365 Creative Writing Prompts: Dear Diary

Dear Diary,

It has been 12 days. They still have not noticed that I am haunting them. I'm running out of ideas; I mean, how original can a ghost be? It's all been done before, and nothing is working. They never look up from their phones long enough to see objects moving "on their own." They don't turn down the music or the videos quiet enough to hear the chains rattling or things going bump in the night. Not even my cold spots make a difference: they just shiver and move on.

I'm going to change my tactics. Instead of acting like a ghost, I'm going to act like one of them. I will sit at their table and eat breakfast cereal with them. I will sit between them on the couch while they play games on their tablets. I will join them in the shower. I will take out the garbage with them. I will sing along to their songs.

And if that doesn't work, I could always play with the power lines and the cell phone towers. Bring it on, humans. This is war.

365 Creative Writing Prompts: Tear-Jerker

Millions of people--all of China, in fact--bowed to their savior, Mulan. She held back warm tears until the emperor leaned in to whisper in her ear. The threat of execution for breaking the law would never leave her.

365 Creative Writing Prompts: Memory Lane

Memory Lane is a quiet street in the suburbs of Seattle. There you will see a house painted the color of chocolate milk and filled with dusty cupboards and bald eagle droppings. Most of the rooms house toys and games and schoolbooks, but don't go into the room at the end of the hall on the second floor. It used to be a bathroom.

The girl who lived there now haunts it. That mirror is where she first tried to summon Bloody Mary with her friends. A vicious Tyrannosaurus Rex waits for victims behind the shower curtain. The gaping maw of the bathtub drain screams. The toilet bleeds. All because she dreamt it, imagined it, played with her own horror.

Memory Lane is a quiet street in the suburbs of Seattle, where the rain never stops, never stops, and the ghosts never sleep, never sleep.

365 Creative Writing Prompts: Sunrise/Sunset

The burning starts at sunrise. They don't put you out until the sun goes down behind the mountains. You burn all day and then you steam in the quiet hours of the night. I used to live for the nighttime, for the cool breeze and the dew. Now I live for the morning, when the demons set my flesh aflame. Daughter of the Sun, they call me. Watch me burn.

365 Creative Writing Prompts: Just Say No

"How did your performance go, Miss Patty?"

"I've done better, but I've also done worse. It was a fair night. I was a little sharp on that high note, but the rest of the song was something to be proud of."

"Were you nervous?"

"Not really. I've sung on that stage for twenty years. It's practically home."

"How was the audience tonight?"

"Here and there. They didn't ask for an encore, but they didn't boo me. It really was a rather normal night."

"Then why are you here?"

"I don't know. You tell me."

"I'd like to see what you know about what happened."

"I only know what I heard in the whispers."

"And what did the whispers say?"

"They say that someone died."

"Is that all they say?"

"I didn't listen too closely. Maybe something about a performer. I was on my way out the door."

"Which door did you leave from?"

"I don't remember. Must have been the one that leads right out into the parking lot."

"But you don't remember exactly."

"The lights were bright on the stage, and I sang my hardest. I was tired."

"How tired were you?"

"Well, I don't think I was falling asleep during my own performance. My chest felt a little tight, like it often does after a long day."

"Did your chest pains go away after you sang?"

"I don't know. Sure."

"Do you feel them now?"

"I don't think so."

"Let me get this straight: you don't really remember what happened after you got off the stage."

"That's right."

"But you remember everything that happened before and during your performance."

"That's right. Where is this going?"

"Miss Patty, what if you didn't leave the stage tonight?"

"What do you mean? I'm here, aren't I?"

"Where is here? Have you even wondered who I am?"

"I don't understand. What is happening?"

"Don't panic, Miss Patty. I have one last question for you. I think you know the answer."

"Hurry up. I want to go home."

"Miss Patty, did you leave the stage tonight?"

"I--what--"

"Think about it. Did you leave the stage?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because I died."

365 Creative Writing Prompts: Joke Poem

Why do the campus ghosts congregate in the university library?

...

Because they enjoy conducting BOOlean searches. Hardy har har.

365 Creative Writing Prompts: The Stars

I was looking at the stars when I died. The snow was soft underneath me. I didn't feel cold or wet; I only felt...astronomical. For as long as I had breath, as long as my heart pumped blood, I kept my eyes open and trained on those glittering freckles in the sky. There was Orion, the wintry hunter. The North Star, guide of the sailors. The Dippers, endlessly pouring celestial water onto the earth. And below them all, a dying girl who kept discovering new stars only to have them melt on her face.

365 Creative Writing Prompts: Light Switch

First, there was darkness, and that was all that I knew. I could feel it, smell it, breathe it into my lungs, feel it bind to my blood like oxygen. The darkness was life-giving and life-thieving. Though my heart beat, I felt frozen in time--and what kind of life is that?

Then, there was darkness and something else. Something was burgeoning from the darkest shadows, born from the life-giving elements that I breathed. It started small and grew until it began to condense the darkness, to squish it, to press it back. I had to blink my eyes. Time was moving. I finally found the word for it: light.

I could feel the light, could smell it, breathe it into my lungs--but I coughed. Coughed again. My eyes stung. Where the darkness was forgiving, was like oxygen to my body, this light was stealing the oxygen away from me. It was piercing and horrid and hot, so hot.

My skin curled away from the light, and the darkness tried to protect me. It covered my skin with a crisp black suit. I became the darkness, fused with the darkness. I burned.

At last, there was darkness, and that was all that I knew.

365 Creative Writing Prompts: Dirty

It was dark and cold and the mud rose in the garden as the river rose at the edge of the woods and the rain pelted the side of the house and I checked out the attic window one more time. IT, a twisted creature I had never seen before and which I wished I would never see again, was still crawling through the black sludge that used to give life to Mama’s gourds. I shivered.

The lamp at my feet flickered, and I tightened the quilt around my shoulders, turning away from the window. Mama would be home soon, I thought. Mama would take care of the thing in the garden, crawling crawling like a slug.

Only it wasn’t a slug. It was far too big, more the size of the dog that lived next door which would sometimes lick my hand through a hole in the fence.

Only it wasn’t the dog. From my window up above, I had seen the neighbor bring him inside when the rain started.

When the wind shifted, and the other side of the house began to get soaked, I checked the garden again. Crawling crawling, this way and that—and then it stopped and raised a swollen head to look up at me peering down through the attic window.

I scurried back, accidentally knocking over the lamp and extinguishing the flame, and I was crawling crawling to the attic stairs and screaming for Mama but I knew, I knew that Mama wasn’t coming and Mama wasn’t going to take care of the thing in the garden.

Because Mama was already in the garden, crawling crawling, in the mud.