Include the following in your story: metamorphosis, rogue, shrug, salamander, sleepy, chimpanzee, enzyme, lemon, glance, merge

It started out like any other day. Everyone arrived at work with sleepy eyes. At first glance, you’d think we were the worst Canine Care Team out of all the shelters in the area, but that day, we saved the world.

We went through our morning routine like it was any other day and we finished by spraying lemon flavored Febreze throughout the shelter. That’s when we noticed something was off. Dogs that were normally barking their heads off were cowering in the back of their kennels. Other departments would just shrug it off, but it got under my skin like a flesh eating enzyme.

Then, the power went out. It’s happened before, so no biggie, but the back up generator wouldn’t come online. We just went about the day and let facilities handle it. Unfortunately, we didn’t realize we were in trouble until it was too late.

It was Moxie who saw it first. Her scream echoed the shelter. When we got her to calm down, she claimed she saw a monster. None of the supervisors believed her, but the team and I did. There were too many weird things going on for us NOT to believe her. I told everyone to stay together. We couldn’t afford going rogue and getting attacked like Moxie did. The adoption floor was eerily quiet with our cowering dogs, but of course, like every horror movie, we forgot to look up.

A monster as big as a refrigerator dropped down in front of us. It looked like some disgusting metamorphosis of a salamander and a chimpanzee. Moxie screamed and her scream merged with the frightening roar of the creature. We ran. Then, we fought.

It was a battle for the story books. Vet Clinic became the safe house and every department defended it like a army base. Management wanted to wait until the authorities to arrive and handle the situation, but Canine Care, my team, we weren’t going to let anything happen to our dogs. We found out the creature wasn’t alone. It had a portal back to its own world. I feared it was just a scout paving the way for an invasion.

Why here of all places? Why would some alien monsters decide to invade at an animal shelter? It was Moxie who figured that out. You see, even though we’re a “No Kill” shelter, we still euthanize. Dogs who don’t pass behaviorally get put down. Not to mention we do euthanasia’s for the public. My point: is that there’s a lot of death on these grounds and our graveyard doesn’t portray how much. These aliens, they’re attracted to death. Moxie saw one going into the freezer we keep the corpses of our animals. They absorb some sort of power from death–do ask me for a deeper explanation. I’m still reeling at the fact that this all happened! Anyway, it’s by “absorbing” death that they were able to create their portals to this world. To an animal shelter that is dripping with death.

We did a pretty good job at avoiding the creatures as we tried to figure out how to stop them. However, we did have a couple encounters. Skyla, our team lead, got hurt when one attacked us from behind. We were able to get her to vet clinic, but our hope of stopping these monsters was shaken.

What we needed was to close the portal, but how do you close something that’s powered by death? David and Melanie proposed that maybe life, the opposite of death, would close them. None of us knew how that would work, but it was a start, and I decided I wanted a closer look at the portal.

The portal was in the behavior room, a place where a lot of euthanasia’s happen. It also happened to be on the complete far side of the shelter. I didn’t want the team to go with me, but they didn’t want me to go alone. So, Moxie, David, Melanie, and I departed into the monster infested shelter.

We got caught by one in Dog Holding, a large room full of kennels holding dogs that hadn’t been evaluated yet. The creature went after Melanie, and David came to her defense, but he didn’t have a weapon fight the monster’s claws. I grabbed a nylabone from a dirty kennel. One of those huge bulky ones that could bash a person’s skull in, and I got the creature from behind. It came after me and I ran through the kennels, hoping Melanie and David would be able to get away. What I didn’t know was that the monster had a frog-like tongue.

I guess it was the salamander part to it. I thought I was going to get away when the creature’s tongue tripped up my ankle. I hit the floor and the monster came bearing over me. I thought I was a goner, but then I realized the dog in the kennel right next to me was losing his mind, barking his head off, and lunging at the door of his kennel. It was Moon, a dog slated to be euthanized for hostile behavior.

I kicked off the latch to Moon’s kennel.

Moon tackled the creature! Never in my years of working with dogs had I ever seen one so furious! The monster screeched and recoiled, and I was able to get away. I hoped Moon ripped that thing’s throat out.

I met up with the others at our team desk. We were a couple halls away from the portal, but after facing that monster, we needed to catch our breath. We threw out ideas for handling the portal. Maybe there was a way to close it from the other side? Maybe some chemicals we had around the shelter would mess with it? Melanie thought maybe if a living thing just touched it, it would disappear, but the creatures were living…right? And they touched it.

Our discussions were cut off when we heard movement coming our way. Everyone backed under the desk to hopefully not be seen and since I couldn’t fit, I was ready to hold my ground. Yet, what came around the corner had me laughing. It was Moon! He was all happy as can be with a limb from the creature dangling in his mouth! I’d never seen him have such warm eyes and the way he looked at me made me feel like he ready to “play” some more. That made up my mind. I’m going to adopt him.

With Moon now on the team, we continued to the portal. One of the creatures was defending it. So we came up with a plan. Moon and I would distract the creature and lead it away while Moxie, David, and Melanie would figure out how to close the portal. Yet, we should’ve known things wouldn’t go according to plan.

As soon as Moon spotted the monster, he went for it as ferociously as he did the last one. I wasn’t going to let Moon fight alone this time, so instead of drawing it away, we fought it there. Unfortunately, it’s cries must have been heard through the portal because another one appeared. Fearing that more would arrive, Melanie wanted to flee, however, a third monster blocked our escape. We were all ready to cash in. Three monsters verses the four of us and a dog? What were thinking?! We’re shelter workers! Not world savers!

I’m not entirely sure what happened next. Moon and I were tripping up a monster and suddenly it…it poofed! It turned into ash right before my eyes and in Moon’s teeth! I twisted around to find the other monsters were gone too and the portal. Moxie was standing in the place the portal was looking as dumbfounded as the rest of it. The power came back on. The dogs in the shelter started barking again. Everything felt back to normal except we were as confused as could be.

To this day, Moxie has no idea what she did to made the portal disappear like it did. She touched it. She thought she could go through and close it from the other side–a sacrifice play, but then it disappeared and once it did, the monsters turned to dust. We suspect that when the portal closed, the monsters lost their connection to their world and they died because of it. No one will know for sure, though. Despite our injuries and the damage to the shelter, there’s no indication that an invasion almost happened. Everyone is doing alright. Skyla recovered from her injury and still leads the team. Moxie got promoted to a co-lead for her valiant closure of the portal. David and Melanie are accepting job offers elsewhere and I’ve been spending a lot of time with my new dog, Moon. I’m thinking about enrolling with him into the police force, but for now, we like to go to big, open fields where he can chase after the wildlife.

It was an insane day! And, no one really believes that it happened, but the shelter knows and now the board is reviewing just how much death happens on that piece of property. I think things will be better from here on out, but my team will always be prepared just in case it happens again.

I don’t get offended easily–or at least, I like to think that I don’t. So, when considering the writing prompt: what’s the most offensive thing you have ever heard anyone say? Not a lot comes to mind. Sure, I could talk about something some political person or sports person or media whatnot said or I could delve into the unjust reasons people aren’t being kind to each other, but there’s enough of that whatnot out there that I don’t want it on my website. So, allow me to share with you a time where I found something that somebody said to me–said to his platform–very offensive.

A few years ago, I took Organic Chemistry and lab as a summer class while pursuing my bachelor’s. Organic Chemistry…really sucks. It’s one of those classes where you think you have it all down, but you take the test and you bombed. Then, you find out that not only you bombed, but the entire class did as well. And, when the class keeps bombing, you know something must be wrong with the way things are being taught. A wise professor would start asking questions to figure out where knowledge is getting lost in translation. My professor? Well, he blamed us, his students.

I remember multiple times throughout the summer my professor would tell us it took someone special to understand OChem. It took grit and it wasn’t for everyone. Only the brave will master OChem. These are all valid points. I mean, we all have our strengths and weaknesses. Everyone has a subject where it’ll take grit for them understand and everyone has their top subjects and their not so top subjects. OChem just happens to a subject that is difficult for more people than most. I gave my professor the benefit of the doubt at the start. Maybe in his own way, he thought he was encouraging us to be that someone special he always talked about. I certainly didn’t want to be that someone special. I just wanted to pass the class. What did annoy me, though, was that my professor started saying things like he’s “awesome because he can do OChem. Only awesome people can do OChem.” He would butter himself up all because he was good at OChem. Look. I get being excited for your subject and confidence in yourself is a must when teaching, but he was getting arrogant and arrogance isn’t flattering. Yet, I was stuck with this professor for the whole summer and I needed to pass the class. So, I did my best to ignore his arrogance and focuse on the knowledge.

Then, a day came when my professor said something that if my roommate hadn’t been there, I would’ve caused an uproar. It was a typical day. My roommate and I sat in the front row like always. The professor had his whiteboard with chemical bonds on it, but before starting lecture, he was going over the quizzes…that everyone failed. Instead of being a wise professor and figuring out what went wrong and helping us understand, we got a lecture from him over how OChem takes special people and hard work and we’ve got to put in the hard work to be “awesome” and “OChem isn’t a subject everyone can do like art.”

I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard my professor say that last line. I even looked at my roommate to confirm that he actually said it and she was giving me a warning look to keep my mouth shut. He seriously said that! He said that art is a subject that everyone can do! And his tone was so downgrading! It was like he was some king spitting upon a peasant! If you’ve explored my website, you know I’m an artist. I share my paintings, pastels, and pencil drawings in my Art Gallery. I even doodled in all class because it helped me pay attention. But for my professor to have the gall to imply that OChem is the superior subject because not everyone can do it and even say that everyone can do art–I’m sorry. Did he paint the Mona Lisa?! He did paint Starry Night?! Has he ever tried to capture the beauty of the sunrise or the pattern of a blue jay’s feathers?! What about the sheen of water? Not everyone can do that! Sure. Art is subjective. Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. You could put a smiley face on a stick and call it art, but not everyone can make a living off of it. Not everyone can make someone feel something when they create art.

I still can’t believe my professor disrespected another school subject like that just because it wasn’t “awesome” like OChem (***Disclaimer*** OChem is not awesome. In my opinion, OChem sucks). I wanted to call out my professor. I wanted to argue and defend artists everywhere. I wanted to walk out of that classroom and never come back. However, my roommate–being the ever dutiful Ravenclaw that she is–kept me in my seat and convinced me to survive the class with my mouth shut so I wouldn’t have to push back my graduation date by taking OChem again. I put up with my teacher for the rest of the summer–though I may have given him quite a few looks that proved my disapproval of him. At the end of the semester, I wrote a strongly worded and rant-like review about his arrogance, accusations, and his disregard for other subjects–specifically art.

Everyone is built different. OChem comes easy for some and it’s difficult for most. Art is easy for some and difficult for some. We all have different talents which is why human beings need to be interdependent on each other. I don’t believe any school subject should be considered greater over another and yet, the world views them that way. People are praised for going into sports, law degrees, or the sciences and yet an artist is just an artist and other smaller subjects don’t get mentioned so a lot of people don’t even realize they exist. Why can’t people be praised and rewarded for doing what they love and making a difference instead of winning a rusty trophy or making the big bucks? The world may never know.

So, my professor downgrading art as a subject is the most offensive thing I’ve ever heard. Compared to most things, I think I have a pretty solid reason to be offended by the things he said. I don’t know where he is now. I don’t even know if he’s still teaching, but I do hope he got a little bit wiser for his own sake.

Now, how about you? What’s the most offensive thing you’ve ever heard?

What’s a compliment you’ve received that really made your day? And I mean REALLY made your day. Maybe your mind goes to one specific thing or maybe you think of something you wish someone would compliment you on? Either way, let us know!

For me, well, I’ve got a pretty specific memory that comes to mind with this question. If you don’t know by now: I’m a geek. I play video games, watch movies, read books, and all. And the first compliment I think of when considering this question comes from all the way back when I was in junior high. It was probably 7th grade. My friends and I are sitting around the lunch table. I have no idea what we were talking about, but one of my friends–one of my preppy type of my friends–looks at me and says: “you know, if you had pointy ears, you look like that princess from the video game my brother plays.” Naturally, my interests were peaked and my first thought was that she meant the Legend of Zelda video game series. However, I always hid how much of a geek I was way back when. My friends didn’t know I played video games and was into all the stuff that society would frown upon. You know how it goes: “Oh, you’re a geek? What a nerd. Video games rot your brain. Play a real sport. Etc. Etc. Etc.” I hid all that stuff so that I wouldn’t get picked on or look down on. So, when my friend told me I look like some princess from a video game I tried to hide the fact that I probably knew exactly what she was talking about. I awkwardly shrugged and asked: “which game?” She just shook her head and said: “I don’t know. I don’t remember.” I tried to pry: “was it the Legend of Zelda? I’ve heard there’s a pointy eared princess in that one.” She shrugs and says: “probably.”

Given the fact that Princess Zelda from the Legend of Zelda series is my all-time favorite character, I was feeling pretty good after that compliment! I know she could’ve been thinking of a different video game and I know she was just trying to pry my geekiness out of me and prove that I’m not as preppy as she is, but there was a chance that I got compared to Princess Zelda so I didn’t care one, stinkin’ bit!

Things have definitely changed since those days. Princess Zelda is still my favorite character, but nowadays, I hope to be complimented on my writing over my looks. I would especially love to get complimented on when it comes to my book. It would be nice to hear: “hey, Nikki, your book was fantastic! I can’t wait to read the next one!” Being a writer, people compliment you all the time on your writing whether it’s a blog post, a poem, or just a note in a card, but for non-published authors, it can be hard to find someone who will read your book all the way through and honestly tell you they really liked it. If beta readers (other writers) read it to help with feedback, they might hold back their opinion because they’re intimidated or they don’t want to hurt your feelings. Beta readers know how much heart gets put in a book, and no one wants their heart crushed. Then, if family members read it, they often soften their opinion. Tell you its good just because you’re family. Hopefully, one day, my book will get published and I’ll be able to look online for that one review that says this book was really good.

So, that’s my best past compliment and hopeful compliment for the future. What about you? What unique compliment have you been giving? And, what about your neighbor? Your sister? Brother? Mother? Friend? What unique compliment do you think they would like? I dare you to share your stories either in the comments below or on my Facebook or Twitter pages. Oh, and I double-dog dare you to give someone the best compliment today. Let them know something that they’ll be smiling about when they remember it years from now.

Make someone’s day.