365 Creative Writing Prompts: Food

Breakfast will be served.

Gloria Gordon smiled at the sign and squinted at the rising sun. It was the perfect time for a swim: a cool breeze blew over the bay, and the other tourists were still snoozing in their air-conditioned rooms. If only for a few minutes, the water would be all hers.

She slipped an orange out of her bag and dug into it with her fingernail, tossing the peelings into the sand. The fruit felt cool and sweet going down her throat. With the warming sun on her skin, she was cool on the inside and hot on the outside. She licked her fingers, dropped her bag, and stepped into the water.

She walked slowly, sidestepping a crab or two, until the water reached her chest. Then she kicked off of the seaweed and sand and swam out into the waves.

For ten minutes, she swam to and fro as the sun rose higher over the horizon. A seagull circled overhead, casting no shadow on the sparkling bay. Other than the cries of the birds, Gloria Gordon's gentle splashing was the only sound the first tourist heard as he awoke in the beachfront bed-and-breakfast. He shuffled onto the balcony, passed the breakfast sign, and waved at the small figure in the water. Then he retreated to the bathroom.

Gloria Gordon sighed. Her time alone was over. She turned to swim back to the beach, but from the dark depths of the seawater, a long tongue snagged her foot and dragged her under without a sound. The sea serpent swallowed her whole, chewed her apart in its rocky gullet, and tossed up her salty skin onto the sand. Her guts felt cool and sweet going down the serpent's throat. Flicking his tail, the serpent swam deeper under the warming bay.

Back at the bed-and-breakfast, the hostess set out a new sign on the balcony: breakfast is served.

365 Creative Writing Prompts: Dancing

There are overgods and there are undergods.

The overgods live above Earth in the clouds, where they can look down on the doings of mortals and shower them with praise and criticism as necessary. They dispense wisdom and grant wishes and occasionally exact punishment, but do not be fooled into thinking the overgods keep the world running.

That responsibility belongs to the undergods, the forgotten deities who dwell miles below our feet in a realm of dust and coal. They churn the world's core and feed the world's roots and hold the mountains and the seas in place. Without them, everything would fall apart: forests would collapse, rivers would dry up, even the clouds graced by the overgods' golden sandals would cease to be. Yes, without the undergods, we would have no overgods.

Those dirty, damp beings are essential, so why don't the mortals give thanks to the undergods? No one offers sacrifices to the Under-Dweller. No one praises Gnash the Mountain-Maker or Rootma of the Oak Trees or the Darc Who Hides. No one utters prayers to Carol the Queen of Bats. With the brilliant and flashy overgods to focus on, no one remembers the rest, the unbeautiful, the ungraceful.

 But they will regret that mistake.

If only the surface-dwellers would have remembered Constance the Dancer. Constance, whose eternal dance was the only thing holding back the hordes of demons bristling to overthrow the Earth. Constance, whose tapping toes shut the floodgates of molten iron in the beginning of the world, whose rapid rhythm tormented the hellhounds as they strained on their chains, whose brittle hair swung to and fro to the sound of peace. For thousands of years, Constance's dance kept at bay the forces that thirsted for the golden blood of the overgods and the meaty flesh of mortals.

If only the Dancer had been thanked, she would not have slowed, would not have wearied. The signs were clear, but the end was inevitable. It is too late for prayers now.

There were overgods and there were undergods.

Constance stopped dancing last night.

365 Creative Writing Prompts: The Vessel

Full disclosure: the only way I'm getting out of here is in a hearse. 

When it comes, I'll be waiting on the edge of the sidewalk in the parking lot. A few cars will pass by without a second glance at me, their drivers focused on street lights and lane lines and the occasional text-message-that-can't-wait. Then my ride will come--a long, black, shiny hearse--and I won't be able to see the passengers through the tinted windows, but it won't matter and I'll climb willingly into the back all the same.

My seat will be long and lined with satin, and I'll lie down without snapping the seatbelt into place because there won't be a seatbelt that far back in the car. The manufacturers will have long ago considered such a safety measure pointless, expensive, and too late. They did, however, install a heavy lid onto the top of my seat so that I don't bounce out and frighten the neighborhood children. I'll close the lid and cozy up to the cobwebs and the stench of formaldehyde.

We'll stop at the gas station just up the street to fuel up before the long trek to the cemetery. Blood, not gas, will gush forth from the nozzle, and fat red drops will spill onto the pavement after the gas tank is full. I will peek out from under my lid out of curiosity. Filling up will have cost the undertaker fifty dollars. A sign beside the gas pump will tell me that the blood was oxygenated, but I'll be too afraid to ask where it came from.

The rest of the trip will be smooth until we pass the cemetery gates, where the speedbumps will jostle me just enough to unfold the hands that I will have so carefully crossed over my chest. The door will open a few minutes later, and I'll hear nothing but cawing crows and an occasional elk call (why elk were welcomed into the cemetery and mourners were not, I'll never know). Once the lid is nailed to the coffin, I'll have to imagine the dead tree leaning over my grave dripping bird poop and leaves like tears. The undertaker will lower my coffin into the dirt, where I will be greeted by ancient spiders and newborn earthworms and the skeleton of a saber-tooth cat from the Holocene era. 

And as the first shovelful of earth settles over my head, I'll lie back with my new friends and my old body and my favorite Emily Dickinson poem and drift away into a peaceful, eternal sleep.

Household Demons

I watched a documentary the other day and learned something very disturbing: there are demons among us. Hard-working, dusty demons. At first, they appear to be ordinary household objects; in fact, every home has at least one of these relentless demons tucked away in a corner or a closet. And the homeowners don't notice the dark and murderous presence. There is no screaming or hanging up charms or hiring an exorcist. No, the oblivious go about living their lives on the edge of danger. Sometimes, they even reach out and touch the demon. A few people probably think that they own the demon, that they have enslaved it.

They are wrong.

These demons cannot be controlled. They cannot be killed. They will continue pervading our safe spaces, undermining our security, brushing our surfaces.

You must not let them work. Whatever you do, don't sweep your floors. Never ever touch that sly devil: your household demon, the broom.

Haven't you seen the documentary--what was it called? Fantasia?

Because I used to be afraid of the bathtub drain

I was sitting in the bathtub, staring at the moldy ceiling, as the lavender-scented bubbles of my bubble bath deflated. They weren’t popping with excitement or abruptness, just deflating slowly and sadly and melting back into the oily water. I melted among them, too cold to remain in the tepid water but also too cold to get out and walk across the bathroom for the closest towel.

            

When I finally summoned up the courage to get out, I reached forward and yanked the plug before I could chicken out. The bubbles around me sighed, and then I heard a strange sound. It began as a faint whining noise and got louder and louder. No, not whining. It was like someone speaking underwater, you know that gargling sound that isn’t really a voice but pretends to be. Goosebumps blossomed across my skin. I wanted that noise to stop.

My courage shrank as the tub filled with cold air. The water and all the corpses of the sad bubbles swept past my legs and down my toes into the gaping drain.

I couldn’t take my eyes off that drain, that black hole, that toothless mouth. The more water that went down it, the louder and more high-pitched the sound became. I clapped my hands to my ears, but the sound was still there. I sang a loud version of “God Bless America,” but I could still hear it.

At last, the drain cleared, and through my clenched fingers, I finally recognized the sound. The drain was screaming—a high-pitched scream that told of beached whales and drowned ships and tortured people lost in dark depths. A scream that started in the deep black of ocean trenches and ran all the way up, past ancient wrecks and bloated monsters and rotting limbs, through the river and the water table and out my drain.

I couldn’t take it anymore. My whole body shivered with cold and dread. In one swift motion, I slammed the plug back into the drain. The screaming stopped immediately. I stared at the drain one minute longer, then got out and grabbed the towel. Its frayed red threads dangled around me like tentacles.

Short Fiction from a Writing Prompt

Carolina walked into the rain and didn’t look back. That was the last time anyone ever saw her.

But it was also the first time they had seen her, so they took some comfort, as they rolled their pumpkins back home, that some people come and go, some people are just passing through. The old Filipino proverb had never been proven wrong: if things are meant to be, they will never happen. Fate has a funny way of denying herself a future.

Carolina may not have looked back, but Katie did. She did not join the rest of the village in their long walk back home. She stayed there, holding the torch so high that the flames licked against the feet of the crows swooping over her head. She stayed there and she watched the darkness envelop Carolina. She watched the rain fill Carolina’s footprints so that the next morning wild foxes and daring cats would lap up a cool draught from the rainpools. She watched, knowing that life would go on even if fate did not.

Finally, when the rain had stopped, and the moon had set, and the fog of a new day was beginning to settle, Katie lowered her torch. It had stopped burning, stopped steaming, hours before, but Katie had not noticed. She had not noticed the dark or the cold or the droppings from the angry crows. She had only noticed the absence of the strange, tall girl—the girl who had been fated to be her friend. Betrayed by a fate that could never happen.

So Katie walked into the rain and only briefly looked back. That was the last time anyone ever saw her.

Flash Fiction

My widow's family does not like having me around, no matter how hard I try to get close to them.