Day 81 Ruminating And Writing

Captive

The little creature tossed and turned in the cage. It was nothing like she had seen before. She had trapped enough creatures in the forest to think she knew all sorts of what lived there, but this was the first of its kind. She turned her head, and the little dark fur ball stopped moving. She peered into it, and huge yellow eyes opened up to peer back at her.

“There you are,” she said. “I can’t have you roaming in from the portal. Earth is not made for you.”

The creature said nothing. It blinked and then began rolling in the cage, hitting against the wooden bars. With enough force, it would break free, but she was there, and she was fast. It was her duty to hunt down the creatures coming from the opening. It was a duty her father had left for her to fulfill.

Journalist

His hands trembled as he looked at the tied-up man on the floor. He hadn’t meant to. The man was the son of the country’s richest CEO. He had been there to interview him, and the obnoxious boy had thought it was okay to laugh at the people working for their company and their misery, as his father had cut the pension funds in half. His father was famously corrupt, but he had too much power to get caught.

Now, he had the boy, and he… he could force something. Or at least, make them beg. That would be the first. He wanted nothing more than to see the boy’s father beg for mercy, and the son, too. But this was not him. He hadn’t meant to. He didn’t know what to do. The boy knew it was him, and once he woke up, there would be hell to pay.

He took his phone out and almost dropped it. There was a guy whom he could call. He was a source—the bad kind.

Drug

It was happiness that you could swallow, and there was nothing you needed to do. Everyone was on it. There were no more miserable bastards in the grocery store hauling their kids after them. There were no lunatics raving at the bus stop. There was bliss. There was ecstasy. There were all the grinning faces that he hated. He was the only lunatic. He was the only sourpuss. He was what they would hate if they cared. More than once, he had tried to join their ranks, even when he saw them coming, passive drooling idiots that didn’t care about anything, living in an AI-powered world, but the drug didn’t work on him. He was a mutation. A miserable mutation, who couldn’t take the happy bill. He was on a quest to make the others give up their drug. No one ever did willingly. And when the forced withdrawal hit them, they cursed him with the most hellish language. They would never be able to live without the drug. They could never let go of the bliss they once experienced.

The Prompts are from the book A Year of Creative Writing Prompts.

Too hot. Too miserable. Too tired. Too irritated. It took me all day to muster the strength to write. I managed to edit my book in the morning. I chose it over this one. I’m glad I did. I accomplished a significant amount of editing and writing. But now, I’m happy that I wrote this one. I liked all of the ideas, and again, I think there’s a book in all of them. I especially loved the trapper woman who hunts creatures coming from the portal. Then I got all excited about the drug thing when I mixed AI with it. Now, I’m off to hike in the woods.

Thank you for reading! I wish you a wonderful day of wandering and roaming and ruminating ❤