The weapon cut to the bone with precise, brutal force. It was aimed at the most vulnerable area.
The target was hit dead center with a destructive power that surprised even the sender. It had been dispatched specifically to wound, not to kill.
If only the words could be recalled.
Linda McMahon works as a Transaction Coordinator for a California real estate company. She is constantly busy pursuing paper by day and words by night.
Words terrify me. Their power and immediacy. Will you marry me? Changing everything. Just an articulation of speech. I do. Words transforming worlds. Like a head on collision. It’s a girl. Easier than falling from a great height. I don’t love you anymore.
So I just say nothing these days.
Shark Trager struggles with finishing his works of artistic frivolity so has taken to writing microfiction because not finishing a 50-word story is less reckless.
“I have never before encountered such impudence!” blustered the King. “It is an affront! It is an outrage! Insulting! Degrading! Disrespectful! I should have you put in the stocks, clapped in irons, hanged, beheaded! You’re just so very, very… Well, impudent!”
“My most humble and sincere apologies,” said the imp.
This story was based on the prompt “never before” at TypeTrigger.
There is great power in a word. Your task, apprentice, is to unlock it.
Begin by deeply internalizing its meaning. Then divide its syllables, and unravel them. Only when you have delved to the core of every phoneme will you be prepared to bend the word’s power to your will.
This story was based on the TypeTrigger prompt “in a word.”
“Don’t forget your keys, dear.”
“Yes, mom.”
“Can you recite them for me, just to be sure?”
“Yes, mother… Patience. Perseverance. Perspective. Practicality. Proactivity.”
“Precisely! Oh, my brilliant, handsome young man. You’re going to make a great dictionary engineer.”
“Sure, unless they assign me somewhere other than the P division.”
We bumped one another in the mall.
“Well excuse me,” she pouted.
But I didn’t. Her tone, her look, and her behaviour were a sad excuse for civility, so I excused myself from the situation.
Satisfied, I proceeded to the next entry in my Word-Practice Dictionary: excycloduction would be harder.
I think I will write a story today.
Words to paint glowing meanings in which I’ll revel,
Using verbs and nouns, adjectives as well,
Fiction or truth, a story of many words I’ll tell,
To keep me happy, as hours to days will swell.
Oh, there is no ink! No stories today.
The whispered words tiptoed from his lips and swarmed her mind, some filtered down into her subconscious and made themselves at home.
They lay dormant at first, but when they woke up they danced with her deepest fears…
He stole her silence and she would never forgive him for it.
This guest story comes from Honest, who loves to create, mostly with words, and hopes to inspire and be inspired. You can follow Honest on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Honestlyspeakin. Honest also wrote The Invisible Man.