Day 189 Writing Short Stories

Sorrow

Nothing was as it seemed. The darkness had swallowed everything she touched. There was just a stifled stillness, and she wasn’t sure how to struggle free. The dark tentacles pinned her down on her bed, sucking the life out of her. There was just a thick, heavy sorrow within. No will to struggle. Just surrender.

She could hear their muffled voices, demanding her to fight, whispering about all the past lives that seemed now too far away to reach. They spoke of someone who no longer existed. They said kind things that were never there. She was bad. She was the worst. There was just the dark ceiling, the hard, unyielding bed, and the desire to die. She just had to let go, but she was too afraid to surrender to the tentacles, to the harsh eyes that followed her every thought, every mood, stripping her of every ounce of humanity. She was just flesh. This useless thing that no longer served her.

There was a sob. It was not hers. It was someone else wishing the impossible. They didn’t see the festering wounds on her body, where the tentacles latched onto her. They didn’t see as the blood oozed out of her like rotten marmalade, looking alien. Her body had become hollow. Soon, it would have all of her. Soon, all this would fade, and she wouldn’t have to make a choice. Soon, the darkness took her sorrows away. No one would need to remember her.

Crow

The beak came at him, piercing the skin on his neck. He shielded himself from his wife; he had accidentally turned into a crow.

“Please, darling. I know. Let me work to reverse the spell.”

The crow flew over the bookshelf, watching him there, letting out a sharp caw.

He hunched over his desk to flip through the spellbook he had found in his father’s attic. As soon as his hands had touched the book, he had known what he was and what his dead father was, and now here he was with a crow as a wife.

Before this, he had done a levitation spell that worked for five minutes. It had made the kitchen table crash down and break his wife’s favorite china. If he were ever to be able to turn her back, he would have a hell of a time. The china incident had caused a week-long rift, and he had barely survived it. He had just wanted something to take the edge off, to show her what the magic might bring to their lives, and now she was a crow.

At least, she would now believe him that he was a wizard, a real-life wizard.

He glanced at his wife. Her black eyes pierced his stare. Hell to pay, he thought, and hunched back over the book. There was no reverse spell. He had accidentally turned his wife into a familiar, and nothing in the book explained how to undo it.

He searched for a shapeshifting spell and decided it was their best bet. He mumbled out the incantation, and the crow turned into a huge ornamental vase. He rushed to catch it as it tipped over. He hugged the vase against his chest, took it to the table, and began reading the book feverishly. Somehow, there was a sense that this might take their entire lives to fix.

The vase let out a hollow sound, as if wind swirled inside it.

Lover

This is about a wife meeting her husband’s lover. So, I skipped this one.

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

I would love to be able to turn into a crow. It would be fantastic to see the world from an entirely new perspective. To fly over this city of mine, and see how it unfolds under me. I would fly to the nearby nature reserve and see all the hidden things not shown to the human me. I’m sure there’s more life in there that runs away as I walk past them, afraid of this human form. I would see all the birds of prey, the fox, the owls, the badgers, and the other creatures I can’t even fathom living there. But for now I can’t, but I keep searching.

Have a wonderful day! And if you can turn into a crow, I wish you happy flying. Thank you for reading ❤