Monster

Aidan Collins

High School Senior

October 2023

Prompt: Design a monster and write a short story about it.

In the depths of the digital world, there lived a curious creature known as the "ASCII Beast." It was composed entirely of typographical characters, a manifestation of code gone awry. With its keen "●" eye and a mischievous grin made of "oo," it roamed the digital landscapes causing glitches and mayhem wherever it went.

One day, a young programmer named Emily stumbled upon the ASCII Beast while debugging her code. Instead of being afraid, she decided to communicate with the creature, typing out messages in code. To her surprise, the beast responded in a cryptic but friendly manner.

Emily and the ASCII Beast formed an unlikely friendship, solving coding conundrums together and creating beautiful digital art. They showed the world that even the quirkiest and most unconventional characters could bring about creativity and collaboration in the realm of code.

And so, in the world of programmers and digital artists, the legend of the ASCII Beast became a symbol of the unexpected wonders that could emerge from the vast sea of code and characters.