Day 257 Writing Short Stories

Cumbersome

She had been hauling the huge sacks the whole day. The harbor master was looking at her pityingly from the shadows. He had commented on her efforts but hadn’t made even a single gesture to help her.

The heat was causing the sweat pool on her forehead. She swiped it off as she moved back into the ship away from the midday sun.

She reminded herself that this was what she had wanted, that she had offered herself for the job. This was a way to get her off the island and closer to where she wanted to be. The captain had been good enough to offer her the job and a voyage in exchange. The ship would sail tomorrow, and she had a way off. She hoped that at the next harbor she would find out where the hell she wanted to go.

Hauling the sacks was a cumbersome task, but being stuck on the island forever was worse than the slight pain she now suffered.

The captain had been gracious enough to take her on board. Not everyone was so kind toward runaway women. The other captains had told her to go back home. There was no home to go back to. She had burned it down. Accidentally, she might add. Not that anyone would believe her. So here she was, begging for transport off the island before they found out it was her and came after her.

She still played that day out in her head. It had been like any other day. No warning about what was to come. She had been helping the younger kids get ready for school. Then, when they had left, she had helped the matron to peel potatoes and carrots for the soup. It had been all that she did in a typical day. She had grown tired of all the peeling and cleaning, and she had sneaked into the closet to take a nap. When she woke up, the entire house was on fire.

She had rushed out of the closet to find the orphanage engulfed in flames. She had gotten out unscathed. The flames hadn’t burned her. She looked at her hands, and the flames seemed to draw towards her. They played at the tips of her fingers, and when she shook them off, they returned to the orphanage.

She didn’t know how, but she knew it had been her. She could sense every body burning inside the fire. She could feel as the matron died, as the nurses were trapped in the attic, suffocating to death. It still lived in her, inside her body, even in here in the harbor. She was thankful that the other kids had been out at school and that there was no one as old as she was in the orphanage. She felt bad for the matron and the nurses. They hadn’t deserved it.

She looked around. She was alone in the ship’s hull. There were only a few sacks left. She lifted her hand, snapped her fingers, and the fire came alive in her hand. It burned bright. It burned hot. Yet, it didn’t touch her.

“There Is Good to Be Found in Every Evil.”

If there was one thing she hated, it was the thought that you needed to have bad to know what good was. She was sick and tired of people excusing all the shit that was happening around them. Good was good. It made you feel all fuzzy and happy. It made you feel as if everything was happening as it should.

She frowned as yet another pretentious asshole thought they sounded clever when they said, “There is good to be found in every evil.”

The man took a sip of his beer and beamed with pride.

“Yeah, right,” she said.

“No, I mean it. How could we know what good is without evil?” he asked.

Some of his followers nodded along with his words. They seemed to swallow everything coming from the man in tight jeans and a baggy t-shirt. He was like their messiah for all that was to be. They were almost dressed identically to him and drinking the same shit he was drinking.

She had seen enough men like him to know that they were clever enough. They knew all the right words, and they were aware enough to pass as if they knew what they were talking about. But when you poked enough holes in their speech, they were shallow without substance.

“So you propose that we couldn’t know what good is without evil? That we wouldn’t recognize what feels good or right?” she asked.

“Yes,” he replied, happily jumping in. “You need evil to understand what is good.”

“And good to understand evil?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“Then there cannot be good without evil and evil without good. They have to come together.”

—

I’m not sure where to take this conversation. There is sound logic in both and can be argued at length. Both of the characters annoyed me. I found them both to be set in their own logic to find dialog, and I know that was the point, but in the mood I am in, I wanted to stop. The other reason was that I couldn’t find a good argument, which he would have accepted.

Red Fox

This prompt is about a hunter following a huge red fox that turns into a woman. I wanted to get to this and write this one, but I’m too groggy because of the flu, so I give up and head to the sofa with my cat.

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

My brain feels scrambled. I looked at the prompts and was initially sure I couldn’t write any of them. I’m not sure if it is the flu or the annoying feeling I have had lately. Writing feels overwhelming again. Not the actual writing part. No. But the publishing and getting my words out there. It is such an enormous task, and it is constantly shifting. It feels like trying to catch a dragon. All you get is third-degree burns and knights. Not the good kind of knights, but the type that are black and white, and think they are right all the time. It is not them, though. It’s me. I don’t know what I’m doing, and I keep refusing to do what is necessary, so it is no wonder things aren’t working the way I want them to.

I have noticed that my stamina for doing the hard things has gone down. It seems like I’m wasting energy on things that make it hard to make writing work. The first energy waste is my work. While I enjoy helping my clients solve their problems, interacting with them and the people around them is exhausting. I like people in a sense, but social issues in their lives consume me. I have noticed that I need a lot of downtime to recover from human interaction, or their lives keep looping inside my head. The second thing is climbing and training for it. Happily, climbing doesn’t consume me as much as it did before. I have a new program from a professional coach, and he thought I needed to cut my training to a minimum. Still, I feel like I have a lot to catch up on when it comes to my body recharging. But I’m slowly getting there.

I just wish things weren’t as hard as they are. That sometimes the stars would align, and there would be a break. But that is just wishful thinking. I need to organize my efforts and make a plan. It has felt like too much lately. I have started to put tasks on my calendar, so I can get them done. Today I have to look for cover artists for my sci-fi novel. I keep putting it off.

Okay, now I’ll take the cat and go to sleep.

Thank you for reading ❤ I hope you have a better day!