Day 152 Writing Short Stories

Monotone

That sound, that echo, that monotone voice inside you, telling you that you are not good enough, you are wrong, you are bad, you mean nothing. How did it sneak in? How did it stay there? Why does it have such control? The shame.

Yet, it was not always there. She didn’t once recognize its power. It sneaked in when she was a kid. The first time someone asked her why she was the way she was? The first time, someone refused to play with her. Somehow, all those moments let in a monotone voice that ingrained as an inseparable part of her.

But now she was getting rid of it, recognizing it was not her voice. It was a demon that should be exercised out. She was done being ashamed of who she was. She was done being molded into their view of what one was supposed to be. She was getting rid of the demon of shame.

A Boy

He still woke up sweating and screaming, seeing the fire engulf the house and being trapped inside it with no way out. He felt his heart racing as he relived the moment again. Seeing the boy and his hand reaching for him.

All should be fine. The doctors gave the go-ahead to return to work. He had recovered from the accident, but it still plagued him. If the boy hadn’t been there and taken him out, he, the firefighter, would have died in the flames.

He had had close calls before, but this was worse.

He turned to his side and tried to sleep. He had gone back to see the house again and talked to the owners to thank them for their boy’s bravery and kindness. But there was no boy. No one knew what he spoke of. The other firefighters said that he had stumbled out of the burning building on his own.

There was no record of the boy. Not a previous resident. No neighborhood kid, who looked the same. But he had dug deeper, and he had found his boy. It was a kid who had gone missing from the other side of the country twenty years ago, looking exactly the same as he had when he had offered his hand and guided him out of the burning building.

Nothing made sense.

But there he was again, the boy. Standing in his bedroom, watching over him, and he wasn’t sure if what he saw was real or not.

Talent

The autumn leaves were already shining bright yellow and red. The wind had turned colder, but this was one of those warmer autumn days when everything felt right. She wiggled her nose and danced on the fountain stones. She didn’t care what others thought at the park when they saw her dancing. The music in her headphones and the dance came first. It was one of those days that only the moment made sense. Only following her mood felt right.

She was smiling as a man came to tap her shoulder.

“Miss,” the man said.

…

And I don’t know where this goes! I tried to figure it out. But I didn’t like any of the paths. The girl should be discovered for an unexpected talent. And I don’t know what that is. At first, I thought it would be the nose, then the dancing, but nothing felt right to me. So, I’m not able to move on. I just wish she could continue dancing and loving her music without the need to profit from it.

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

I’m feeling blue—still two more weeks until I can climb. Half of my friends have gone AWOL, deeming me useless during the time I haven’t been able to climb, one and a half months. And I know when I go back to climbing again, I need to find new friends, and that terrifies me. The local gym is small, and I know almost everyone there, and there are no potential “best friend” climbing partners there. (The new climbers are 10-15 years younger than I, and so on.) So I have to reach wider, and that feels scary and enormous. But not all is bad. I appreciate the few who have stuck around—those who did the same the last time I was injured. I just don’t seem to learn with the rest of them.

But that’s enough about that. None of the prompts sparked joy exactly today. I felt like all of them were an exercise I needed to complete, and I’m sure that it shows. I just wish the girl could dance her song away in peace.

Thank you for reading! Have a wonderful autumn day ❤