Day 294 Writing Short Stories

Cuff

I’m not sure what to do with this word, and I don’t have the time to figure it out, so I skip this one.

Pond

A man stops at a pond in the middle of a forest to drink. He finds something staring back at him. I instantly thought Näkki, a water spirit from Finnish folklore. But I skipped this one too as I’m pressed for time.

A Dream

She instantly knew that this was a dream. It was the same wolves that always followed her in her dreams. Sometimes they were aggressive. Sometimes they observed her in the distance. They always made her heart race, and she never knew what to do with herself and with them. The dreams had been there as long as she could remember. She could remember, as a child, running home from her friend’s house, picturing her dream wolves following her, half thinking it was real. They had always been with her. They still were.

Even when she knew this was a dream, the terror didn’t go away. She watched the wolves walking beside the frozen fields against the dull light of spring. They were slowly making their way towards her. She was alone in the frozen forest opening. She was always alone. No door, no house, no fence held the wolves away. They always got to her.

Her heart drummed harder. She should wake up. But she couldn’t. The wolves didn’t let her. It was like this needed to happen. As if they needed to remind her they existed, that they would follow her for eternity to come.

“You don’t need to be afraid,” a voice said.

The voice sounded odd. It sounded real, not a dream voice with muffled tones and distorted words.

She turned around to see a man standing next to her. She looked a lot like her father did when he was young. The man had a dark head of hair. His eyes were kind and loving, with a streak of silver in them. He wore a brown leather jacket and jeans.

“Dad?” she heard herself ask.

“No,” he shook his head.

“I’m one of them.” He nodded at the wolves that were already there.

They had surrounded them. She had never let them get this close to her without waking up. But she was still dreaming. This was a dream. It had to be.

“You don’t need to be afraid, they won’t attack you. We need you to wake up.”

She squeezed her eyes and wished everything would go away. To wake up.

“Not that way. No, Maya. We need you to know this is real. That the world you think is real isn’t. That you are a wolf like us. And until you don’t remember, you keep hurting yourself.”

She opened her eyes. The wolves were so close that she could touch them. “Real?” she asked.

“Real.”

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

The last prompt was about a neighbor’s vicious dog, a woman has dreamed of ever since she can remember. I changed into a wolf because it is something I have dreamed of since I can remember. I think it started when I was six. I have been dreaming of wolves once a month ever since, but now, as I have gotten older, they are less scary. Though today I woke dreaming about wolves, and they killed me. They don’t usually kill me. Sometimes they are just there. Sometimes I find them friendly. But mostly they can be pretty terrifying. I’m not sure what to make of them, and why I keep dreaming about wolves. If you have an explanation, please let me know.

But now I have to hurry to work.

Thank you for reading ❤ Have a fearless day!