He stood amid chaos, tumult, and noise, hearing nothing.
A voice passed through his mind. “Speak your wish, and your hearing can be restored to you.”
He looked around him, at the lights, movement, and stone-eyed faces. “Do not restore my hearing,” he said. “Please take my sight, as well.”
This story is based on a title suggested by @PanzerVaughn.
Every morning, as the sun comes up, the stars awaken.
Stars are not nocturnal, as many assume. They actually sleep all night and dance during the day, when their predators, the owls, can’t see them.
So when you see a shooting star, remember: a hungry owl is chasing after it.
This story is based on a title suggested by @facelesscog.
Some kids always had to be told to “stay inside the lines.” Not Nancy: she had never liked colouring in the corners.
Her parents and her teachers said, “Don’t just paint the middles. You’re missing all the parts near the edges!”
“But really,” Nancy protested, “what’s so great about edges?”
This story was based on the prompt “in the corners” at TypeTrigger.
“Time for bed, princess!” trilled Mom.
Little Mia said, “Why?”
“So you can sleep, and have lots of energy tomorrow.”
“I don’t need sleep.”
“Of course you do, dear.”
Mia laid awake in her big-girl bed all night, wondering what sleep was and why everyone else did it so much.
This story was based on the prompt “what for” at TypeTrigger.
Mia will appear in Special People, my superhero-with-a-twist serial web fiction, in a future story.
The bear came through the door of his shack tent with a squeal of abused latchwork and snapping lumber.
He started up in his open sleeping bag. In the next frozen second, his eyes darted between his knife, hanging sheathed above his bed and the intruding bear.
Time ran out.
A longtime LRR fan, Alex works for a gold exploration and development company in Saskatchewan. This was written while in a shack tent, after having watched a bear safety video too late a night.
Editor: I worked with LRR for more than two years until I left in 2010 to finish school.
I thought stasis would be like sleeping: I’d close my eyes on Earth, and open them a hundred light-years away. I thought it would be an escape.
But it was more like a dream, a slow swirl of half-reality. I spent ten years inside my own head, reliving that memory.
This story was based on the prompt “that memory” at TypeTrigger.
Thirty lashes for a kiss, yet words cut deeper. Still, the sting of her travel clothes brings a smile as he pulls her aboard the boat.
Tousled by the morning tide, she spares a brief farewell to the stolid house she once called home, free now to feel his touch.
Born in the Blue Ridge Mountains of West Virginia, J. Chris Lawrence has spent much of his life traveling. With a love for fiction, he fancies himself a writer, and hopes to convince others of the same. He currently lives in Georgia with his wife and two sons. Read his blog here.
Something was wrong. It was a feeling more than an observation, something intangible, instinctive. Hannah backed away.
The creature seemed offended. “How typically human. You see a purely biological life form and consider me slimy, primitive, and murderous. How ignorant.”
The heads-up display built into Hannah’s eyes blinked a warning.
This story is based on the adjectives intangible, slimy, and murderous, as provided by @RubyCosmos.
Percy peered out the window of his old, beat-up car, scanning the dismal grey plains. Rain again.
The endless prairie highways made Percy feel like he was constantly moving but never approaching his destination. To stay sane, he counted raindrops, trying not to think about who was in the trunk.
In a Brooklyn apartment complex, she’s one anonymous echo among many. She doesn’t know anyone’s name. One day, she finds a dead ant outside her door. She wonders how it survived in a world where everything was bigger than it. She gives it a name. She feels very large.
Kyle Hemmings is the author of three chapbooks of poems: Avenue C (Scars Publications), Fuzzy Logic (Punkin Press), and Amsterdam & Other Broken Love Songs (Flutter Press). He has been pubbed at Gold Wake Press, Thunderclap Press, Blue Fifth Review, Step Away, and The Other Room. He blogs at http://upatberggasse19.blogspot.com.