Day 12 Writing Short Stories

Poppy

Universes are made for organisms. They are made for the small and the giants. They are made for red poppy fields and the deserts with their mines, for the stars and the lawfulness and lawlessness. But they were not made for the likes of her. She had to steal her place. Force it to happen so her daughter knew more than the coal towns and their men and their hands.

Here, the little red flowers would bring them enough money to eat and her daughter to dream. With any extra money she had, she bought scraps for her daughter to play with. She wanted her to see another kind of universe—one day to fly off this godforsaken planet with only cruelty in its core.

She watched her daughter play amongst the flowers, only God knowing what she saw through her goggles. She cut the pods open with her curved knife. The sap oozed out, and she collected the gum with a scraping knife. One of her other girls worked in the backroom, boiling the gum with lime and water. Opium would be ready to be sent on. She would have to go into the town tomorrow.

Her daughter danced there between the flowers. What she thought of them was beyond her. She never lied to her, never told foolish dreams about how they supported themselves. Truth would set her free. Knowing that the opium they made killed people in the towns. That one day it might bring the sheriffs to their doors, and when that happened, she would have to hide under the house and make no sounds. Then head to the hills, where more people like them live.

Until then, the green emerald sky with its stars was the only concern her daughter should have. Her self-made goggles glowed in the twilight.

—

Again, I didn’t get quite the story right. I wanted it to be more than about motherly love and the opium trade. I had this idea somewhere at the back of my mind for the daughter and her gifts. It never manifested. So this is a bastardized version of what I envisioned and what the lottery drew for me: conversational, western, rags-to-riches, and omniscient third-person.

It’s so strange not to be able to write in the parameters. It would be so easy to follow them, but the stories inside my head don’t always want to follow. They want to do something different, leaving behind an annoying feeling, not of failure, but of another story haunting behind the one being told.

Thank you for reading! Have a day of stories ❤