Day 30 Writing Short Stories

Shadow

The little neighborhood was sleepy. You weren’t, you kept watching the houses and their dark windows. You have been doing that for a week now. It started because of the noises you heard on your roof. You asked your neighbors about it, and they laughed at you, questioning your old ears. It was not like they had been forthcoming before with any neighborhood matters or nuisances. So you took the justice into your own hands, as you had done before. You kept watch.

The houses were asleep. They had been for every night and dawn now. Your eyes pressed heavily on you. You thought you were being the silly old geezer with stubborn tendencies, as your daughter would say. The last time she had called, you and she had argued. She wanted you to move in with them, but you had said no. You had said that it would only cause a drift between her and her husband. He didn’t really like you. You know you were right. She just couldn’t admit it.

A shadow darted over your window. The quiet neighborhood sounded even quieter. All the night animals were dead silent. You were fully awake. You pressed your nose against the window, searching for what had cast the shadow. Still, the houses were asleep. But then you saw it. It was on the roof of the house over the street. The long, nimble figure looked like one from sci-fi movies—the one with the man in the desert dragging a huge alien behind him.

You froze watching it move on Wilson’s roof. It sniffed the air, then disappeared inside the house through the roof latch. The lights came on, and then you saw Mr. Wilson walking through the kitchen.

You rushed down the stairs and out of your front door with your binoculars held high. You crashed into Mr. Wilson’s door, cursing your old bones. So you rang the bell. When Mr. Wilson opened the door, you pushed past him and ran upstairs, searching for the roof window. You found it in Mr. Wilson’s bedroom. There was no monster. You turned around to meet Mr. Wilson, who had been following you upstairs, shouting at you, cursing your stubbornness and ill temper, and only now you could hear his words. You watched his mouth move, seeing the huge, sharp molars and the wrong colored tongue with its blue veins.

—

I have to cut this short. I need to go to work soon. This was fun to write. It was fun to think about the rebirth narrative and try to apply it to the mystery genre. I think this prompt taught me a thing or two about writing. It feels like something clicked inside me. If I follow different basic narratives with my characters in my books, I can make my books deeper and stronger, and easier for the reader to grasp.

And yes, Mr. Wilson is the alien, and poor you, you might not get the last act as a changed person, who connects with themselves and their family. Aliens tend to eat humans, or at least in this one, they might.

The other specifics of the story were a contemporary writing style, which I failed again, and a second-person narrative.

Thank you for reading! Have a day of mystery and rebirths ❤