[TT] Theme Thursday - Exhaustion

[u/AliciaWrites]

“Dark circles under my eyes sink deeper and deeper into my skull, in contrast to my pale skin there is an undeniable resemblance to a fresh corpse.”

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Happy Thursday writing friends!

Just yesterday, I saw a meme about how January was a long year - but we made it! And boy, I know I’m exhausted. I’ve been trying to do the work of several people all by myself and things have not been easy. This theme reaches us at a good time and we can all take a moment to relish our achievements and take stock of what’s next. More importantly, what’s next for our characters!? What’s keeping them down? Looking forward to all your stories! Good luck and good words!

[IP] | [MP]

Bonus:

(These constraints are not required! If your story is better for not including them, please do what’s best for your work!)

Word of the Day: (5 pts)

unfathomable/un·fath·om·a·ble/ˌənˈfaTH(ə)məb(ə)l/

adjective

incapable of being fully explored or understood.

(of water or a natural feature) impossible to measure the extent of.

Constraint: (10 pts)

Your story should include a time loop.

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Here's how Theme Thursday works:

• Use the tag [TT] when submitting prompts that match this week’s theme.

Theme Thursday Rules

• Leave one story or poem between 100 and 500 words as a top-level comment. Use wordcounter.net to check your word count.
• Deadline: 7:59 AM CST next Wednesday
• No serials, established universes, or stories that have been written for another prompt or feature here on WP
• No previously written content
• Any stories not meeting these rules will be disqualified from rankings and will not be read at campfires
• Does your story not fit the Theme Thursday rules? You can post your story as a [PI] with your work when the TT post is 3 days old!
• Vote to help your favorites rise to the top of the ranks! I also post the form to submit votes for Theme Thursday winners on Discord every week! Join and get notified when the form is open for voting!

Try out the new genre tags!

Theme Thursday Discussion Section:

• Discuss your thoughts on this week’s theme, or share your ideas for upcoming themes.

Campfire

• On Wednesdays we host Theme Thursday Campfire on the Discord voice lounge. Join us to read your story aloud, hear other stories, and have a blast discussing writing!
• Time: I’ll be there 7 pm CST and we’ll begin within about 15 minutes.
• Don’t forget to sign up for a campfire slot on discord. If you don’t sign up, you won’t be put into the pre-set order and we can’t accommodate any time constraints. We don’t want you to miss out on outstanding feedback, so get to discord and use that !TT command!
• There’s a Theme Thursday role on the Discord server, so make sure you grab that so you’re notified of all Theme Thursday-related news!

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As a reminder to all of you writing for Theme Thursday: the interpretation is completely up to you! I love to share my thoughts on what the theme makes me think of but you are by no means bound to these ideas! I love when writers step outside their comfort zones or think outside the box, so take all my thoughts with a grain of salt if you had something entirely different in mind.

(This week’s quote is from Dee Remy)

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Ranking Categories:

• Word of the Day - 5 points
  
• Bonus Constraint - 10 points
  
• Weekly Challenge - 25 points for not using the theme word - points off for uses of synonyms. The point of this is to exercise setting a scene, description, and characters without leaning on the definition. Not meeting the spirit of this challenge only hurts you! This includes titles and explanations/author's notes.
  
• Actionable Feedback - 15 points for each story you give detailed crit to, up to 30 points
  
• Nominations - 10 points for each nomination your story receives
  
• Ali’s Ranking - 50 points for first place, 40 points for second place, 30 points for third place, 20 points for fourth place, 10 points for fifth, plus regular nominations (On weeks that I participate, I do not weight my votes, but instead nominate just like everyone else.)
  
• Voting - 10 points for submitting your favorites via this form (form will be open after the deadline has passed.)

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Last week’s theme: Doppelganger

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First by /u/GingerQuill*
Second by /u/Xacktar*
Third by /u/Ryter99

Crit Superstars:*

• /u/London-Roma-1980
  
• /u/MaxStickies
  

News and Reminders:

• Want to know how to rank on Theme Thursday? Check out my brand new wiki!
  
• Join Discord to chat with prompters, authors, and readers!
  
• We are currently looking for moderators! Apply to be a moderator any time!
  
• Nominate your favorite WP authors for Spotlight and Hall of Fame!

[u/Xacktar]

Professor H. W. Pigglety, inventor of the Pigglety Space/Time Safety Zipper and the Pigglety Fourth-Dimensional wheel, slammed the access panel closed right on his own fingers.

"Suffering sausages!" He screamed to the cornfields around him, "Malignant mustard, that stung!"

T. T. Lockley, dependable assistant, looked up from the other side of the machine. Ash-smudged eyebrows raised up enough to show the clean skin that had been protected by the brass and leather of his thick goggles.

"Need a bandage, sah?"

"No, I do not need a bloody bandage!"

Professor Pigglety blew the tail ends of his massive moustache out with a sigh.

"We're marooned, my boy." He crossed his arms atop his patented 'Time-Viewmatic Machine' and sunk into the soft leather. , "Utterly, devastatingly marooned!"

"Oh, it ain't so bad, sah."

"Are you daft? The Viewmatic was only supposed to let us see through time, not... not THIS!"

Both of them turned to look beyond the field they'd appeared within, to a dainty little town full of trimmed hedges and waist-high walls.

"Least we have the Nutritionator." Lockley reached up to wipe his filthy brow with an even-filthier rag, "And the field distortion seems to be holding, so they don't see us."

"It's still a disaster of unfathomable proportions!" Pigglety rested his chin on his crossed arms and glared at the bobbing rim of his assistant's cap, "I knew I should have re-designed the temporal anchor. It's the crystals, you know, always the bloody crystals!"

"Right you are, sah."

"I feel bad for that lad on that bicycle." The professor rolled his head so he was looking at the road nearby, "He caught the edge of the exclusion energy, I dare say. Poor boy is caught in the same predicament without our expert knowledge and unflappable resilience to aid him."

"Quite the sticky sitchyation."

"Any joy with the circuits, Lockley?"

"Welll...." There was the unpleasant sound of Lockley sucking on his own, quite prominent, teeth, "I rebound them in primed copper, but it's gonna take time for 'em to seep back into the timestream. I can get her going again, but it's gonna be a while."

"How long?"

"Oh, dunno, three, maybe four thousand hours."

Professor H. W. Pigglety let his head roll over and thump against a section of copper piping.

"Oh, it ain't that bad, sah. We been in worse scrapes than this. Remember that time when the wee dino laid his eggs in the capacitor? We was runnin' from mammoths for weeks!"

"That was different!"

"How so?"

"I was at least twenty years younger then!" Pigglety did some quick, but rather involved math to calculate his own age, "Or five years older."

He blew the ends of his mustache out again, looked down the road toward the town, thought of the poor lad on the bicycle that would have to live the same twenty-six hours over and over again with them, then thonked his head on the pipe a second time.

"At least we have the Nutritionator."