writing practice seven-day challenge

Writing Practice 7 Day Challenge

Hey john!




It's time to get started with the 7 day writing challenge! We're so excited to be writing with you!

To help you stay strong and finish your word count each day during the challenge, we'll send you an email with three sections.

The first section is really short. It will just have a link to the day's form where you can let us know how many words you wrote that day. This will help us keep track of how you're doing on the challenge, and by the end we'll be able to let you know how you did. Each day's form is unique, though, so don't submit your word count on an old form. Here's what this section of the email will look like:

Once you finish your daily word count for today, you can enter it here:

Click to enter your daily word count for DAY 1.

In the second section, we'll have a short writing lesson to help you focus and stay encouraged for your writing that day. Here's what that will look like:

"Being a good writer is 3% talent,
97% not being distracted by the Internet."
—Anonymous

Becoming a good writer is hard. It’s not easy to figure out how to write a plot with the perfect twist, characters so vivid they could walk off the page, dialogue with ironclad believability, all with a voice that captures readers and keeps them coming back for more.

Maybe you have days when you think of all you’ve written and wonder whether it’s all doomed for the trash pile. Days when you question whether writing such drivel is worth it, or whether you should just throw in the towel now.

Here’s the thing, though: the key to becoming a good writer is to write.

Wishing you were better won’t cut it. Neither will waiting until some future time when you hope you will be.

That's why we're here. That's why we're doing this challenge. To take one week where we intentionally choose to focus. When was the last time you focused on your writing for seven days?

So close Facebook, Twitter, and all those other pesky internet distractions. Shut the door so you can’t hear the TV blaring in the other room, or the clanking of pots and pans.

Sit down.

And just write.

The last section will be a practice section, just like we have on thewritepractice.com. This will be a short and simple exercise or focus for your writing for that day. Here's what that will look like:

Practice: It’s pretty simple: Butt in seat. Distractions blocked. Write.

That's it! So go get writing and we'll see you in your inbox tomorrow!

Happy writing!
Joe

P.S. Don't forget to enter your word count for DAY 1 here. Then, if you want to start giving and receiving excellent feedback so you can get more out of your 7 Day Creative Writing Challenge, make sure you join a writing community like The Write Practice Pro. Learn more about the benefits of Pro membership here!










Human Zoo
Word count 1,691
Flash Fiction Day One Seven Day 1,000-word story contest

The town of Silver Spring Wyoming is now a ghost town. Something happened to the town 100 and 50 years ago in 1880 and no one really knows what happened there was a dispatch sent by a visiting journalist who wrote that the town has been taken over by men in black suits who had started executing everybody in town using a ray gun of some sort. The dispatch ended apparently with the death of the writer.
A couple hours after the town residents had been killed visitors came to the town and found that everybody had been buried in a mass grave in the middle of the town and they were all burned to death. The only person left alive was the town drunk who told a strange tale about strange creatures coming down from the Sky in a big ship with Ray guns and shooting everybody. He said a couple people had entered the ship and disappear that afternoon.
One Saturday afternoon, men dressed in black suits and speaking English with a strange accent came into town. They went to the bar and said that they were journalists from a European newspaper and they wanted to interview everybody in town for a story they were writing about Wyoming. They would pay everybody for their time and buy them a drink so over the course of the afternoon the men in black interviewed all 500 residents of the town
Around 7:00 PM a big black ship appeared in the sky above the town and two people were taken aboard the ship the Reverend Henderson, and Judy the town’s school teacher. Everyone else in town is lined up in front of the city hall. The residents had been instructed to dig a large pit and the ship flew away leaving Sam the town drunk as the only witness to the massacre as the ship fired ray guns killing everyone and throwing them into the mass grave which was then filled up.
.
Robert Henderson and Judy found themselves naked with strangers from around the world in a large cave cage. There were strange creatures outside looking at them they were just beginning to try to find out who the other strangers were when on the screen in front of them pornographic images appeared. Men dressed in black uniforms came in and poked them and told them start having sex then of course that man and woman grabbed each other and followed their instructions

Afterwards they sat around and trying to figure out what happened to them Henderson started out by saying
“look why don't we first start out by asking each other what your name. where you're from and what you remember before getting here. I will start, my name is Reverend Henderson and this is Judy Small the local school teacher in our town in Wyoming in the United States of America, the date is June 19, 1870, so please tell us your name where you're from and what year it is where you are from. They went around the room. There were ten other people in the room 5 women five men all between these ages of 20 and 40 all naked from 10 different countries including Russia 1890, China 1990, Japan 1946, Korea 1975, Mexico 2020, Saudi Arabia 2020, Israel 1975, UK 1960, India 1875 and Thailand 1890.
Mr Henderson then said
It seems to me that we have been abducted by aliens and we are in a zoo and that the only requirements our jailers have put us is that we have to have sex when they tell us to. I think that a big mistake has been made and I think we can rectify it. If they refuse to send us back, I think we can negotiate a contract with them as performers they will pay us for our time, they will provide us furniture, a private shower and backroom, a kitchen and food for us to cook, clothing and provide us with coffee tea whiskey wine beer or provide us with the raw materials and let us home brew
We will work on a farm that they will provide us to grow our own food as well provide us dogs and cats as pets. They will allow us to walk around the zoo into the other compounds freely. We will continue to perform sex as demanded but we got to choose the partners that we wish to have sex with an they will have to pay us a salary and allow us to go into town once in a while to buy provisions and get out of the zoo. Are we all in agreement?
Mr. Henderson went to the door and banged on it until finally one of their jailers came to the door and Mr. Henderson said he wanted to talk to whoever was in charge about their situation. A man dressed in black appeared in their room and asked them well what's this about?
Mr. Henderson said it seems that you have abducted us and put us into a zoo by mistake. You are requiring us to perform for you but we not going to perform for you unless we have a contract and you provide us a monetary salary, furniture, private bathroom and shower facilities,. Laptops with access to Google, Netflix Amazon, CNN, MSNBC, FOX, BBC, Mexican, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, and Arabic TV networks, Kindles with the reading materials of our choice, a kitchen for food for us to cook a garden for us to grow, a fishing pound for us to fish, whisky coffee tea wine and beer for us to drink or raw materials for us to self brew. We will be given access to go into the nearby town to walk around and get out of the zoo, have a meal in a restaurant .
In terms of our performances or performances, it would our daily routines and our sexual interactions but we will decide who and what we have who we want to have sex with. Oh and turn out the lights and drone cameras after ten pm.
The man in the black suit said,
“That is fine, but we cannot agree to the private bathrooms in showers add we will assign each night your sexual partners and we will require you to perform sexual activities on camera as part of our zoo experience so get over it, and that activity will involve homosexual contact, but we will only require it once a day from 9:00 PM till 10:00 PM at 10:00 PM . We will turn off the lights and not film you after 10 pm until 6 am. You will be required to wake up at 6:00 AM and do your normal activities throughout the day each of you also is required to work four hours per day in the human cafeteria that is part of the exhibit where we will be serving earth food and beverages to our customers two of you will work in the kitchen and two, we will work as wait staff so our customers will have a chance to interact with human beings. The rest of you will spend four to six hours working in the garden, the farm, the distillery, etc, but the rest of the time is yours.
You will be able to walk about the rest of the zoo compound freely except of course entering the predator species cages. We did go back in time, so we have dinosaurs, saber tooth tigers, wooly mammoths, and other extinct species and species from over 100 different worlds in our zoological compound. We do have a few other intelligent species living here under conditions like yourselves, Once a week you will be given passes to go into town, but you must be back by nightfall as we will not pay for your lodgings. Each of you will have an implant put in that will contain your financial, biological, and health information that all citizens of the federation must wear. It also contains your employment records, your political activity rating, and your social status. A few other humans are living in our world serving as advisors to the foreign ministry on all things related to earth. They will be coming by to talk with you all from time to time.
our customers are from around the Galaxy. You humans are fascinating creatures to us that is why we kidnapped you here, the people in your communities were all killed to prevent knowledge of our existence from leaking out.
however, for the good of the galaxy, your species is under quarantine as we have determined that your species is clinically insane and too violent a species to be allowed to join the rest of the federation. We will be monitoring your societies from afar and we will be monitoring you as well. We took from earth copies of everything that your world has ever published and that is part of the library of the federation which you will have access to as well.

Having access to your US in America and networks etc is costly but we were throwing them for free we will also throw in for free access to the collective networks and Internet services
We will require you just to study galactic languages each day for one hour per day in an online platform that is pretty much oh and we will allow you to make your beer wine whiskey and that would be sold too at the human café.
that is all have a good life. And so life in the human zoo began for the inhabitants of the late planet earth.
The end



Vietnamese Street Scenes Found Poem based on internet musings of William Walton

I have recently acquired
The habit of eating breakfast
On Phan Chu Trinh street
In Vuna Tau

That habit acquired more out of necessity
Than choice
Due to an abrupt
and not wholly unwelcomed
Change in my relationship status

My local female friend
ceased to share a domicile
I was forced to move elsewhere

I moved from the alleys
of Pham hona trau
on side of town
To phan chu trinh
on the other side of town

an area populated by many foreign residents
otherwise known as expats
on this street

at a certain hour in the morning
until noon or so
a vendor sells freshly made hard boiled eggs
peeled
and fresh Vietnamese ice coffee
I order as is my habit two of each

There is an assortment of foreign nationals
Some of whom have Vietnamese wives
A few of these individuals are French
One is Belgium, two are fellow Americans
And several are Australians

One of my better friends is Jorma
From Finland
He is 68 years of age
Most of them are my age
And are retired like I am

We usually converse over coffee
In the morning

The other day we talked about
Russian-Finish war of in 1940
And watched an interview
With a former bodyguard of Stalin

We talked about the tone poem
Composed by the French composer Sibelius
Entitled the Swan of Tunoel


Jorma told me the title referred
To an old Finish myth
About a swan that carries the soul
Of the deceased across a river
Into the after life

Like Charon
Who carried the deceased
Across the Hades river in Hell

I met a man from Iceland
Born in 1941
He is married to a Vietnamese woman

Over coffee we talked
about the Icelandic language
And old Norse
And its connections to ancient Anglo-Saxon
Hence to early modern English

Being a polyglot
Speaking Spanish, Korean, Vietnamese
German and some Chinese
I was fascinated by the conversation

And now I know a few words
Of Icelandic

Anyway, we had a fascinating conversation
This unanticipated encounter occurred
After two hours of aqua running
and before a weightlifting session

In many ways living in phan hu trinh street
Is an improvement
Over that of Pham hona trau

More opportunities to socialize
More foreign nationals
Less cramped

And better feng shui
The location of Phan hu trinh street
Is a lucky one

Wedged between a mountain
And the deep blue sea
The street is comforted
by the evening ocean breezes

My studio apartment here is a big improvement
I tried my best to maintain a good relationship
With my ex

But the end of the affair
Has let to many new possibilities
And many new romantic pursuits
Yet to come

 
Day two Flash Fiction

Congressman Jake Lee

Jake Lee retired from the US government, returns to the Bay Area at age 65. He and his wife buy a condo downtown Berkeley. Jake soon get involved in various causes and am soon a practiced demonstrator and show up everywhere much to his wife’s Angela’s amusement. He is arrested a number of times and his expose on how protestors are treated by the criminal justice system generates tremendous outrage.
Jake’s writes a daily blog on my various causes called Cosmos’s Corner. And he publishes to great acclaim his novel, “the Great Divorce.” His novel is praised by the right and the left as a prophectic vision of the future. In his novel, a charismatic preacher unites the Christian right in a self-declared crusade. They demand a constitutional convention to declare the formation of the Christian States of America. They also set up a shadow government called the committee that did not exist that brought together Christian leaders, business CEO’s, top military officials, top government officials, top media figures who are united by a desire to set up a new government that would respect traditional Christian values, including enacting a national morality act that would criminalize drug use, alcohol, gambling, prostitution, pornography, abortion except to save the life of the mother, same sex marriage, recogniction of transgendered rights including banning the procedure in the U.S., and a radical downsizing of the U.S. government. Marriage would be recognized as the union of one man and one woman who were born male and female who desire to raise a family. Couples who do not to want to raise children or adopt children would not be allowed to get married. Co-habitation without marriage would be illegal. Hotels, apartments would be allowed to discriminate and refuse to rent to co-habiting people or to gays and lesbians. Discrimination against LGBT would be legal, including firing people who are LGBT and banning their service in positions which require a national security clearance. Only Christians who do not drink, do drugs, or use pornography would be given clearances.
And withdrawing from most international organizations including kicking out the UN. They would also rename the United States the Christian States of America via holding a Constitutional convention. The new constitution Constitution 2.0 would implicitly recognize the U.S. as a Christian homeland, establishing the Christian faith as the official faith of the United States, requiring non-Christians to register, banning immigration of non-Christians and deportation of non-Christians who are illegal aliens. They would also ban birthright citizenship requiring that at least one of the biological parents be an U.S. citizen at the birth of the child.
The novel hits a raw nerve. The right adopts it as a clarion call for a second civil war, the left also adopts it as a call for the West Coast, and the East Coast to succeed. In the novel, ultimately after a short but brutal civil war, the West Coast declares themselves independent with a new capitol in SF. California is split into five new states, - SF, LA, San Joaquin Valley, North Coast, and Eastern California east of the mountains. They join Western Washington, Western Oregon, British Colombia, Arizona, Nevada and Colorado in the new Federation. The east coast declares independence as well with the capitol in NYC and uniting Canada, and the Great Lakes including Chicago. Illinois is split into two states downstate and Chicagoland. Texas, New Mexico, Oakaholma. and Northern Mexico forms the Texas Republic. Florida declares itself to be the Capital of the Caribbean, and Utah joins Idaho in forming the Desert Republic.

After publishing his latest episode, he runs for Congress and am elected at age 67! He runs on the slogan, an update of the Superman theme – “Fighting for Truth, Justice and the American Way!” His team wars superman shirts and slogans. Jake is tireless campaigner going door to door throughout the district and meeting with any group that is willing to meet with him. He also hosts parties at his house bringing together activists from across the district.
And he soon become the thorn in the side of the Federal Government as he continues his crusade to point out injustice wherever he sees it. He publishes a daily outrage of the day pointing out corruption, incompetence, and malfeasance throughout the Federal government and local governments alike. His daily outrage goes viral.

And he becomes famous for his witty “Jakecisms “
He has a standard apology for when his comments touch a raw nerve.
“ I am sorry that some people took offense at my comments. I did not mean to offend anyone, but if the truth hurts that is too bad.”
He and his wife becomes famous for their get togethers at their Capitol Hill house and becomes a top destination for upcoming politicos and journalists alike. During these salon meetings all sorts of deals are made uniting the left wing of the democratic party and he is soon seen as the leader of the left wing populist wing of the democratic party.
He is loved in his district and hated across the country, called by conservatives the “Most Dangerous Man in America” which he uses as a catch phrase for my campaigns. And his universal nickname is “Super Jake” referring to his endless energy, and enthusiasm.
He serves ten years in congress and finally retire at age 77 when he runs for Governor on a pro-Californian Independence ticket as his prophetic novel on the “Great Divorce” begins to take shape. Shortly after his election, he declares California independence and joins forces with Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, and British Colombia in forming a new nation, The West Coast Federation. And he serves as the first president holding meetings during the second constitutional convention that codifies the Great divorce avoiding a second civil war.

Day Two Poems

2020 the annus Horiblus comes to an End

January

Jan. 22
“We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”
— CNBC interview

First cases reported
Cruise ship turned around
China travel ban

February

Feb. 10
“Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.”
— New Hampshire rally

Crisis becomes apparent
Europe in crisis
US not far behind
The President continues to downplay the crisis

March

March 28
“WE WILL WIN THIS WAR. When we achieve this victory, we will emerge stronger and more united than ever before!”
— Twitter

National lockdowns begin
Unemployment craters
Congress passes inadequate measures

April

On untested and dangerous treatments for the coronavirus
“I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute, one minute, and is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning? Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that.” Speaking to reporters at the White House on 23 April.

President discontinues daily COVID crisis task force briefings
As he makes a fool of himself
By opening his mouth

May

When: Friday, May 29
The claim: The WHO ignored “credible reports” of the coronavirus’s spread in Wuhan, the Chinese city that first reported the new virus, including those published in TheLancet medical journal in December.
The truth: The Lancet said it did not publish such reports in December. Its first reports on the virus’s spread in Wuhan were published on January 24.
The crisis deepens
Thousands die
In the first wave

President and his minions
Proclaim that by July
The economy would be roaring back
Olympics postponed for one year

June

When: Wednesday, June 17
The claim: The pandemic is “fading away. It’s going to fade away.”
The truth: Trump made this claim ahead of his rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, when the country was still seeing at least 20,000 new daily cases and a second spike in infections was beginning.

President resumes his mass spreading rallies
Hermain Cain becomes the latest Corona ghost

July

“Now we have tested almost 40 million people. By so doing, we show cases, 99% of which are totally harmless.” South Lawn speech at the White Houseon 4 July.

The president continues to insist
That the US has more cases
Because the US is testing more
Total nonsense of course
But to his lemming like followers
Makes perfect sense

August

When: Thursday, August 27
The claim: The U.S. has “among the lowest case-fatality rates of any major country anywhere in the world.”

When: Thursday, August 27
The claim: Trump “launched the largest national mobilization since World War II” against COVID-19, and America “developed, from scratch, the largest and most advanced testing system in the world.”

When: Thursday, August 6
The claim: A coronavirus vaccine could be ready by Election Day.
The truth: The timeline Trump proposes contradicts health experts’ consensus that early 2021 is likely the soonest a vaccine could be widely available.
None of these statements are true
The Republican convention is held
At the WH
After Florida and North Carolina refused
To allow the full scale convention to take place
Speaker after speaker made wild crazed speeches
About the dangerous left wing mob rule
That Biden and Harris would unleash
As they turn the U.S. into another Venezuela
Promising the best is yet to come
As 200 thousand corona ghosts
Look on

September

When: Tuesday, September 29
The claim: “We’re weeks away from a vaccine,” Trump said at the first debate.
The truth: Redfield has said a COVID-19 vaccine may not be widely available to the American public until the summer of next year. Two of the three drug companies working on a vaccine have said they hope to have only initial clinical-trial results by the end of this year.
The corona virus are not yet ready
The president demands that they release the vaccine now
Before it was purely tested
The FDA refuses

October

During the final presidential debate between Trump and Democratic candidate Joe Biden, the two spoke about the ongoing pandemic, when Trump said, "It will go away and, as I say, we're rounding the turn."
"We're rounding the corner. It's going away," Trump added.
As the president declares this
Thousands lie dying every day
and first lady

The october surprise
Is that the president
All come down with COVID

November


Even now, the president, eager to claim credit for an imminent vaccine, is reportedly planning to host two dozen indoor Christmas parties that will again flout his own government’s public health advice. Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, has similar plans, according to the Washington Post.

The president refuses to concede
Claiming massive voter fraud
Files 60 court challenges
Loses every one of them
Holds up the transition for two weeks

December

Dec 6, 2020President Trump's lawyer and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, who has been pressing the case that the 2020 election was rife with fraud, has the coronavirus, Trump tweeted on Sunday.

But the president remains silent
As the virus runs out of control
3,000 people a day dying
Just like 9-11 happening every single day

And so the year ends
Thousands dying
Millions unemployment
Millions facing homelessness

But the vaccine is starting to be delivered
A little to late
But perhaps the proverbial light
At the end of a dark tunnel

 
LANDMARK
LOST
NOSE

Landmark, lost nose

In a landmark case
The judge declared
That my nose
Had been lost
Due to a clerical error
I was doomed
To live without my nose
Lost in inner space
 
Lonely Corona Christmas

Around the world
This Christmas will be unlike
Another other
That we have experienced

With travel proscribed
People staying low
Many parties cancelled
Many people having a virtual
Christmas celebration

While the Corona ghosts
Haunting our holiday celebrations
 
The Fire burns out of control

The Fire burns out of control
Millions of Tree burning up
Afterwards
A Stream of water
Flies down the mountains
Seeming to take down everything
Trimming things in its wake
As animals Swim in the flood
People breathing though their open mouths
Leaning their arms
Against the dead trees
Present in the moment
The world ended
 

My love Mini-monoverse


my love
my dove
my true love
my god love
wearing glove


my dreams
my screams
it seems
my themes
it deems

Day Three flash fiction

The Khan Take over the world
One day the alien overlords arrived without notice. They took over the world in a whirlwind offensive. They landed their ships everywhere and took power. They executed millions of people, particularly targeting the leadership class. The aliens were giant spider-like creatures. The soldiers were rodent-like creatures that were biped, and incredibly brutal.

There were essentially four classes of aliens – the overlords who were giant spiders, the mechs who were fighting robots but AI creatures, the skitters who were the worker bees of the aliens, and the human slaves and slaves from other races. All in all, there were about ten different types of aliens living on earth.
The aliens took over the airways. The commander of the alien forces spoke to the world.
My name is commander zero – you will soon be learning how to speak galactic standard but for now, you can call me that. We are the Khan and are the master race of the galaxy. You are the tenth planetary system that we have conquered.
We have a deal to offer you, humans. First, if you accept that we have taken over the world and agree to follow our rules including learning galactic standards, we will allow you to live. But if you resist, you will be exterminated. It is your choice.
In our world, we do not tolerate dissent, but we also have a system of local representative assemblies that pass laws and approve budgets and provide some oversight, but the Emperor is firmly in charge. The press is free to report the news but with controls over sensitive data. Everyone must work. There is no welfare. If you do not want to work or have anyone to take care of you, you will be sentenced to a mining colony, or referred to a social cleansing board.

We will be setting the mining colonies on your moon and in the desert regions of the world. Anyone who is too disabled to work or too old to work will be exterminated unless their family members are willing to take care of them. Those people will be referred to a social cleansing board for final status determination.
We do not recognize religious dogma. In our experience, there are no Gods in the world. We will be closing all your religious institutions, all the artwork will be confiscated, the buildings will be converted to other uses. Priests and nuns will be executed on worldwide TV starting today. We will start with the Pope. We will also destroy your religious monuments and broadcast that as well. Starting with Rome and Mecca.
We will take a lot of the artwork from your museums back to our capital city where they will join other artwork in our colonial art museums. We will also send back animals to the galactic zoo.
Most of your books will be destroyed. Only works published in the galactic standard will be permitted. We will take over your television networks, radio, and computer networks and everything will be broadcasted in the galactic standard. You will all have one year to learn it. Everyone will have to look galactic standard. All other languages will be banned after one year.
Now starting next week everyone will be assigned jobs. Your corporations will be taken over by galactic corporations. You will all be given salaries in galactic standard credits. Your prior currencies will be abolished. Your banks will be taken over and people will have their local currencies swapped out with galactic credits so most of you will not lose too much money. We do not want to destroy the economy but there will be some disruption.
Most of you will be relocated to the cities. The countryside will be either farming zones, mining zones, or forestry zones. Most small towns will be abandoned. Simply not efficient to have all these small towns.
Most of you will commute via public transit options. Private vehicles will be reserved for the elite.
We will rebuild your electric grid and covert your power to renewable energy sources so global warming will be solved.
Your farms will grow galactic standard crops and galactic standard livestock although we will grow local fruits and vegetables and we will grow coffee and tea which we will export back home. And we will export your alcoholic beverages.
Gambling is illegal. Pornography is illegal. Drug use except for prescription drugs is illegal. Abortion services will be illegal. Consensual sexual relations will be legal. But homosexual conduct will be illegal. Marriages will be recognized as the union between a man and a woman. What you do in your sex life will be your business except for homosexual conduct.
Five years later, commander zero gave his annual state of the union speech. He started by saying
We have made a lot of progress. Most of you have adopted but some of you still refuse to accept the fact that we are in charge and some of you are still resisting, and some of you are engaged in terrorism. That must stop now.
So, we have an offer to make. Those of you who refuse to accept the new rules will be offered refugee in Africa. Africa was supposed to be a mining colony, but they would allow humans to live there if they mined and do other work for the aliens, but the humans would be allowed to govern their affairs. A limited number of humans would be allowed to live in the rest of the world as traders, and businesspeople but subject to the laws of the aliens.
Many of you will continue to work and some of you will remain slaves. The slaves would be allowed to breed and provide a second generation of slaves. The aliens would not enslave any other humans provided that the Humans kept their end of the cease-fire and kept themselves to Africa.
The humans would have 24 hours to decide. If the humans refused, they would release the virus and kill off any remaining wild humans.
The 2nd Massachusetts militia takes the alien offer and is transported to West Africa. Other flights arrive and there are eventually 50,000 humans left alive in West Africa and perhaps 50,000 human slaves in the alien dominated rest of the world.
The alien's airlift supplies and the humans set up farming communities and some go to work in the mines that the aliens set up across Africa.
But most of Africa reverts to a wilderness.
Some humans end up serving as hunting guides for aliens who like to travel to the African bush for recreational hunting.
Some free humans live on in the alien world as traders, businesspeople, and spies and there is a larger slave population.
The dream that someday humanity would kick the aliens off the world never dies.
Corona Christmas morning
CHRISTMAS DAY
CENTRE
DOOR

On a Corona Christmas day
In the center of the room of the house
Lies friends and family now corona ghosts
 
Magnet

Ever since I met you
So many years ago
Your love was like a magnet
Drawing me to you
Making me come to you
Your body a magnet of love
Lust And mad passionate desire


At the casino of the damn

The dice tumbled
the table leaned forward
with held breath.

Watching the players
Play at the casino
Of the damn

The winner gets a reprieve
The losers will be condemned
To hell

The winner rolls 6
The lucky number
To avoid
The sentence

Wish we could delete last year

Wish we could delete
Last year