Day 248 Writing Short Stories

Champion

The plate armor glistened in the midday sunlight. It was humid and hot, and the plate she was wearing was making the sweat snake down her back. It pooled inside her armor, making it like a pot, where she was going to be the stew. It wasn’t easy to be a champion. She wanted to squirm out of her clothes and be free, but she didn’t. Not even a single muscle on her face moved as she kept her post as the King’s guard. He was making his ground around the kingdom, visiting this noble and that in light clothes, she might add.

The wind gushed out, and it was hot. She tensed her leg muscles to keep her awake and not pass out. With a side glance, she glanced at her unit, and they were fighting as hard as she to keep their composure. One more hour, she repeated to herself, and they would get their rest as the King napped. One more hour and she could be something other than a champion. She could be naked, diving in the river they had passed by.

Tattoo

She had been planning to get the tattoo for a long time. She had carefully picked up the tattoo and its meaning. It meant a world to her. Now that the day had come and she knew the tattoo was big and complicated, meaning it would take more than seven hours to complete, she got nervous. She knew what the pain would mean, but she had never taken this big tattoo.

The tattoo parlor’s iron-gated door looked ominous with its blackened windows. She rang the doorbell, and when the artist took a while to open, she almost bolted. But there was a down payment and all, so she stuck with her guns and waited.

The artist was a polite man covered with tattoos from head to toe. They picked a spot, adjusted the image to fit her forearm, and she was happy with how it looked there. It was going to be a hare for good luck, for the dreams she had dared to pursue. It came with a twist: a little skull, cute flowers, bees, and the actual hare. It was a thing of beauty.

They started the work, and it was going well. She actually didn’t mind the pain. It was harder to keep the hand in the needed position. Past the midpoint, the image was starting to take shape well, and it was exactly as she wanted. When the finishing touches were made with white ink, the pain got bad. She was ready to give in, but she continued chatting with the artist about his fishing and respect for nature. The man reminded her that people were too quick to judge. The richness of the inner world is always shown on the surface. Neither did the morals.

The tattoo was done, and it was as she had wanted. It made her happy.

—

This was supposed to be a tattoo gone wrong. I didn’t want to write about such a thing, as if you have a true artist working on you, the process is done right. Or that is my experience. I have a huge tattoo on my forearm, and the seven hours I spent with the artist were just right.

Used Car

He had never owned a car before. He had always lived in the city, needing only his bike to get around. Moving here up in the mountains and a small town with a long distance to everything, he needed a car. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for. He couldn’t afford the luxury off-road SUVs he saw everywhere. But he didn’t want some small compact car that wouldn’t start when the weather dropped cold.

So he had calculated that he could afford an old model pickup truck, but the mileage made him question his choices. But it was the best there was.

He had gotten the car this morning, and to his luck, it started fine, and it was pleasant to ride. It had belonged to an old man who had died a few years ago. His son was selling it and the man’s other possessions through a broker. What he had gathered was that the son lived on the other side of the country, and he didn’t give a damn about his late father’s things.

He would give anything to get to know his father. He had never had one. His father had left them as soon as he was born. Kids in the school called him a bastard and sang nasty songs about his mother and father. Children were cruel. But he had learned to fight both with his fists and mouth because of that, and it had served him well throughout his life.

He got the car home and drove it into the garage. As he got out, something gleamed under the seat, and he lowered down to look what had lodged there. There was a palm-sized disk underneath the seat. It looked like a mirror, but a more advanced version of one. He had never seen anything like it.

It came loose surprisingly easily, and he took it with him to his lodge. The small cabin he had afforded to buy with his military service payment was the first home he could see himself living in for quite a long time. He hadn’t unpacked everything yet, but it was already starting to look like he belonged there.

He sat on the leather sofa and fiddled with the disk. It was smooth as glass, but made of something metallic. He didn’t know what metal. It didn’t feel like steel or aluminum, but it was as light as the latter. It vibrated against his skin as he swirled his fingers on the plate’s rim. It was not electric like, but something close to it. He pressed his thumb on the surface, and the disk began to buzz. He let go, and it dropped at his feet.

A light beamed up from it, illuminating the whole room. In the light, there was a whole new dimension. Something beyond his room. He got up and swirled his hand over the image. His hand went through, stretching to the other side, where an alien-like corridor disappeared into the shadows. He pulled his hand back, and the hairs stood out. He experimented with the image with his foot, and when it came back, the fabric of his trousers stuck against his leg.

It looked real. More so as something swallowed the darkness, and a door opened at the end of the corridor. He saw a monstrous thing crawling through the door, looking straight at him. He dived into the disk, pressing his thumb against it, and the light disappeared, and he was alone in the room. His heart was racing, and he was gasping for air.

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

I’m currently on a train, traveling up north to visit my family. I will be staying with them the weekend. I still try to write the prompts.

I had to change trains at Tampere, and I was so pleasantly surprised by the customer service I got from a local cafe, providing me with salad on the train. It got me wondering how badly Finnish culture has deteriorated; I was surprised by the basic courtesy a professional showed. It shouldn’t be that way. I think common politeness is the least we can do for each other. And those standards shouldn’t be slipping because we no longer know how to interact with each other. I hope this is not so in your country. It would be a shame if the same issues we face here in Finland have become a global thing.

Trains are the best places to write. I cannot escape anywhere. The distractions are down to a minimum, and the only thing that kept me from writing was my mind needing mini breaks to think.

About the writing, I regret it now as I review what I wrote: I didn’t take advantage of the first and last prompts to write a fighting scene. Somehow, neither of the prompts felt like it should have a fight scene. Champions are just there. I’m currently playing V Rising, and the champions are something to be killed. So switching to think of them as something good took some effort.

I started reading the Dungeon Crawler Carl on the train, having bought it on my visit to Edinburgh. It looks promising. It has the right kind of mood. It is entertaining, and it feels like a movie inside my head. I like the writing. It fits the book. Can’t wait to finish it, and let my husband read the book, and hear what he thinks about it.

Thank you for reading ❤ Have a splendid day!