The Consequences of that Demonstration for Good or Ill

Part 3 of 3 of a multipart prompt.

The smart thing to do would’ve been to laugh and give a wink towards the man who had been heckling Katrina earlier, fling the hand backstage, and then immediately pull something else out of the hat to distract the audience. That would’ve been the smart thing. What Katrina actually did was drop the hat and chuck the hand away from her as fast and as hard as she could, right into the audience. The chaos was rapid and complete. The audience was no longer an audience, it was a hysterical mob. Katrina watched in horror as grown men trampled little old ladies in their haste to get just a little bit further from the severed hand. Women screamed, some fainted, their children getting swept away in the tide of patrons trying to exit the theater. Katrina backed up slowly and slipped behind the curtain.

Sounds Became Intense, I Heard Everything

Part 2 of 4 of a multi-part writing prompt dealing with the senses.

Standing in line, waiting to board that infamous ride, all the sounds of the amusement park suddenly sprouted around with a blossoming intensity. I heard everything. I heard a barker at Prize Alley trying to get a young couple to play that game with the squirt guns. I heard the individual scream of a blond on the Gemini as the trains raced over a hill. I heard a child crying for more ice cream at one of the concession stands. But more important, I heard the ride. I heard the creaking of the metal support beams and the chunk of the over-greased gears. I heard a soft whine in the cable that pulled the car up to the top of the tower and the groan of the tower itself as it swayed in the wind. Finally, unmistakably, I heard the bolt shear and go pinging off into the ether as the car plummeted down with no stopping mechanism..

Blindness Set In, I Couldn’t See

First of four writing prompts themed around senses.

Sinking, sinking into the deep. The hardest part is just letting yourself drift down through the water away from the light. At first there are a few fish to catch my attention, but out here, in the middle, that’s all you get. After that, it’s nothing but empty water all around getting darker and darker until…the blindness sets in. I can’t see an inch in front of my face and through I’m in the sub, I can still feel the pressure of the water outside as the pressure gages adjust a fraction too slowly. You would think there’d be all sorts of glowing buttons and dials, but not in this sub. In this sub everything is dark, no automatic lights either inside or out. This sub is “The Hunter” and our prey is shy.

The Person Finally Arrives at Their Destination but is Disappointed or Surprised by What They Find There

Part 3 of 3 of a multi-part prompt in which the heroine attempts to find her own adventure.

I sprinted away from the grinning, stripy, half-cat through the trees, wincing as the pain in my ankle increased exponentially. Finally, unable to run any longer, I stumbled to a stop in a clearing and sat on a felled tree. Elevating my ankle onto the tree, I decided here would be an okay place to rest until I found my adventure. Maybe, my ankle would be better in the morning. A man hiked out of the woods across the clearing from me. He was tall, dark, and handsome. Now this would be okay, I could do with a little prince charming, I thought. He saw me and stopped.

“Oh no, you must get away from here, run!”

“What?”

He doubled over in pain and then fell to the ground. I tiptoed over to him, and heard a growl. It was then that I noticed the large, white full-moon above the trees. And then I noticed sharp teeth.

The Person Struggles to Get Back on the Road

Part 2 of 3 of a multi-part writing prompt in which our heroine attempts to find her own adventure.

“Can I get you a cup of tea?” asked the caterpillar.
“Definitely not. I better go before the lawyers come.”
“Suit yourself.”
I struggled back out the door and left the labyrinth behind me. My ankle still stung, but I had to get going or I would never get to my adventure. The woods ahead were dark and deep, but there was a well-kept path between the giant gnarled trunks. A little ways along I even found a good walking stick to help keep the weight off of my ankle. Time wore on and the path wandered until finally giving up the goat and disappearing altogether.
“Uh oh.”
“What’s the matter?”
I looked around but saw no one.
“Who said that?”
“Why, I did.”
I finally spied a pair of eyes and a wide white-toothed smile in the crook of a nearby tree.
“Oh no.”
“What’s the problem?” asked the Cheshire cat becoming more corporeal by the second.
“I’ve lost my way.”
“Impossible. All the ways around here belong-“
“-To the queen of hearts, I know, I know. Crap.”

The Other Person Goes East, Looking for Something They’d Lost

Part 3 of 3 of a multi-part prompt that I made into an homage for Ian Tregillis's latest angelic noir novel Something More Than Night.

I didn’t want to take the sword, but Gabriel isn’t a Seraphim you argue with, so I took it and stowed it before my jitters could unmake a sound principle of physics.

“Where are you off to?”

Gabriel looked beyond me to the rising of a hundred million suns. “I must fortify the essence of religious sanctity, make pure the rivulets of undying devotion, and find my car keys.”

“I thought you said that this wasn’t a time for jokes, Sir.”

Gabriel turned his gazes back to me. “Who’s joking?”

With that he vanished and took a small child’s wonder with him. Having no intention of actually braving the deeps, I decided to camp out a while in the dark matter on the metaphoric end of the spectral universe.

The First Person Goes South, Taking Something They Shouldn’t Have

Part 2 of 3 of a multi-part prompt that I made an homage to Ian Tregillis's latest angelic noir novel, Something More Than Night.

Gabriel gave me that look he has, you know, the one that begets fusion and melts crusts of planets. I didn’t like that look.

“Sir?”

He put a talon on my shoulder or what would have been my shoulder if I actually had shoulders. His mere touch buzzed through me like lightning cutting through atoms to make ozone.

“We need you to infiltrate the Deeps, Thuriel. We must have the first strike.”

I’m not much of a hard hitter by way of angelic beings, I’m more of a weaver of mathematical improbabilities, so Gabriel’s words unnerved me. They caused a gaping maw of fear to open in my representation of guts, but I plastered it over with indignation.

“Uh, why me, Boss? I don’t even own a flaming sword.”

Gabriel reached into robes glowing with the light of a thousand dying planets and withdrew a sword swathed in flames brighter than the plasma in the center of a baby star.

“Here, take mine.”
.

Two People Standing at a Crossroads Taking Care of Business

This is part one of three writing prompts, and an homage to author Ian Tregillis's latest novel Something More Than Night.

We stood at the crossroads of interplanetary dissonance and quadrilateral harmony. It was nice there. Despite the nomenclature, interplanetary dissonance can sound quite beautiful at times. But Gabriel wasn’t there for the ambiance. He was all business, though his feathers beat in time to the pulsing of the nearest quasar.
 
“Thuriel, what have you to report?”
 
“The outer reaches of mortal trimaterial thought processes are secure. There will be no breech from there, Sir.”
 
“What of the motes of carbon between the toes of the Precambrian era?”
 
“Tight as a cheerleader’s sweater.”
 
Gabriel raised an angelic eyebrow at me. “You’ve been spending way too much time on the mortal plane.” He shook his head and somewhere a newborn nebula was blown back into disparate particles. “But this is no time for jests. The demons are poised and ready to strike and we must bar them from objective reality in any way that we can.”

This is Not the Way Out

Post group inspiration inside the Maynard parking structure.

Silence echoes all around, but the too-bright lights scream in my eyes,
“This is not the way out!”
Surrounded by crumbling concrete splashed with faded paint. Blue arrows point in any direction,
but this is not the way out.
I spin round and round watching as the filthy, tattered tarps block out the view of the outside world,
and this is not the way out.
I am relentlessly pursued by unblinking eyes boring into the back of my skull. They follow me, follow me, hound me, and I try to tell them
this is not the way out.
Around each corner a new obstacle awaits, but every one is the same. Though the signs say exit,
this is not the way out.
I finally pay the rickety gatekeeper and emerge into the night. He waves me on smiling, and his teeth speak to me.
“This is not the way out.”

Playtime

Warning: Mature Themes

This is an extension of the original prompt "(1m) A thief breaks into a house and encounters the owner of the house with a gun (write 4 lines of dialogue only and see what ending you take it to)."

“Hey Mister, watcha doin’?”

Jeremy sighed heavily and turned to the source of the voice with a huge, forced grin on his face.

“Oh hey Little Man! I’m just picking up a few things for your folks, what are you doing out of bed this late-“

Jeremy’s grin faltered as he saw the pistol in the little boy’s hand. It was matte black and stood out in stark relief against his baby blue, dinosaur pajamas. Solid and weighing down the toddler’s wrist at an awkward angle, Jeremy knew in an instant that it was real.

“Where did you get that?”

The Lightning Bug

Inspired by actual events on the way home from post writing group festivities.

   As she walked along the moonlit street with the cool breeze in her hair, the vestiges of a night of comrades and jocularity clung to her like fine, silken spider webs, but the further she tread from the noise and warmth of the restaurant, the more they faded. Dreary thoughts wormed their way through her placid joy and stole her smile by measures. I need to do this. I should do that. I mustn’t forget to... Did I forget to? The mundane maintenance of the tedious machinations of life slowed her steps as she climbed the stairs of the too bright parking structure.

    Trudging up the last few steps, she spotted her car and took a few steps towards it before something odd caught her eye. A lightning bug hovered just below her waist in the middle of the lane, deep enough in the building that it was far from escape out into the night. She wondered how it could have gotten there, for surely fireflies weren’t prone to simply wander into parking structures. Perhaps someone’s car alarm had gone off and the blinking headlights had lured it, or maybe it hitched a ride in the bed of the pickup truck parked obliquely next to her. It was such an incongruous sight that it gave her a moment’s pause. She watched it in fascination until she eventually overcame her initial bewilderment then continued past the misplaced insect.

Withered the Flame

Warning: Strong Language

Now comes Her hue and cry,
Change the tresses upon their sighing trestles.
Hark!
Matrimony of Mother Nature and Father
Time marred, malleable, molded so
The creeping chill heralds the new hue.
Hitherto emerald alas now the flames rage
Hew the tendrils and the sparks fall to
Wrap Her in their coat of embers.

Pond

A brief story from a prompt I wrote for last year.

Her skin was pale yellow, like marble stained with butter. Her eyes flitted back and forth, tracking the little green particles around her as the two men in suits stood above, watching her. They had gold in their eyes, not green, and suits as dark as river stones. They looked at her like she was meat, or a jeweled statue.

Vampire Child Origins (part 2)

He opened the door to see two women standing there, one in her thirties, the other in her mid-forties. They were both dressed in white blouses, maroon cardigans pencil skirts down past the knee with black buckle shoes. Badges on the cardigans marked them, stamping Nanny Brigade on their left shoulders.

“Mr. Riovas? My name is Donna, this Andréa We are here on behalf of the UAO, you asked for a certified nanny?” the older woman spoke in a clear concise tone that reminded Thomas of a sister he had as a teacher in catholic school.

There is a difference between a "Pocket-watch" and a "Pocketwatch"

Warning: Strong Language, Mature Themes

I stumbled across a prompt online that I really, really like. (writingprompts.tumblr.com) The prompt was, "Convince me that the Universe wants to be noticed." I laughed. And then, wrote. This is a snippet, a sample from a five page prose. Enjoy! :)

If you dig into a pocket,

you may find a pocketwatch...
...or a cookie.
but that's another story.

because I dug into this pocket.
a...
faux pocket on the back of some blue jean jeggings.
a...
careless, nervous, airless gesture
a...
slip of the mind, the thumb, and BOOM.

a fake hole turned--

Cemetery Man

The following piece was written in 3 minutes using three rapid sequential prompts each one-minute long.

Carl threw his back out last month so I had to pull in extra long shifts and complained incessantly to the residents of the the Worthington tomb. It was nice they always listened. That would have been all right one would imagine but sitting up all night talking to dead people is not healthy. What is worse is when they start to talk back? You ask yourself am I crazy or should I be scared. Or both I suppose. That night was the the first time I heard them. It was a kindly old lady who said, “Apple strudel or pie?” I said “pie” and that was my first mistake.

Vampire Child Origins (part 1)

When Thomas Riovas married Allay, he didn’t think he would outlive her. Most people don’t think they are going to outlive their spouse, but he had even less reason to see it coming. Allay had been alive almost as long as humans had been civilized, being born in one of the northern providences of ancient Mesopotamia, circa 1500 BC.

As far as he knew, being married to a vampire was no different than being married to a normal woman, aside from her getting into debates with history professors. She had never even bitten him, she had been purely on a diet of bag blood, which he understood to be the case with most vampires now, as the licensing process for live feedings was long and a pain in the ass.