The echo of silence surrounds this place
I stare into another realm,
At the stranger falling beneath the surface.
Since our next Sudden Fiction Contest is coming up soon (stay tuned for details), here’ s another entry from our last contest…
Where trees officially carried, almost quietly, the secret language of sorrow, a girl sat by a pond nearby. She put her hand in her pocket where she carried the little purple notepad that he left at her doorstep a year ago. Read the rest of this entry »
Guilty until proven innocent
I cannot plead the fifth
Because all of the evidence points to me
I killed an innocent kid
Read the rest of this entry »
These are pretty straightforward prompts (at least the 1st and 3rd ones are). Sometimes straightforward is best.
When you’ve done some writing you want to share based on these prompts, put it into the “leave a comment” box/link for this post…
Make sure to do each step, in order. Allowing yourself the “brainstorming” first steps can do so much for your writing… Read the rest of this entry »
Characters
MINERVA, Wife mid 40’s
JOE, Husband mid 40’s
Setting
Their living room. Winter afternoon. The present.
Lights come up and Joe is sitting on a chair opposite the couch. There is a fire in the wood stove slightly down stage. He is looking through vacation catalogs. Dog bones and toys are scattered on a rug between the chair and couch.
MINERVA walks in with a cup of tea… Read the rest of this entry »
The sky is an inky indigo, devoid of stars,
and so the bicyclist stands out: a shadow
wearing a red windbreaker.
But as he nears the intersection (and so do I,
caught by a red light), the lines fill in.
A face overshadowed by worry. Hands, pedals.
The shops and traffic lights shine neon.
The road is clear, dark, open to invitations,
lit by the sometimes glow of white headlights.
He rides on, and my radio station flickers static.
Raindrops spatter onto my windshield,
sparkling, tiny as a child’s glitter.
Bundled up by the fire
But your skin is like ice
Still striving for that moment
When your soul can be released Read the rest of this entry »
William, the obtrusive, callused arranger, bursts into the back room. “This place is perfect, no?” His thick French accent muddles up his little proud giggles. “This place, she is… how do you say? Nonchalant, oui?” He looks over to the beautiful woman adorned with white. She looks towards the floor, paying no attention to William’s antics.
We held our semi-annual Sudden Fiction Contest last Wednesday…
Contestants were given 30 minutes work with the following 3 prompts… Read the rest of this entry »
Without thinking, Oswald creates an entirely fictitious world within his own mind. It happens every day. Inside this world, the cruel and bitter ghosts of his past manifest by possessing what he perceives as the monsters of his present. He flicks on his turn signal as he lets his foot weigh slightly on the brake. He makes a complete stop at the corner, obeying the arbitrary red symbol of his imprisonment that reads so clearly, “STOP.” But there was no real stopping, was there? There was no way to put a halt to the boulder that had already been set rolling in such a fluid, yet all the same, erratic motion.
We thought of Carol again. Neither of us had been able to get the image of her mangled body, or the sound of her mother’s hysterical sobbing out of our minds. They were etched in our memories now. A macabre movie reel that just keeps playing and playing over and over again. Read the rest of this entry »
While the overcast clouds ate through the black sky, I could feel no rain. I heard the humming of the motor, felt vibrations cutting through my body. My skin began to itch and I violently tore at the ropes that were binding me, twisting back and forth like a mental patient in a straightjacket. but it was no use.
I was stuck. Read the rest of this entry »
The awkwardness of the situation was over.
We had met only a few hours earlier and with nothing but the sound of our own breath, the highway through the open window and other peoples luggage being dragged outside our door we had had sex.
Good sex.
Unprotected sex. Read the rest of this entry »
