Day 244 Writing Short Stories

Sunk

Water is not kind. It’s treacherous. It’s eroding. But it was what she was made of. She was made for the oceans and their deep trenches. She was made for the sharks and the eels. The sunken city, with its forgotten streets and collapsed buildings, was her home. She dived there every day she could.

Those days were getting fewer as she got older. There were more demands life was putting on her. More duties to fill. More bills to pay.

This could be her last dive before the real took her. The blue waters and the statues of the old felt so much more real than school, jobs, and families. Here, there was more to life than above the waters. Here she could feel her mind rest.

It felt so wrong how things were made. It was like cities and societies had gotten away from everyone, and they were running hard to catch them, exhausting themselves for nothing. Not all the things that were made needed to be made. There was so much excess that it had no point. They were made to be wanted, and the want was created through lies.

She wished she could change the stories people told about reality. This was real. The little fish that swam past her were real. The sand underneath her fins was real. But not the stories about smartwatches measuring and rating existence. Those were lies told by the useless things made for want, not for use. There was no point in her knowing her heart rate, her sleep, her exhaustion. She knew it. It was inside her body. It was who she was.

The lies created a disconnection. She hated the lies. She hated that she had to take part in them. All of her time was measured and merited. And the act itself mattered no more. It was the money made that made something valuable.

The sunken city was just a measure and not a wonder of its own.

She dived through the city. She had come up with so many stories of why it was at the bottom of the ocean and not above. She had made stories for all the houses she saw. For all the statues that she passed by. This was her secret. A place no one knew of. She could make a fortune by telling the truth, and she could escape the lies she hated, but she would make this place into that lie, and she didn’t want that. The city would never be measured in money. It was her bliss. It was her sanctuary.

Fight

The place smelled of ale and piss and long, sweaty nights out on the road. She lowered her hood and brushed the rain off her leather clothes. The tavern had been just the right kind of salvation from the rain.

She clocked several people watching her arrival. They measured her pose, the swords at her hip, and the daggers poking mid-shank. She kept her face neutral, not welcoming any unwanted attention. The rain had been enough to set her mood back.

She made her way to the bar. It was filled with other travelers from the road, hungry and thirsty, in need of a bed, just like her. She ordered herself the soup of the day and a massive jug of hot cider, and booked a small bed in the common room, enough to get her through the night.

The tables were full. She got a few offers to join their company, but she declined. She found a windowsill that hadn’t been taken yet. She nestled herself on it, nursing her cider.

The soup arrived in time, and it heated her body, making her feel almost normal, almost not like the bastard the rain always made her be. The night was spreading thin. She watched as the people around her were getting drunker and louder. She would rather go to bed, but the common room was no better. They never were. She would have to wait for others to pass out before she would take her shut-eye before heading early on the road.

But it was not her luck. The man who had been eyeing her all night had gotten enough beers under his belt to think it was wise to approach her. She asked him politely to leave, but when he grabbed her wrist, she knew that there would be no shelter for her today.

She kicked the man in the crotch, and the wail the man let out made the fight spread from all around him. Tables were kicked down. Swords were drawn. Fists were exchanged. The man she had kicked now bellowed louder, his face all flustered.

“You don’t want to try me,” she warned.

But the gigantic man didn’t listen. He came at her like a bull, all the blood leaving his brain.

She danced away underneath him and drew her daggers into her hands. The man turned around and didn’t hesitate to launch again. She slid to his right and sank her dagger into his side, stabbing him several times.

The man dropped to the ground, latching onto the table, taking it down with him. She moved behind him and slit his throat.

No one paid any attention to what she had done. The room was in chaos. The little fights were still going on. No one else had drawn their blades. She didn’t have that luxury. She didn’t have the luxury of staying, so she slipped back into the rain, cursing her luck.

Colors

The world and people were made of colors. She saw everything in colors. People shone in bright pink and yellow, or sometimes carried the dull grays and blacks. It was like music, but instead of hearing the tunes the cars made in traffic, she saw them blue or sometimes red, depending on the time of the day.

Sometimes it was hard to slip into the world of words people used together. She forgot what she was supposed to say, thinking that flashing the appropriate color was enough. She usually went with the serene colors of green, blue, and pale pink if she really wanted to express herself. What she got back were words. Words were hard to interpret. They carried so many secrets with them. So many tunes. So many colors. Sometimes they were masked yellow, but they were rimmed with green.

She didn’t like hidden intentions. She didn’t care for the plays and dances people made around each other. If there were just colors, there would be no need. You would instantly know if someone was feeling down despite the smile they put on. She knew. She couldn’t understand why others didn’t.

She went around the world with her headphones on. And sometimes she wore her purple sunglasses, coloring everything as it wasn’t.

Now, here, holding his hand, there was just the perfect color of blue. The good kind of blue. The blue she liked, and he liked it, too.

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

I love that there is always a next day with the prompts. While yesterday’s prompts felt difficult for me, today had a lot more to offer, and I could write all of them. I’m happy that I got another fight scene in. Again, I have to learn how to stretch them longer. I find it hard to balance the reality of fights with the fantastical. In the one I wrote, I think it would have been unrealistic if the man had caught the protagonist. She is much smaller, and in close combat, he could have dominated her. So she had only her agility and blades to her advantage. I also wanted to make her merciless. She couldn’t leave him alive.

The story of the sunken city is about the battle I have had with my work lately. I love the work I do with my clients, but I hate that my employer only sees the money they can attract from a broken society with so many children who need OTs’ help. I find what I do immoral. And I know I’m not the only one. I have heard that so many of us OTs are considering changing fields. The working conditions don’t meet the basic standards of good therapy. There is no time for planning. I think this is not only an issue in my field. I think it is our society that has gotten time, quality, and money wrong. We do things for profit, and not for the sake of the task. No wonder people are tired and feel their lives are meaningless.

I wish there could be a fix. I have long dreamed of building a community center in my city, where older and younger citizens could interact around hobbies and other shared activities. Communities have so much power to make things better.

Thank you for reading ❤ I wish you a day full of colors!