Day 59 Writing Short Stories

Engulfed

The wild was scary. It was where thought and independence met; where meaning was found. That was why she sneaked in the wild. One by one, bringing into her home the green, the yellow, the pink, the red, the blue. She stole the seeds from places where she shouldn’t have had access: hidden places, controlled places, forbidden areas. As a housing allocation secretary, she wasn’t meant to see anything beyond the documents detailing families in need of homes and the available places to house them. After work, she was to converse with the party members and their serious brows as she decorated the community house, and when it was time to leave, she was to go to bed to be fresh for her job the next day. So it had been for a long time, but then there had been a strange word in the files, written ever so commonly: gardener. A word she hadn’t heard in ages.

The representation of the word vexed her, keeping her awake at night. It was like a memory she knew she should have, but didn’t know existed. The annoyance grew persistently loud, making her worm her way into files she should have no access to, and she had found her contained wild, only to discover that beyond the city walls there was a true wilderness with tallness none could imagine.

She couldn’t sneak in the mountains hidden in the documents with their ghostly peaks or the giant oaks that housed creatures so strange and free, she had a hard time imagining them as nothing more than a fairytale. But she wished she could hide them inside her garden—to shelter the small, nimble creatures with tails, tufted ears, and chestnut brown fur—just so that the wild could exist once more in the city compounds.

Yet, the greens and the pinks weren’t enough, despite their potent magic to transform a person. She sought out the gardener, watching her at every opportunity. Through the woman, she discovered a warehouse full of magic, full of controlled wild that was turned into the cans they ate.

After that, at work, at home, at the community house, the restlessness inside made her feral. She could barely contain her newfound nature. The questions pressed against her lips, wanting to shout to every person she came across. But there in their eyes were the zombies that had looked back at her from the looking glass not so long ago.

One day, she hid from the zombies, not arriving at work. She had gone to the farm, as the gardener called the place, when she didn’t guard her tongue. People poured in, and at the end of the day, the trucks came to take away the cans made of secreted magic. The contained greens weren’t enough. The scene made her push further, hide farther, licking the city walls, pressing the pads on her fingers against every dent, hole, and crevice, searching for what was lost. Then there it was, a metallic grid bigger than a house with the sound of wind and tsunamis.

She took off her shoes, abandoning the cushioned shoes made for asphalt. She crawled in from the defenseless spaces, piercing the waters and following the playing wind, howling in the vastness of the cement tunnel, soothing her timorous heart.

There, in the opening into a new world, stood the ruins of the old, taken over by the wild that took her by awe. It was nothing like what she had imagined. The cage around her heart grumbled as her bare toes hit the wet, mushy ground, engulfed by the green.

—

I have barely slept. Our basement flooded. The huge septic truck kept me up most of the night as it pumped out the water.

Fun times.

But I still did my morning exercise, edited my book, and wrote this one. What I got today was a lyrical dystopian comedy told in first person. As you can see, some of the elements don’t match what I wrote. The story didn’t come out that way. I generated the parameters, then went to take a nap with the cat on the sofa. Before I fell asleep, the first sentence came to be, and the tone was set. I just had to follow it and accepted abandoning some of the elements.

I tried to be descriptive with today’s prompt, pausing in the moment. I didn’t quite pause long enough to explore the sensation and the situation truly, but I got some words right for the story, especially the word feral. I love the world feral. It makes me think of Princess Mononoke. Anyway, I want to improve at taking my time while writing to explore words, sensations, and situations more fully. I didn’t quite achieve that today, but it’s a process, so I will let myself have the time to learn and play.

Thank you for reading! Have a playful day ❤