Day 219 Writing Short Stories

Sweet

I let the sweet candy roll on my tongue. I swirled it against the roof of my mouth and sucked it hard. The sharp bitterness with the sugary taste grasped me and held my attention. The world beyond the taste melted away, and there was only the now that existed in every fiber of my being. I rolled the candy against my tongue and got the same hit. If you could feel every neuron in your brain firing, then it felt like that to me. I was in full focus.

Time

If you had asked me once who I am, I would have answered what I did. I would have said I’m a warrior, I’m a guard, I’m justice. I would have been proud to say those words. They meant so much to me then. Now, time has taken away the strength of my convictions. It has stifled the righteous flame. It has left me raw and bare. It has left me here at the bottom of this pit.

You see, warrior, justice, and guard are not about me. They are about the judgment of others, and they deemed me unworthy, dangerous. They dragged me here to work amongst those I once helped them to hunt down. My body is now bruised, beaten, and skin and bones. I know the hatred I bestowed on others deep within my core. I bear witness to it every day.

I’m a prisoner, a rebel, despicable, a dead man walking. I have lost all that I once was. They and time took it away. They changed kings. They changed the lands. They had no need of my loyalty, my actions. They let me live, but you can’t call the mines a life. It’s a punishment—a purgatory.

The thing is that kings can be made. And some remember. Even the hunted ones remember the old days. So do I. I don’t want to become a warrior, guard, or justice again. I want to become life and death to those who have abused my rights.

Healer

The land was soaked through. Everything shone in that late autumn dullness, where all good things had rotted away. The men had come to get me. They spoke of their village and the strange sickness that had taken over every house. People were turning mindless and feeble. The villagers asked me to heal them, and I came even though there were men amongst them who wanted me gone. There was no room in my profession to hold on to grudges.

The village looked pitiful. The once-vibrant streets were bare, and there was no sound of children anywhere. I remembered walking the streets, unable to breathe from the sheer number of people around me, but now there was just the eerie silence.

The men took me to the longhouse at the end of the village. They had taken the sick there and locked them inside. They didn’t dare come in with me. I stepped in and heard the moans of the sick. They were tied to makeshift beds. Their eyes were fully open, and what I met there was emptiness. The sickness had taken both the young and the old. I saw children no more than five shaking against the shackles that kept them at bay. They looked at me with their empty eyes, snapping their mouths open and closed.

The woman nearest to me tried to bite me as I got too close. I stepped back and heard it moan. It sounded like hunger and desperation. These were not the men and women I had mended not too long ago. These were not human.

I pushed my hand over the man next to the woman, keeping his head down, and my hands far away from his hands and teeth. His skin felt icy to the touch. It was leathery and lifeless. He swung his hands towards me and snapped his teeth together. I withdrew from the man and touched the next one, finding all the people in the same state.

I took my exit when I could bear their state no longer. I met the expectant eyes of the men outside. They wanted me to give them good news. I shook my head in sadness.

“They are far too gone. You need to put them out of their misery and burn their bodies. Shield your mouth, eyes, and all that you can when you burn them. This is no sickness that can be cured. This is a sickness that will take over everything when it gets its teeth in.”

I saw the sorrow in their eyes. The tears and the anger. But they didn’t question me. They already knew the answer, but they had hoped I could be their salvation. I couldn’t.

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

It was fun writing from a first-person perspective. I so often use the third-person perspective that it is almost like the first-person narrative doesn’t exist. I’m too tired to ramble on. I need to decide whether to take a short nap before heading to work or push through this one and try to edit my book. My cats woke me up before the clock went off, and I had a hard time getting back to sleep after that.

Thank you for reading ❤ Have a lovely day!