Day 238 Writing Short Stories

Dear

Dear mind, why are you a trickster? Why do you come equipped with such lousy ware? I cannot escape from you. They offer me breathing to calm you, but all you do is lie. Lie about me, about my reality, about what is there and what is not. You are venomous, and I have no way to suck the poison out of you.

Dear mind, we were clearly never meant to cooperate.

The Isle of the Dead

I could never claim my life to be perfect, or that I ever was. I was flawed from the start, and I died flawed. Now, as the Isle of the Dead rises in front of me and the last ferry ride of my existence comes to an end, I’m tormented by the life I didn’t live. I let my mind trick me into not doing the things I wanted to do. I feared rejection and death. I feared failure. So, I never failed. I never tried. I never did.

Now the panic rises in me. There is no going back. Life on the island, if it can be called life, is devoid of everything. We, I, are to exist there until the universe ends and wipes out the memory of us. I can feel the eons piling on me. I can feel my life suffocating me.

I glance at the water and see the agony of the desperate. Their gaping, hungry mouths forever drowning. I can see them in me. They have dried to get back as I want to do now. They have jumped off the ferry and drowned themselves in a sea where you cannot die. To float there and watch the ferry go by would be a torment like no other. But it would be a chance. A chance I had never taken before. Chance for life.

I stand up from my seat.

The others watch me. They follow my gaze into the water. They speak nothing.

I step out of the ferry and let the ocean embrace me.

Due

I stretch and stretch the inevitable. I know the book is ready, and it should go, but I fear the rejection; I fear it is no good. So, I let it sit in my library of written words. I let it die there. The due day is gone. Yet, I do nothing and let it fester in me. My agent asks for the text. There is a message every single day. I say nothing. I let the book gnaw me alive. Little by little, I can feel my care for it wane. Yet, there is the promise of money. There is the contract. But all I have is the doubt and the whispers of failure. I’m no good. I’m nothing. But nothing is better than rejection.

I can hear my agent’s words. I can feel her disappointment. She knows I’m a hack. She knows that I’m no good. It is like a loop in my head. The more I resist handing the book off, the more I feel plagued and restless. It burns me. It consumes me. I hate myself. I hate the book. It would have been better if I had never even written it. The agent can go to hell.

I mute my phone, and I read and read and read. Then there is the liberation of the drink, and my mind goes quiet. No curse haunts me. There is no voice—just the numbness.

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

Today was a day of mood writing, letting the first-person narrative carry where it wants. Something is haunting the back of my mind. Like, I cannot move on until I release it. I’m in desperate need of an exorcist. Not sure what kind. I hope tomorrow is a day full of clarity.

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