Day 342 Writing Short Stories

Window

The wood around the window was rotten. She only had to reach for it and peel it off in little slices. The house had looked scary when she was a child. Now it looked pathetic. Like the bogeyman she knew existed wasn’t there. But the world didn’t work like that. The monster was there inside the house, the monster who had pushed her to this path: the path of ghost hunting and the path of exorcism. Not the Catholic Church type of exorcism, but for the occult parlors and tarot reading. And she was here now, because another little girl had gone missing, and she was sure she knew what had happened to that little girl—the same thing that had happened to her best friend. But no one had believed her back then. A little girl talking about monsters was dismissed. And they had let her friend die.

She pushed the house door open and stepped inside. She could feel its presence. It was hungry and spiteful. It was selfish and evil, and she would return it to Hell.

Dust Fairy

A girl finds a dust fairy under her bed. I skipped this one.

Thursday

The rest of her siblings swirled around the corpse they had found. She snarled at them, letting out a low growl. They stopped their flight and watched her. She was not Sunday, who was the strongest of the sisters. She was Thursday, and Thursdays didn’t command others, but they were running around like headless chickens.

Their father was dead. So it was. Good riddance, if she were asked. She had never liked the tyrant, her tormentor. But Sunday, Sunday was in tears. She looked as if she was ready to collapse.

“Weekdays have no emotions,” she said. When it didn’t have the effect she desired, she added, “Father says so.” She wanted to kick the corpse, the body, the so-called father.

Her words were like a jolt to her sisters. They all stopped fidgeting.

“We need to leave. He is dead, and not by his hand or by decease. We can’t be here, or they will find us,” she said.

They looked at her, confused. It was not Thursday’s role to speak, let alone to command. But she had been practicing her voice in the woods when Father had been away.

“We go to camp March, and then move to November. We hunt and eat, and then when we have a plan, we find those who killed Father.” She cocked her head towards the camp. Her sisters followed her gaze.

“We should follow the trail now,” Sunday protested, regaining some composure.

“Sure, we can do that. We can always expose ourselves, unlike what our father taught us.”

Sunday frowned. She saw that she was losing her second-in-command, or first, as the bastard was now dead.

Thursday had a plan. She would get them out of these woods and into the real world where they came. To the world where her dreams and nightmares came. She knew them to be real despite what their father had told them. The cans he brought with him from the hunts he made didn’t seem nature-made. There was something beyond the vast wilderness, and she was going there. But Sunday would stop her, and she wouldn’t let that happen. She would break her sisters one by one until they had no other choice but to follow her or let her leave.

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

A slow, slow, slow morning. Still trying to recuperate from my trip. Also, my cat was convincing when he asked me to join him on the couch and sleep the morning away. I woke to a May Day parade going on under my window. Despite the slow morning, I managed to write and edit my book. So, this is a good day.

Thank you for reading ❤ Have a wonderful May Day!