurting me, abusing me, and that he wasn’t even my real daddy. She said that I’d been stolen away, and my real daddy had tried to save me. If that was true, she said, then I was supposed to tell them.
I didn’t know what to say. Daddy hadn’t been hurting me, he’d been teaching me. I’d acted wrong, and he taught me to act right. And this man, he’d hurt daddy. He wasn’t helping. He was bad!
Daddy was my daddy, not this other man. Just thinking about how he might take away everything, I began to cry, tears streaming down my reddened cheeks.
The lady officer held me as I pointed him out to the officers. She thanked me, gave me a hug, and said that I wouldn’t have to worry about either daddy ever hurting me again.
The next day, I went with the officer lady to get my things from home. She led me inside, and already it felt like a different place. It was empty and cold, and the carpet creaked beneath my shoes. I never noticed that before with the sound of daddy’s happy laughter all the time.
I asked her if I could go to my room by myself, and she said okay. When I opened the door, there was tape on the carpet outlining where daddy had fallen, and it smelled like bleach. It reminded me of the taste of death metal.
I closed the door and walked to my bed, grabbing Bun-bun and Buttons from my pillow. Then, after looking around to make sure I was alone, I flipped Bun-bun over, and unzipped her backside.
Inside of her was what daddy had been teaching me to make. Gold nuggets, the size of the death metal that he made me eat, filled her up from top to bottom, and Buttons was the same.
Daddy knew I was special, that I could turn the death metal into gold. That was why he’d taken me away from my old daddy. That was why we’d celebrate every night after I’d done a good job making it. And that was why, when I’d been bad and failed, we had to do it again.
But now I had no daddy. I didn’t need one anymore. I had plenty of gold, and I didn’t want to share it with a new one.
The officer lady knocked on the door, and I zipped Bun-bun back up. She asked if I was ready to go.
“Yes,” I said, eyeing the paperwork she had in hand, bound together with a metal paperclip “But do you mind if I have that clip? It looks really nice.”
If you want to join us and help write a story by trolling in chat, or share your own writing for feedback, then we’d love to have you join us on Twitch.
And you missed the stream, you can still watch them on the YouTube channel or watch the full stream reruns.
Hope to see you next time, friend!
Featured image: Pakutaso (1, 2)