Day 223 Writing Short Stories

Hollow

This feeling inside me, the hollowness of it. The echo of a story that once held true, and now is just an empty memory with a dull ache. I want to escape. I need to escape. But I can’t. I’m stuck in the now and the story I have created to sustain it. I feel the life draining out of me, yet there is nothing I can do about it.

I search for the shooting star to release me. I grasp at every motion, every emotion, every meaning, but they slip past me.

Maybe after midnight I can birth new? Maybe this year will release me, and the hollowness goes away.

Small Town

She knew she had been born wrong. She always had been. There had been the looks and the whispers, and then the blatant attacks against her. She had endured it all and remained, despite the looks she still got from her neighbors. They didn’t want her in their town. They wanted her gone.

She was a devil. Whatever she did, however many good deeds she did to others, it was never enough. All they saw were the horns that had been there when she was born. Horns that had made her mother and father abandon her here to her aunt, who had beaten sense and Bible into her. Aunt, who was now dead and buried in the hallowed ground, was hailed as a saint for what she had done for and to her.

All she knew was to be thankful for her. Thankful for the house she had left to her. Thankful for the food. Thankful for the lessons. She flinched at the memory. Without knowing it, she touched her horns, rubbing them. People looked at her, and she hurried her hand down, away from the horns.

They hurried their steps away from her.

She had done everything to get rid of the horns. But they couldn’t be cut. They couldn’t be filed away. They stood there against the test of time and the test of people. She had become a sideshow freak. She lived solely on the money she received from her interviews, from the pictures, from the curious spectators, from scholars’ tips. She had become an obsession for others, a fantasy, a dream, an item to possess.

Her body and mind were not hers. People argued over her. They put meaning into her. They never asked. If she spoke, they put their own narrative over hers, making her wish that she were the actual Devil with a capital D. Then she could curse them. But she was kind. She was shy. She was afraid of them. A devil wouldn’t be. All she was was a freak.

The World Happenings

Three friends talking over beers about how the world has gone to shitters. I skipped this one.

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

My mind feels odd. It has no story in it. There are words and a vague sense that a story lurks around, but not a full-fledged story, just a feeling. I found it hard to write today. So I let my words guide me, leaving them raw.

Thank you for reading ❤ Have a day full of stories!