Day 144 Writing Short Stories

Bell

The church bell struck midnight, and she knew what it meant. It struck only for those who knew how to listen. The sound made her skin prickle with goose bumps.

“It’s time,” she said pointlessly.

All her sisters had already gotten up. They knew the bell. They knew the dead. They knew what was expected of them.

She got her cape by the door and drew her hat deep down to shield herself from the autumn wind and the rain. Her sisters followed her.

They were not her actual sisters. They were a coven. The ancient ones. They were there to guard the land—the boundary between the living and the dead.

Villain

The world was made of losers and winners. She was taught that early on. From that moment on, she was determined to become a winner. Thus far, everything had gone according to the plan. She owned the city. She had enough money and power to do as she wished, and people obeyed.

But then he had come along. A hero, they called him. He wore a bad excuse of spandex and paraded around in a cape. The foolish man had thought he could hide himself with glasses and by behaving all nerdy. She had a way to track people down.

And here he was, the man-child in his red cape, just in her grasp. And all she had to do was hug him, and she would drain all his powers. That was the unfortunate delivery method of her powers. Hugging. She hated touching people, and what she had done for the past years was hug more people than she cared for.

The man looked at her expectantly.

“Oh, sod it. Let him go,” she gushed to her henchmen. The thought of hugging the man wearing a spandex suit was too much even for a villain like her.

Childhood Home

There was never time to be alone. There was always someone present. A thought, a ghost, something wicked and malicious. She had woken up to shadows so many times that she didn’t know a life without them. But she had escaped; she had found a new place where the land was new.

The land under her childhood home had seen blood, and it drew all the nastiness to it. She could feel that in her bones now, watching the run-down house with her adult eyes. The new residents had already settled in, and she saw the look on the little girl’s face when she arrived home with her parents. She didn’t want to go in first. She lingered there, letting her parents shield her.

She must have seen the shadows, the figures, felt their presence already.

She couldn’t allow the girl to go through what she had gone through. When the family was gone, she would set the house on fire. That was the only way she could make sure no one would suffer again, that the little girl could be free and think of it all as a bad dream.

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

An odd day. I started editing my book, and it went sluggishly. Every sentence felt wrong, but I didn’t know how to improve it. I still managed to write. Then these prompts. I started with the Villain one and was ready to type in that I cannot write this one, but then the words came out. They were not mighty ones, but they were words nevertheless, and they opened up the scene. Then I wrote about the bell, and all I could think was the bell tolling for thee, so the witches came. The last short story was about a childhood home, and mine was spooky as heck. I was afraid of being home alone. There was always a pressing feeling, even when other people were home. Some of you might have noticed that already. I grew up in a world where my mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother believed in ghosts, fortunetelling, and all the other strange things. I remember countless times when they discussed seeing and feeling ghosts. My childhood friend was the same. So, I will forever live in a world where there is a sense of magic mixed with science and the need not to believe in it. And I think I will always be drawn to stories that involve death.

Thank you for reading! Have a spooky day ❤