Day 348 Writing Short Stories

Tail

What a magical thing it is to have a tail. Tail so fine that it leaves kings and queens in shame. Tail so big and fluffy that it’s a crown jewel. Tail so expressive that minds don’t need to be read.

Yet, there’s no such tail. It exists only in dreams. Dreams that consist of swinging from tree to tree, walking head high in the jungle. Dreams of leisure and wildness.

Still, what a magical thing it would be to have a tail, in dreams or not.

Glass Elephants

Two girls break their mother’s prized glass elephants. She sits them down and tells them about respecting others’ property. I skipped this one.

Numbers

She swallowed. The numbers hadn’t been this bad before. The numbers shouldn’t exist in the first place. She ran her calculations again and again, first on her computer, then double-checking them on paper. The results were the same. They were insane. They shouldn’t exist.

She stared at the numbers, knowing she should call someone—the proper authorities. There wasn’t one. There was no entity in charge of cosmic-scale maintenance to prevent the two dimensions from colliding. If her calculations were correct, it would happen in a week. There would be a major shift. A catastrophic one. Two dimensions would merge together and form something new. She didn’t know exactly what it would mean or how it would happen, but it would happen. She was sure of that at least. The worst-case scenarios ran through her head, what two colliding dimensions would do to each other. They could collapse on each other, they could shift the laws all wrong. They most probably would kill everyone and turn reality upside down, so to speak. And there was probably nothing she or anyone else could do about it, least of all authorities, who had barely given her research a second thought.

She was most probably the only one who knew it would happen, and no one would believe her if she told them. They would call her mad, wild, naive, stupid, or something to dismiss her claims. At best, her calculations would be debated in the academy, and by the time such a debate was to come, the dimensions would have swallowed each other, and there was no point. The best thing she could do was to pretend the data didn’t exist and do everything she had ever wanted to do in a week’s time. She just wasn’t made for the best things. She reached for her phone and dialed her former supervisor’s number. She would let her solve it. Tell her what to do, or tell her she was crazy.

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

I have been silly, silly, silly, and stupid. I barely slept last night, and my mind feels like it. I came home so late from climbing, and because of all the scary things I did and all the success I got, I was so overwired that I tossed and turned all night. Thank the dimensional monsters that I have a late morning today, and I have a half day at work. Otherwise, I don’t know how I would manage. And as you might have gathered, writing wasn’t exactly easy today. So to conclude, silly, silly, silly me.

Thank you for reading ❤ Have a cheerful day!