We’ve made it to the midpoint of my 12 in 12 Monthly Writing Prompt Challenge, with Story #6, Collective. I have a lot of thoughts on how the project is going so far and what comes next, but that can be an entire post on its own. I will point out though that a common theme has emerged; finding a reason to keep going when everything seems hopeless.
Collective continues this theme. It is probably the darkest story I have written so far, being about what I think people would do if we confirmed that hell was real, and for everyone. This is my childhood fear of going to hell meeting my current feelings of depression, and I think it turned into something quite good. It ended up being long too, coming in at almost 10,000 words which poured out of me.
Being so long I didn’t get to give it a second lot of editing which I think it needs (The ‘T’ key on my keyboard was broken this month, so a lot of words were missing their ts or had extra ones. This was a bad time to have a protagonist I referred to only as ‘he’.) To be honest though, I think most of these stories could use more editing. That’ll probably be something I tackle at the end of the year. Regardless, I’ve been happy with how these stories have turned out, and I’m really happy to share Collective with the world. You can start reading it now:
2026 Monthly Story Challenge #6
Collective (Wordcount 9923)
By Jayde Holmes
cw: body horror, depression and severe hopelessness, characters try to prevent their own existence
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He was six when his great-great-great-grandmother came to live with the family and he loved her. Her presence made him feel like he was in one of those happy families from the old movies. He’d liked Biggest Nana well enough as a human when he’d talked to her at the morgue, but he’d always wanted a puppy. He’d learnt early though that there weren’t enough resources for pets that didn’t used to be people these days, and he loved that Biggest Nana had found a way around that.
He was ten when Biggest Nana died, which was old enough to understand what was happening and be hopeful. For three days in a row, he went to the weed-filled park at the centre of their identical grey cube house neighbourhood, but he didn’t play with the other kids on the playground. Instead, he went to the small grassy area where he and Biggest Nana had played, and ran around, imagining her beside him as an animal spirit.
A month later Mum came home shaking and confirmed that Biggest Nana had been spotted in hell.
Click Here to Continue Reading
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I’ll be posting again soon to talk about all six stories from the first half of the year, as well as what I’m planning for the rest of the project. The first story of the second half will be called ‘Judgement’, which after writing a story about hell feels a bit familiar, but I don’t want to re-tread the same path as Collective. I am going to try and move away from the surviving hopelessness theme, and try to do a few stories that are lighter in tone.
We’ll see how that goes
~ Jayde
Jayde Holmes 
Time travel is just one of those things we really shouldn’t ever get our hands on honestly.
This was a very gripping story. I like how it starts with so many questions, but gradually sprinkles in lore and answers. That first bit of, “Biggest Nana had been spotted in hell,” caught my attention immediately.
As I read the story, DOOM inevitably came to mind: the whole idea of humanity discovering Hell as some different dimension and trying to conquer/use/defeat it in some way. I like how instead of going the route of humanity harvesting and economizing Hell, everyone just wants to find a way to subvert it, not even for the sake of stopping death, but to stop suffering.
And of course that contrasts later with how it’s a large portion of humanity which creates Hell. I like how well the story reflects that in the protagonist. His consistent bitterness is portrayed as rational and irrational at different points as he tries to understand and forgive. But it’s ultimately the spite and hurt people can’t let go of which becomes their undoing.
I also find it interesting that Heaven is only mentioned once. Humanity doesn’t go on this massive mission to find Heaven as an alternative, and none of the hell scouts mention encountering demons or the devil, which of course makes sense when it’s revealed that “hell” is something created by humans rather than the traditional hell.
One thing I WAS wondering is what was stopping a group of humans from making a separate time machine to subvert the creation of Hell, and/or destroying Hell. Since you have a part two coming, I’m guessing more will be revealed with that.
Thank you so much for commenting, I’m glad you found the story so gripping. With how quickly I wrote this, it’s a relief to see that so much of what I was saying about humanity and the protagonist got through as intended. And I agree; time travel is one of those things that we should never have access to.
I probably should be more clear that this story is part of a collection of 12 unrelated stories, so unfortunately there is no part 2, as ‘Judgement’ will be a completely separate story. I purposely wanted to leave this one a bit open ended, with a bit of mystery about how long we had to break this cycle and how close we were to doing so. Mostly so people were free to speculate, as you did, on ways things could go differently if just a few more people tried to change things.
As for humans building a second time machine, in this time loop at least there was a reluctance to do projects that took resources and manpower from Collective’s time machine and the morgues. Even the re-bodiment research was eventually canned despite how much promise it showed. But in a future loop, if there are enough people willing to work on such a project, then you’re right, it could work. Especially if the Collective will of Humanity decides to share their knowledge of time travel and the origins of hell when it goes back. I imagine there would be quite a lot of things that could be done to break the loop that leads to hell, as long as enough people believed it was possible, and believed that humanity was worth preserving. The challenge, as always, isn’t any technical limitation, but getting enough people to work towards the goal. It’s easy to feel powerless on our own, and I’ve seen that lead people to think that there is no point in trying to fix anything.
Thank you again for your comment. It really does mean a lot to me. I hope you find other stories of mine that you enjoy.