Month: September 2018

Prompt: The worst Thanksgiving dish you ever had. 

Wet clotted spoonfulls of stuffing, made from the rubbery crusts of day-old baguettes, wormholed by limp strings of sautéed onion. The cook attempted to “crisp” the thing, flashing it in the oven at high heat. This had rather the effect of an as-seen-on-TV food dehydrator, leaving behind a vomit-brown casserole the consistency of shoe leather, with little charred tips like the points of a meringue.

If you could get beyond all of that the–the texture and appearance–the sound of it squeaking between your teeth, the flavor would hit you. Not rosemary, thyme, or sage, those Thanksgiving standards, but oregano. Dusty green handfuls of oregano. The monstrosity tasted like nothing so much as a frat-party pizza, waxy and abandoned the day after the party in a grease-stained box.

Lucy dutifully raised another a spoonful to her mouth. She wondered if she had the nonchalance to spit it into the fancy embroidered napkin in her lap.

Prompt: Tell a story that begins with a ransom note. 

She could do without it, Abby thought. Should be able to do without it. She had been planning on getting a new one soon anyway. The old one worked fine but it was a little slow, and beat up, with campground stickers from her gap year plastered across the top. Whoever took it must have known she needed it right now, enough to clean out her meager checking account and hide a fat was of bills in the prescribed hiding spot: under the loose plank in the step of the old stone water tower building.

That alone should tell her something, she thought. Who knew that building? An actor in the stage company that performed there on weekends? One of the tourist information desk workers in their blue T-shirts and khaki pants? Maybe someone less obvious. Some behind-the-scenes figure. A set designer or someone on the janitorial staff. Really, she suspected it was someone from the law school. Who else but a law student would think to ransom a person’s laptop in the last days before the bar exam?

She pulled the note out again and unfolded it. She smiled, in spite of herself. Someone had taken the time to clip letters from magazine and newspaper headings and paste them down on a sheet of white typing paper. It was a good, old-fashioned ransom note, fit for FBI scrutiny, the sort left by a serial killer at the scene of his last crime or stuffed in the mailbox of a rich celebrity’s daughter, as she lay gagged and squirming in the back of a utility van. It couldn’t be real, she thought. It had to be a joke.

Prompt: Something you had that was stolen.

The package arrived on a Tuesday. In a neat bubble-wrapped mailer with her address printed in black ink. The writing was big and bubbly, like a young girl’s. There was no address. Chandra didn’t think much of it. She did a lot of online shopping. Maybe something she’d ordered a while ago had been delayed. She tore open the envelope and turned it upside-down over the dining room table. It fell with a soft thud. A old wallet. Soft brown leather, rectangular. A woman’s wallet. She had the strangest feeling of deja vu as she picked it up. And she suddenly knew, even before she flipped it open, what she would find inside; her own driver’s license, from twenty years ago, at least. It was hers.

Prompt: The long-lost roommate.

There had been a lot of grappling in the elevator. This she remembered. Could still picture it if she closed her eyes. The darkly patterned emerald carpet like a putting green or the felted surface of a pool table. The reflective black paneling, good as any mirror. The optical illusion, when you stepped inside: whole armies of yourself, standing at attention, in rows and rows. Forever.

When he’d reached for her it hadn’t seemed like a choice. Their movements were automatic, full of the inertia of that sea of tangled limbs and pressing torsos. Who were they to resist infinity?  When the door swung open to an instant of bright light on the tenth floor one of them–she could no longer remember who–had pressed the “closed” button. The other–it had been a joint effort, of this she was sure–had sent them all the way up, to the penthouse floor, where a tiny unlocked maintenance door led to the roof, to the hot dark summer air and a sky swirling with wine and stars.

Prompt: What a character holding a blue object is thinking right now.

The girl next door had imaginary friends. A shimmering, otherworldly horse named spirit. And a beautiful woman, Varta, with thick black hair and a long trailing blue dress with belled sleeves and secret pockets. Annabelle silently listened to the girl describe them both on the swings one day. Varta was not really alive. Though she had been, or perhaps she still was, in some parallel universe. She appeared now only to the girl, as a hologram.

“Like Princess Leia?” Annabelle ventured.

“Exactly.” The girl dug her feet into the gravel mid-swing and looked at Annabelle with fervent, glistening eyes. Her knuckles were white, where she gripped the chains, and on the middle finger of one hand she wore a huge sapphire, on an old-fashioned filigreed gold band. Annabelle studied the ring when she thought the girl was not looking. It was too large, spinning around on the girl’s finger, but that didn’t seem to trouble her. She wanted to ask if the stone was real but knew, somehow, that that would be a mistake. One had the feeling that the girl was in the grip of some powerful spell, one those around her should take care not to break.