We’re here. Town. The solution to our problems.
Ma and Pa described it as a place where everything is painted bright colours, everybody smiles all the time, and the streets are all paved. It sounded like heaven.
But the jolting of the wagon wheels over the cobblestones feels decidedly unheavenlike.
This story is based on a title suggested by Cody Bernal.
For one summer, we were best of friends. Autumn undid us, something in the changing colours, the changing winds.
We hardly spoke during tenth grade. Then June arrived. I hoped, childishly, that the sunlight would reunite us.
Life may move in cycles, but you never cross the same river twice.
Hope wasn’t a talented dancer, but a massive crowd was gathered around the field, watching her sway and leap.
“Park’s closing!” advised a groundskeeper. “She’ll still be here tomorrow. Always is.”
“Does she ever stop?” asked a tourist.
“Not in ten years. Just slows down a bit now and then.”
Sometimes when I fall asleep I see pictures moving across the back of my eyelids, strange pastel cartoons, usually, where a round-headed caricature of me is trying to escape from a cloud labelled “Future” or “Responsibility.”
My wife says that sometimes she can see the projector’s flickers behind my eyes.
This shirt, this wonderful, beautiful shirt, has magic powers; its wearer, they say, will always gain his heart’s desires.
They also say that it’s invisible to those with evil in their hearts, but that doesn’t bother me at all. I don’t need to see it to know that it’s working.
Nights were the worst. Caffeine caught up, jittering his limbs, bulging his eyes as raw sewage gushed from metaphoric bowels, untreated memories he thought he’d repressed. Bloody flashes and screams kept any rest for the wicked far beyond his grasp.
“I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”
That would be the day.
Milo James Fowler is a teacher by day, writer by night. Stop by his blog any time: www.milo-inmediasres.com.
“I’m not going in there.”
The wind whistled through the looming trees at the forest’s edge.
“You’re just being paranoid,” scoffed Meltun.
Eadin protested: “No…”
“Then come on; follow me!” Melton plunged in. He never reemerged.
Eadin wondered, later, how much longer his story might have been if he’d followed.
This story is based on a title suggested by @TrueAntitonic.
Next door, violence prowls. A storm opens dark eyes, tears falling down, down, down.
Shhh, stop crying. See that window? Open it. Breathe. Now lean outwards slowly, slowly…
SLAM! Mother enters, eyes bruised, body bruised, freshly battered from a knockdown fight.
“What are you doing? Get back in. He’s gone.”
Elizabeth Cheung, from Hong Kong, blogs at recusant-reconditus.blogspot.com.
There is a monster in the mountains that preys on bumblebees, daffodils, and woodland creatures, swallowing them whole into its enormous belly.
Some say there’s a garden in there, a paradise where the flowers bloom and the wildlife lives on, frolicking. They’ve forgotten that the monster once swallowed a bear.
This story was based on the prompt “in the mountains” on TypeTrigger.
One by one, the lights flickered into life. Olya stood speechless as they danced into shapes she didn’t have names for.
“It’s beautiful,” she breathed, awestruck.
It would be quite some time before she’d learn what the lights actually were, and a good while longer before she’d finally stop crying.
When he’s not struggling with University Stuff, Alex Aloneftis fights fire-breathing glitches and vile errors with his mighty sword, “The Debugger™”. In his spare time, he also writes exceedingly stuffy opinion pieces on gaming at k-code.blogspot.com.