Sci-Fi Shorts

Of Fish and Men

A/N - This story is from a Smackdown contest, and the italicised section is the prompt upon which it's based (ie, I didn't write that bit).  1850 words.

"I don't believe this shit," the man mumbled to his computer monitor. He took a sip of his extra-large Watty and grimaced in disgust. Picked a stray orange pube from his tongue. "They didn't even read my fuckin' story! The fuck is this comment supposed to mean, anyway!? 'Loved the way Pixy Dust rode Unicron LOL!' There wasn't any Pixy Dust or Unicron in my fucking story, nor was there anything remotely funny in it! What the hell are you LOLing at, you dumbass!?"

He rubbed his temples, leaving orange Cheetos dust behind. His head killed right now. Had been hurting a lot lately, but this took the cake. Nobody understood his beautiful writing. Their comments were irrelevant. It made him sick. Made him want to teach them all a lesson.

A grin worked its way across his pale face.

Yeah. Teach 'em all. A lesson.

The man brought up the profile of the latest imbecile to comment on his riveting story. Got a good look. Memorized the name and the face.

He went to his gun rack. Grabbed his finest and most powerful weapon. Locked it and loaded it.

The hunt was on.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the city, in a (slightly) more sane state of mind, another Wattpadder sat at his computer and sniggered. Heh heh. Smug asshole, thinks he's the next Salman Hemingway. Probably calls his writing 'art' and sips on a latte while he bookmarks thesaurus.com for his next over-adjectived, clumsily similed and painfully cliched literary atrocity. One of my little Pixie Dust/Unicorn comments should bring him back to Earth. Especially if I mispell it...

Eric had a respectable day job, gave to charity, helped little old ladies to cross the street and was generally an all round swell guy - by day. But the night was a different story. By night he became a Wattpad crusader. So many pretentious assholes were stenching up the place, it was no wonder his magnum opus The Story of My Life (So Far) - My Pain, My Struggle and Ultimately My Triumph Against Overwhelming Odds and Insurmountable Challenges in the Face of a Lot of Adversity and Loser Plebs only had 11 reads and 2 votes.

Eric's crusade was to take out the pretentious trash. One irrelevant, cutting and poorly spelt comment at a time. He would drive them to distraction and then to rage and then to WritersCafe or one of those other sites for namby-pamby literary wannabes who couldn't take the white-hot creative heat of the Wattpad crucible. Only then could his story receive the glory it so clearly deserved.

Satisfied with his night's work, Eric drained his latte and headed off to bed, chuckling all the way. Unicron - hilarious....

His alarm went off at 7am and he groaned and reached for the snooze button. His Wattpad crusade kept him up far too late. His groping hand encountered something. Something furry. His hand explored the object. Big, hard, furry - hmm. His hand explored some more. Sticky. His hand froze.

Eric bolted upright, threw back the covers and recoiled in horror. It took him a moment to comprehend what he was looking at. It was pink. It had eyes. It had a single horn. And it didn't have a body.

It was the head of a unicorn. And it had a note attached to it.

The note had a single word on it. "Unicron".

A few minutes later, a shaken Eric was rapidly becoming a furious Eric. Fifteen minutes of Greensleeves while on hold hadn't been a good start and now the patronising tone of the police officer he'd finally been transferred to was just too much.