Daily Prompt #1
Hello fellow Prosers! So starting today (well, tonight) I am hoping to write to daily writing prompts that I have saved on my phone. I will share the prompts with you in the photo section or in the text. The works may be either prose or poetry, whatever strikes me. I'm hoping to do this everyday with some exceptions for weekends or vacations. I also would love if you guys write to these prompts as well! Please tag me in any pieces that you create from these prompts as well as I'd love to read them. Anyways, here's the first piece of hopefully many to come! :)
Prompt:
"Are you you clinically insane or just incredibly annoying?"
"I don't know, probably both."
"Let's go! What are you doing? We don't have time!"
"Okay, just hold on a second," I said letting out an exasperated breath as I crouched down near the wall. Securing the last explosives I had with me to the support beam, I punched fifteen seconds into the timer. Letting out a crazed laugh, I got up and ran. "Jump!" I yelled ahead of me.
"Wha-" Caleb paused for a moment, his eyes growing wide when he saw the blinking light of the bomb. "What in the hell-"
"Get down!" I yelled, tackling him to the ground.
Not a moment later, a loud explosion went off, collapsing parts of the ceiling and covering us in dust and debris.
Pushing rubble off of my side, I rolled onto my back laughing. My sides aching as I struggled to catch my breath between each fit of laughter, I choked out, "Did you see their faces?! Oh Lord, that was priceless!"
Caleb stood up slowly, his shocked eyes taking in the scene around him. "What the fuck did you just do?" he yelled at me, a slight waver in his voice.
"Ugh, I'm pretty sure I just saved our asses," I answered as I got up brushing the dust off of me. "You're welcome," I said with an exaggerated bow.
"Sa-saved us?" Caleb let out a sigh as he closed his eyes and rested his hand on his temple. "How is using the last of our explosives and trapping us in a room with no way out 'saving us'?"
I slowly turned around, looking for any type of escape from the room. Turning back around to meet Caleb's eyes, I nervously rubbed the back of my neck. "Well at least we're not being chased any more."
"No, you're right, Theo. Because being trapped in a space where our enemies can easily find us is so much better than the possibility of out running them." He sighed as he dropped his hands to his sides.
"Now....I'm pretty sure that was sarcasm-"
"Of course it was sarcasm you idiot!" he said slapping me upside the head.
"Ow!" I complained.
"Well, thanks to you, we're stuck here," Caleb grumbled as he shuffled to the other side of the room. He sighed, taking a seat on a chunk of fallen ceiling.
I shifted my weight from foot to foot, slowly playing with the objects in my pocket. "Well I never said that was my last bomb," I mumbled under my breath.
Caleb looked up from his hands. "What?"
"Well I mean," I continued as I pulled out a small bottle of pool cleaner, rust remover, and a lighter from my pockets, "I do have these...."
Caleb paused, looking from me to the items in my hand. "You shouldn't have those...." he breathed.
My eyes widened in excitement. "Oh good! So you do know what these can do!"
Caleb put up his hand to stop me, a painful glare in his eyes. "Yes I know what those can do," he hissed, "but I also know that we were only allowed three bombs for this mission, which you have used, and that you're on probation for making bombs like this before."
I glanced off to the side, fidgeting with the items in my hands. "True, but I also knew something like this," I said gesturing to the room around us, "would happen, so I came prepared."
"Yes, but all of this is your fault," Caleb snapped.
"And now I am trying to fix it." I turned away from him, crouching down to begin mixing the chemicals and constructing a fuse out of an old shoelace.
I heard him sigh as he took a step towards me. "Are you clinically insane or just incredibly annoying?" he asked.
"I don't know," I said shrugging my shoulders as I stood to face him with smirk on my face. "Probably both."
I saw a small smile grow on his face as he clasped the bottle in my hand. "Then let's do this."
My Son
"Could you buy me those shoes?"
No "please."
No "...if I work...could you loan me..."
Just deep, dark green eyes that stare blankly though my own bright blue eyes. The chestnut brown hair that I so lovingly combed when he was a child falls across his forehead, matted under an old baseball cap.
His left hand instinctively moves toward the front pocket of his jeans. Jeans that are so tight that the outline of his ever present iPhone has worn a rectangular shape into them.
I shift and glance at my weary husband before I return my attention to the conversation at hand.
Is he going to answer that right now? In the middle of a conversation? Why?
Imperceptible; the feeling that tore him away from his demand, but I could feel it.
I knew the phone would go off.
Just as it had countless times before.
When we had been arguing. When he told me that his father and I were the worst, that we were ruining his life. That he couldn’t stand us. That we were nothing to him.
But that doesn’t happen anymore; the screaming matches.
He has once again retreated into that screen. The world of likes, shares, and controlled emotions on display.
A glimpse of white, and the slightest hint of a chuckle escape from my son. My attention toward him falters, and I look to his father who too has perked up at the sound of our only son’s first display of happiness since the accident.
He’s on the mend, I think to myself. Good. I’m glad. It’s time for us to both move on.
But just as quickly as it came, the smile disappeared and my son looked up from his phone and tucked it into the same spot in the same pocket without a second thought. He looked to my husband. My husband quickly withdrew his wallet from a similarly worn back pocket and handed it to our son without a word.
My husband clung to his wallet like my son clings to his phone.
A wallet is a different sort of crutch for the suburban man who had grown up in the rural south. A man whose calluses from working on his family’s farm caused him to have trouble completing his school assignments on his mother’s beat up type writer as child. A man who had received a scholarship that funded his collegial education— a man who decided that his wife and child would not want for anything.
As he watches our son walk into the store to spend an obscene amount of money on sneakers that he doesn’t need, and will only wear with matching t-shirts, I look at the bags under his eyes and my gaze falls to the haphazardly tucked in shirt that now has an abundance of room for the belly that is no longer there. The belly which I had previously encouraged him to exercise away for so many years.
Now he was becoming gaunt. The accident was slowly killing him.
I can do nothing but watch him wither.
Our son walks slowly back to where we both wait for him. The cell phone in his right hand, stealing all of his attention. He wordlessly carries his bag and my husband’s wallet in his left hand. When he gets near to his father he wordlessly hands the wallet to my husband without taking his eyes of his screen.
The two turn swiftly and pass through me as though I am not even there. And as far as they know I am not there. As far as they are concerned I am drifting at the bottom of the lake which they have to pass over each day. On the way to work, on the way to school, even on the way to this mall.
Each day they have to pass over the bridge with the mismatched concrete where my car broke through.
The memory of my accident haunts them daily…no wonder they have changed so much.
Harrison Birch
If you say “good morning,” he will look up
from his weeding, or whatever he is doing in
the fenced area of his front yard, look at you
as if he just caught you mid-squat in the dirt,
and turn his wrinkled nose away. If you knock
on his door to talk about his rusted Accord
blocking your driveway, you see his scowling
face in the window—his greeting, a middle finger.
He’s been known to throw things. The family next
door know not to say anything as they pass by
on the sidewalk; he will snarl at them, and nod
to Mr. Torkington, their pet Doberman.
His house smells like musty papers and
dog food. Scout troops are warned from
approaching his door, a girl fractured her
leg when he had chased her away from
his stoop with a rolled up newspaper.
Animal control makes annual inspections
of his house. One time a concerned neighbor,
startled by all the rabbits, called for a wellness
check. They came and took hundreds of
floppy-eared, snuffling rabbits away in crates,
while he hovered by the front door and sobbed.
Spring finds him kneeling in the fresh dirt of his yard
tilling the soil with a trowel, he spies a baby robin
gray and ugly, crying in loud braying cheeps
—sounds too loud for such a tiny body—he
uses the trowel to expose pink fleshy worms
in the muck and the baby bird hops closer,
dodging nimbly between each shower of dirt.
“You deserve better,” he says, clucking his tongue,
and scans the sky for more friends.
No One Weeps But the Children
He takes the children, one a night. They are never seen again, never heard from. The FBI have traced thousands of missing people to him.
They have pleaded, they have negotiated, they have offered bribes and enormous sums of money, but all to no avail.
The children continue to disappear.
Why can't they understand, that's he's just lonely? That ever since his face was first marred, that the children were the only ones whose faces didn't scrunch up in disgust, didn't yell at him, didn't hurt him. Children seemed to have the innate sense to comfort a hurt one.
He once had a child, actually. Once his face was marred, his wife couldn't stand the sight of him. She took the child, despite his beggings and pleadings. Left him crying there, on the floor, his ugly face covered by his hands like he was waiting for a blow.
And then he started taking the children. Their smiles were infectious, and their giggles made him feel so much better about himself. They didn't care what he looked like. At first, they missed their parents, but soon, thoughts of them vanished...and he was happy.
Today he stands on trial. He is to be executed tomorrow.
No one weeps but the children.
Now That You’re Gone
My body tingles lightly as the numbness spreads
My heavy heart sinks to the pit of my stomach
The nausea bubbles and rises
Higher
Higher
Higher
Overwhelming my senses
Uncontrollable tears flooding down my face.
Like Atlas, I am left buckling under the weight of this world
As reality sets in.
Now I am truly alone.