Ever wake up from the middle of dead sleep and go, "Wait, there was something I was supposed to do last night!"
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| I couldn't find this all in one gif and it made me sad. Someone should rectify this issue. |
That's how I was about 18 minutes ago o.o Here's your (laaaate) post! I'll probably be back around noon to spread the word about it, but my family is dragging me Christmas tree hunting, and I don't know where Sie and Rin are at this early in the morning XD
OBSERVE IN PARTICULAR RULE #2
FEEL THE WRATH OF FLAVIO IF IT IS DISOBEYED
SHINY?
Judges This Week: Mars and Rin
Word count: 300 max
How: Submit your stories as a comment to this post, along with your name, word count, and title (and Twitter handle or blog if you've got 'em!). Only one entry per person.
Deadline: 10 AM PDT TOMORROW, SUNDAY
Results announced: Next Wednesday, likely around 10 pm - 11:59 pm!
Remember: The prompt can be mutilated, but not beyond recognition. Use the prompt as the opening line to your piece (observe rule #2 up there).
Prompt
He dug his fingers into the dry ground.
The Hills of Forever
ReplyDeleteHe dug his fingers into the dry ground, scooped up a fistful of the scorched earth, opened his hand slowly and let the dying soil slip down and away, back to the dry land. As it fell, a gust of wind swooped in and carried some of the parched grains off and away.
Caroline stood just behind him, mesmerized by Kent’s’ arid pantomime.
“Maybe you should dig further down?” she both asked and directed.
He looked up at her, his wide-brimmed straw panama sunhat swallowing much of her flaxen-blonde hair. He could see that she was melting in the fierce heat and that the hat, while affording her some relief from the inferno, was only going to delay the inevitable unless they found shade or water. Preferably both.
The bright rays from the fiery ball slammed into his eyes. He lowered the brim of his Have a Good Time at Goodtime Chuckle’s ball cap a tad.
“I could. Our remaining time might be better spent walking towards those hills.”
She looked up. Off in the distance, a distance they had no way to measure, there were hills. The hills had been their destination when they had turned off the desert highway a lifetime ago. An hour in on the dirt road, his car had suddenly stopped at high noon.
They had had three choices. Stay with the car; walk back to the highway; walk towards the hills.
In the chimera of the heat, the hills had looked closer.
“We don’t seem to getting any nearer to them,” she whispered.
“No,” he said. “They are getting away from us.”
He could have lied, softened the blow.
Telling the truth had always seemed the way to go.
All of his life.
Even at the end, it was all he had to offer.
300 dreams of cool clear water
@billmelaterplea
www.engleson.ca
Exercise
ReplyDeleteStephen Shirres (@The_red_Fleece)
www.theredfleece.co.uk
Word Count = 252
I dig my fingers into the dry ground. The soil feels soft and real but I can't be sure. Nolan said the only way to be sure was taste. They can't control taste. Not yet. My tongue dashes out and in like a lizard tasting the air. I taste sweetness.
"Thank you." I threw back my arms and scream at the sky, not caring who is listening. Survival instinct replaces elation. They'll know I've escaped by now. I need to get away, far away. I pick a direction and run and run and run. I gulp down as much air as he can to keep going. Soon it isn't enough. I need to stop, to shelter. My legs smack against something hard. I crash into the hard ground. A log, I've fallen over a log. Perfect. I dive inside. The wood cold through my prison clothes. A yawn turns into sleep.
Prison. I'm not. Her. Blood. Guilty. Sex. Escape. Blood. Psychological. Knife. Blood. Entrapment. Blood. Blood. Blood. Beeeeeeeeep.
The sound long and piercing. Electronic, like the prison. But I escaped. The same three word thought, over and over again. Reality, but which one. I lash out, don't know why, maybe instinct again. Fist into wood, wood becomes pixals, crying away. Wood becomes metal and glass. Behind the latter is Nolan in full prison uniform. She is smiling, why is she smiling?
“Prisoner 20122015 your exercise time is over. Stand away from the door. We need to return you to your cell.”
Words: 300
ReplyDelete@CarinMarais
Dust Red As Blood
Arek dug his fingers into the dry ground. Red dust caked beneath the priest’s fingernails and clung to the blood staining his wrinkled hands. Tears turned the world to a blurred, red puddle even as he pushed more of the dirt from the quickly dug grave. He wiped his face, leaving it painted in streaks of red dust, tears, and blood. Some way from him, standing close to the Veil usually hidden from mortals, was one of the Guardians of the Veil. Her light blue cloak stood in stark contrast to the deep brown of the leather armour she wore. Her face was veiled and her right hand hand was clenched around a spear. She stared out over the flat plain dotted with small settlements. Behind her the shrine of the Khalne Alima stood broken and burnt.
“Why did you not take me?” he shouted at her. She turned a solemn face towards him. A frown pulled at her brow.
“I was the one who should have guarded the shrine today. You should have taken me!” Arek shouted.
She did not move and kept on staring at him. Behind her the Veil glimmered as if it, too, was seen through tears.
Arek got up and staggered towards her.
“Please, let us trade places,” he pleaded. “Galeun is too young. He was never supposed to have been here.”
“You came as soon as you saw the fire at the shrine. You did not think of your own wellbeing,” she said. The Guardian’s words were clipped as if she was unused to talking. “You are asking something of me which I cannot give.” The Guardian pointed over his shoulder and the man turned around. On the ground, next to the boy, was his own body, disfigured from the wounds dealt to him.
Reunited
ReplyDeleteThis is after deadline due to Christmas shopping and I only had 1/2hr before time up but thought I’d post anyway – just to show willing!
269 words
@el_Stevie
#Flashdog
He dug his fingers into the dry ground. It shouldn’t be this way, not at this time of year. By rights, there should be snow, a dusting of purification to absolve his sins, keep his crime from prying eyes but instead she was coming back, reappearing. Just like she always said she would. He had laughed at those words, at the idle threat that had died with her eyes. Yet even after he had laid her in a shallow grave, she had still returned to whisper her loathing in his ear, night after night, until finally he could bear it no longer. And now her voice had followed him outside, become more real beneath the glittering stars and the frosted night.
“Can you see me?” she whispered.
He felt a chill caress his cheek.
He scrabbled deeper.
“Couldn’t stay away could you?” she murmured.
Deeper still, the soil becoming damper, more cloying the further he went. He could not remember burying her so far down. Nothing.
“I’m here,” she said. “You just need to keep searching.”
He raised his head and realised he could no longer see over the edge of the grave he had gifted his wife.
“Keep looking.”
Her voice was above him. And now he could clearly see her face, framed by the moon’s spotlight. She was smiling.
He reached his hands up to her but his fingers grabbed only loose dirt triggering the collapse of the trench.
As the soil poured over him, he reached out once more, touched something smooth, ivory, hard.
Bone.
She was here. He was safe. No one would find her.
But when he looked up he could no longer see the stars, only a never-ending darkness raining down on him.