Day 227 Writing Short Stories

Stale

The sun scorched the ruined city. The desolate buildings had fallen into disrepair years ago. Nothing grew on their walls. No house held life. Whatever was left behind after the bombs fell was already looted.

He walked past the neighborhood where his grandfather had grown up. He had never seen cities as they were meant to be. Just mock-up cities built in the ruins, destroyed one after another by the ravagers and other gun-happy fools. There was no rest. Just constant wandering, hoping there was civilization left somewhere.

Cities like the one he was in were death traps, full of mutated monsters and gangs, but he dared death for the occasional book he found. Most had been burned a long time ago or used as building materials. But there was an odd book here and there, left behind along with family albums. The world looked strange in the pictures. It was a world of abundance no one had known in centuries.

He turned left between the bombed office buildings and made his way up the hill. This time, he had a target. It was a place he had heard of in his childhood stories. A place so magical that his father had carried the dream of it for his grandfather. It was a place of sanctuary, a man could retreat to after a hard day’s work. There was no guarantee that it would have survived the nuclear war, but seeing it gone would end the dream.

The place existed. Half of its roof had fallen. All the windows were blown inward. The walls barely held it together. Yet, in a sense, the bar existed. He stepped in, keeping his hand on the pistol’s hilt, leaning heavily against it, ready to draw.

The bar was deserted. There was only dust and scattered bricks left. Someone had mashed the place into pieces and left half-eaten and rotten bodies on the floor. He walked over a woman’s corpse. Her head was dragged a few feet away from her. He didn’t want to know what had happened to her. The world was not kind to anyone anymore. People suffered fates he wished on no one.

He knelt behind the bar counter that had once been there. He knew every inch of the bar. The layout and the stories were etched into his brain. He loosened the floorboards one by one, finding the trapdoor that he knew to exist. He dragged it open and took the rickety steps down into the underground tunnels that had once housed people.

He lit the lamp he had created from all the spare parts he had found, and the tunnels became alive in front of him. They were not just stories anymore. They were the real thing. He walked through the tunnels, following his stories, and there it was, what his grandfather and father had spoken of. It was a fall full of spirits of the old world: ale, wine, whiskey, rum… The golden drinks that could make him rich, buy him a transport, ammo, and guns, and who knew maybe solitude and peace.

He took the first bottle out of the rack and popped it open. He drank in the ale, stale from time, yet still nothing his mouth had tasted before. The richness of the ale made him understand all the stories he had heard, the abundance in the pictures. He now knew why his grandfather and father had done everything in their power to come here and why he had carried on their dream.

Aging Actress

An aging actress takes a shitty movie part. I skipped this one.

Dog

A dog defends its owner from a vacuum cleaner. I skipped this one too.

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

I had stamina only for the first prompt. The other two might have amounted to something good if I had had the concentration to write them. I don’t. Let’s hope my mind is working better tomorrow.

Thank you for reading ❤ Have a mindful day!