Pádraig Barry (PJ)
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pjbarry.bsky.social
Pádraig Barry (PJ)
@pjbarry.bsky.social
Retired guy. Nurses and surgeons are my heroes. An English/History Major Should Have Been, LH Guy explains a lot, Married to a Saint, What a Great Life We Are Having Together 🚫porn
She smiled as if to approve, then I swallowed the last of the potion without thinking about what is was doing to me. As my thoughts grew more muddled, I could feel myself grow large and strong. I was grotesque now with rough skin, big nose, and bushy hair. What a handsome troll me is!
#2WordPrompt
January 7, 2026 at 2:38 PM
Morticia said it was just a draft, but I knew better. Ghosts don’t always rattle chains. Sometimes they just bring a chill. I looked at her smile and shivered.
#vssmagic
January 7, 2026 at 2:18 PM
She said the wind in the barley was a kind of symphony, and I believed her, because she had the voice of someone who had seen the fae. The fields are brown now, but in summer they had sung a beautiful melody, and we had danced like fools in it.
#vss365
January 7, 2026 at 2:07 PM
The mint grew wild by the wall, cool and sharp in the morning sun. Jack went over and picked a few leaves. He crushed the mint between his fingers and smelled it. It reminded him of her. So many things did these days.
#bravewrite
a mint leaf with a person 's face on it
ALT: a mint leaf with a person 's face on it
media.tenor.com
January 7, 2026 at 1:58 PM
The first stage of time-travel protocol involved “mature, calm, rational decision-making,” which in this instance was impossible since everyone had just seen the dinosaur. Worse, the dinosaur had just seen them.
#2WordPrompt
a close up of a dinosaur looking at the camera
ALT: a close up of a dinosaur looking at the camera
media.tenor.com
January 6, 2026 at 4:52 PM
PJ wanted to share the view with her, the way the city lights flowed beyond the water, so perfect for a stolen kiss, but she was already looking elsewhere. Derek had arrived and her eyes would not leave his. PJ was once again wondering if he was too shy or too bold. Maybe just too slow.
#vssmagic
January 6, 2026 at 4:42 PM
Grace said she wasn’t spooked, but her hands kept folding the same dishcloth over and over, as though it might protect her from something if she got it just right. She had pooh-poohed the existence of ghosts but now she looked to PJ like a believer.
#vss365
January 6, 2026 at 4:32 PM
She wore a wild hat, the kind that suggested either a deep love of Edwardian fashion or a recent escape from a millinery explosion. In actuality Peggy had traveled back to the turn of the twentieth century Ascot Racecourse. She foolishly took a tip from Eliza and bet on Dover.
#bravewrite
January 6, 2026 at 4:26 PM
Agnes’ partner insisted that “standard temporal 18th century male attire” included a feathered hat and a codpiece, which is how they ended up barred from the Bodleian and excommunicated by the Archbishop of Canterbury.
#2WordPrompt
January 5, 2026 at 5:28 PM
Lady Queensbury insisted on calling it a “historic opportunity.” Agnes knew what that meant. in Oxford parlance, it meant “likely to go catastrophically wrong but funded by the History Department.” Agnes knew it was a good time to go on holiday to the Lake District.
#vssmagic
January 5, 2026 at 5:17 PM
Lady Queensbury, Dean of Temporal Studies, an oddball even by Oxford standards, insisted her cat Victoria had once been Churchill’s familiar and refused to evacuate without it. She never went to meetings without it.
#vss365
January 5, 2026 at 1:55 PM
The cat, who may or may not have been sentient, lapped delicately at the cream while the decidedly not sentient physicists argued about causality and who had eaten the last biscuit.
#bravewrite
a close up of a kitten drinking milk from a glass
ALT: a close up of a kitten drinking milk from a glass
media.tenor.com
January 5, 2026 at 1:50 PM
The tea service was of a generous size, clearly designed for Edwardian ladies with time to spare. Agnes for her part was bored out of her tree by the talk about the upcoming garden party at Lady Featherington’s estate. She was zoning out and wished she had coffee to stay focused.
#2WordPrompt
January 4, 2026 at 2:57 PM
Peter tried to hold her heart like the gift that it was. However as time passed, he found it fragile and heavy. He proved to be weak and it slipped through his fingers. Eventually her heart found its way to stronger hands where it belonged.
#vssmagic
January 4, 2026 at 2:38 PM
I was clueless, of course, as boys pretending to be men are, about the weight of a woman’s silence when it falls like snow on a winter morning. I grew up eventually and could put my shovel away, but it took a lot of trial and error.
#vss365
January 4, 2026 at 2:23 PM
In the mirror of her eyes, he glimpsed the man he might have been, had he not traded love for money. It was so far the other way his life had gone since he broke up with Anne and left for the big city.
#bravewrite
January 4, 2026 at 2:14 PM
Reposted by Pádraig Barry (PJ)
This all seems pretty unbecoming of a FIFA Peace Prize winner
January 3, 2026 at 2:42 PM
Agnes went back in time to 2026 to observe the Venezuelan invasion. War, she’d learned, didn’t just consume cities and soldiers; it devoured context, nuance, and any hope of a tidy narrative.
#2WordPrompt
January 3, 2026 at 2:15 PM
Time travel was such a state of the art program. However, when Agnes got to Oxford she was underwhelmed by the facilities. The time lab was sparse, all brushed steel and blinking lights, like a set designer’s idea of the future on a budget.
#vssmagic
January 3, 2026 at 1:59 PM
“Verities and Balderdash” was his best selling album, but Harry Chapin was more than a singer. His benefit concerts, over half of his total concerts, benefited many charitable works, particularly world hunger. He died far too soon and the world needs him more today than ever.
#vss365
January 3, 2026 at 1:53 PM
The lace curtain gave a little quiver in the breeze, as if the house itself were sighing. The papers would be signed today at the closing. The house had been in his family for over one hundred years, but in two hours would be no more.
#bravewrite
January 3, 2026 at 1:48 PM
They told Agnes to remove emotion and stay within defined protocols of time travel. She was to treat the past like a lab specimen, but it’s hard to stay clinical when the Blitz is falling around you and a handsome fire watcher hands you tea in a chipped cup and calls you “love.”
#2WordPrompt
January 2, 2026 at 3:08 PM
Finals week does not go well with time traveling. Agnes tried to cram the temporal coordinates, the Latin declensions, and the entire plot of Middlemarch into her brain before the drop, which is probably why she ended up in 1354 with a copy of Cosmopolitan instead of antibiotics.
#vssmagic
January 2, 2026 at 2:49 PM
Ted said he preferred abstraction to emotion, which was why he dated philosophers and not historians. He was tired of meeting people who cried over a footnote in Gibbon and ruined his dinner plans.
#vss365
January 2, 2026 at 2:26 PM
Even in the asylum, he spoke of his voyage to France as if it were a dream he had once had, a dream that had left him with a limp, a scattered mind and a heart that beat too loudly in quiet rooms.
#bravewrite
January 2, 2026 at 2:17 PM