Das Hier #18

I'll never forget the day that I saw a man die because worms emerged from his one good eye.

And the worst thing was, the smell of those worms, which i could smell even though he was across the room from me.

I can only imagine how painful that was for him to feel the worms that poured out of his eye once he knew what was happening.

Not that he had much time left to live then. As worm attacks were always swift and terrible.

We'd only been experiencing the attacks for a couple of months, but we'd quickly learned how the attacks ended.

Awfully, as the worms would quickly consume the hapless victim and crawl off, leaving behind a stinky trail of wormness and the certain knowledge that this nightmare was going to continue and that life for the strangers was going to worsen terribly because of it.

Fortunately, that's just a drawing of a man with worms coming out his eye that was able to turn into the basis of today's story and not something that could ever happen.

I hope.

Unless these are alien worms maybe?

Or have you forgotten that aliens have already met us?

You remember Spleck, where an alien bought the Earth and renamed it? And then it was owned by another and was finally back in the hands of an Earther.

Things were returned to normal after that but there's no forgetting that kind  of year.

Without the Spleckening, I wouldn't have found your world.

So for me, that was a good thing, even if it wasn't for you.

Oh bother, it's noon and I swore I wasn't going to shoulder the load past the morning.

And I want to. What am I going to do?

Apparently, I'm the only one of us fulltime Societors writing these days so I have to be here or we're just going to fall apart and not millionize the decayear, which would be a damn shame.

But maybe it takes the most exceptional of writers to millionize a year and we're not exceptional enough.

So how did Petrie do it by himself?

Because no one has ever called him exceptional, except for himself maybe. And that isn't the same thing because anyone can call themselves a thing and that doesn't make it true.

Yes, I looked back at what I wrote and it's got a lacking of sense to it.

But there's minimal editing here and I've already done it because it's a million raw words that we're aiming to write so that means no editing.

To speak of.

So I'm stuck with a seeming care, in universe, for the aliens who are killing the humans without no reason for doing so.

I'm not a human and even I struggle with writing around that.

You do remember that I'm an alien yes? Are your human memories that short that you've already forgotten this fact?

For some of you, that wouldn't surprise me at all.

So why should we care about these strangers who'd been killing us for a couple of months after crashing on the Earth?

Because that seemed like a ridiculous idea, but it was what we wanted to be.

We couldn't just kill these worms with a reckless abandon because of the threat hanging over us that their sister race had left in orbit.

The kind the wrecks a planet if it's activated.

And bereft of heroes, we couldn't even dream of stopping their worldkiller.

So we had to accept the reality that hundreds of us were going to die in the most terrible of ways without having a way to stop it or gain revenge for it either.

A ha! That's a good reason for having their hand stayed on the strangers, or worms.

Because of what their sister race had left in orbit.

That makes sense.

I just wish that one of you humans would say good job. Or thanks for writing for us humans.

Something.

But that isn't going to happen is it?

It's only Petrie that got any replies and that was only twice. So if he could only get two replies in the six months that he posted, writing and/or drawing day after day with only Christmas off couldn't get more than two comments, than I have hope since I'm a better writer than him.

So I've got time.

Or would if I was going to be staying here for six months.

I won't.

Can you write me some comments before I leave?

I've taken to eating human food because the food that i grew to maturity on is not available here.

And I am running low on this food you humans seem to love. There's little I like of what I've eaten but I like it enough not to be hungry.

So I need to buy groceries.

But I also need to write because one of us has to be writing up instead of down because I believe in what we're doing and have to put the writing first because I can't afford the time needed to go out and buy those groceries tonight since I know no matter what 

e-mail Brayden sends me, he's not going to write about Anthanys, I don't know when he's going to be back to writing about him.

That means it's up to me and I don't know that I can do this with Dalton only able to write once a week and me struggling to write up.

I'm by no means giving up, but it's going to be tougher than we thought.

We're still doing better than Petrie was doing at this time a year ago, but we can't do what he did if we don't pull together and all do our share like me and Dalton.

And yes, this must be tedious for you to read about, me and the Soceitors trying to millionize a year like some nobody did a year ago.

Only he did it by himself and we're doing it as a group, which isn't the same thing, but it's still cool because we're doing more with our writing than he did with his and aren't going to rely on journal writing to get us to that million words.

Journal writing will end up at a higher percentage of the year than where it is now, surely in the forties instead of the thirties, but it won't be stupidly high like it was when it was in the eighties less than a fortnight ago.

Poached eggs on potato is not haute cuisine, but it is good and I would like to have it again, even if you humans come at me with laughter or worse, comments saying how much of a fool I am.

That wasn't enough though as I needed more potato and a smoothie. to be sated.

But tomorrow, for sure, I am going to buy some human food.

Even though I am all but certain to hit tomorrow with the second bad day's worth of writing, though to be fair to us, bad is relative as it 20 days before we had us a day of less 1500 words.

Or that would be the amount that we'd be stuck with of I wasn't writing hard and still had an outside chance of writing more than 2000, which is the camp at the base of the mountain.

So I'm not giving up hope because I have the better part of an hour to keep at it and maybe, just maybe, find my way to 

Time is running out on me though and I still have to write 600+ words which is an ask in less than 40 minutes when I am so not feeling the flow of words.

Oh.

It's even worse as it's more 700 words which is  on the high side of what any one of us can accomplish in the amount of time that we have left.

So I might as well admit defeat and say that as much as I would like to believe it's still possible, that I will not reach the base camp today because I wasted the time that was available to me.

And that was the case for all three quarters with even this one, the fourth, coming in under the standard that I have set at the beginning of the decayear.

This is a shame but I can only write so much in any single quarter.

So we got caught with a substandard day once already and that was a  better day than this one will end up being so it was only a matter of time before there was another one.

And if we only suffer through two of these days a month, that will only be 24 and that's pretty good.

Though that good is going to be buried in the bad if we can't write our way past the base camp, whose days are too few and far between thus far.

Is two fars too much? I think not. But I don't want to overuse that word.

Or any for that matter.

Tick tick tick,

I'm going to make it close right? Closer than I would have thought just ten short minutes ago.

That will not sit well with me, but I'm just going to have to accept it because I had it within me to make certain sure that I didn't fail to reach the base camp.

Maybe tomorrow?

But only if I work for it hard enough because the others are not showing up at all, outside of Dalton.

Are you even listening to me Societors? It's not too late for us to make an easy go of it. We don't have to resort to the crazy effort that Petrie needed to take.

I'm going to send an e-mail to Franklin tomorrow because I need his help as I don't know when Brayden is going to show up again, but Franklin is good to go and doesn't back away from the challenge like the others are.

Please don't tell me that I'm going to have to break from the others  and start a breakaway group consisting of me, Franklin and  Dalton.

Forget Brayden and Halston?

But I like what they've done, they just haven't been doing enough of it.

C'mon Societors, let's do this before it's too late.

I'm not going to reach the camp at the base of the mountain all by myself today and I would have with just a little more effort in the morning because this where i let us down with both morning quarters being less than two hundred words long which puts so much pressure on the final two.

As I mentioned earlier, we were bound to have this kind of day because we have to be hard and we haven't been hard the last many days.

And that includes me, though not near as much as the others.

But tomorrow will be different. I am bound and determined to make tomorrow the kind of writing day that it should be.

Are you listening to me Societors? We can't do this if we don't get our butts in gear. 

Or am I being too kind and I have to start cursing the lot of you out, except for Dalton of course. He's doing us proud, like me.

Charles Petrie

Date
01-21-20

Time
04:30-05:59=89, Untimed, 17:10-17:59=49 And Untimed

Word Count

105+189+460+1138=1892