Two Stories
Ah, Friday. A day that has largely lost its significance to me because of my work schedule, but when you do have some free time, it’s nice to sit back, relax, and endlessly overthink your personal shortcomings. In honor of that sentiment, here’s two story ideas of mine that sounded great at first, but never panned out.
1. The Butterfly Effect Only Affects Butterflies: A story in which a man to the past in an attempt to change history, only to learn that humans don’t factor into the butterfly effect at all.
Whenever the main character stops his past self from doing something that has a profound, life-altering impact on someone, a totally different person just...takes his place; doing exactly what the protagonist WOULD have done. Conversely, whenever he tries to do something good and meaningful, he realizes he’s only taking that moment away from someone else.
Our protagonist comes to the conclusion that you’re destined to learn the same life lessons the same ways, regardless of who forces you to learn them. Your journey is fixed, based on a rotating cycle of replaceable outside influences. He then accidentally sits on a butterfly and ceases to exist.
2. A woman who sold her soul wants it soul back, so she goes to visit the Devil at his damned arcade, where time stands still. If the woman is able to defeat Satan in a series of games, she gets her soul back.
The catch is, she must give up a deep and personal memory for every game she plays. Also Lucifer likes to cheat. So eventually, after what amounts to forty years of competition, she wins. But her soul rejects her body. As the Devil explains, true redemption of the soul involves embracing the good and bad of your past, and not trying to game the system out of who you really are.
And in forgetting so much of who she was, the woman was no longer connected to the soul she was fighting for. The confused soul, not able to find itself at home with a host body that had given up so much, dooms the body and soul to insanity; giving Satan exactly what he wanted in the first place.