The Smell of a Place

Today’s prompt: “The smell of a place you love”

You love the scent of damp loam rising to your nostrils as you break the crust of earth with your trowel, making room for seed potatoes in the vegetable plot in the back yard, sprouting bulbs near the sidewalk in the front. As your fingers form divots for lettuce seed, you imagine your fingernails capturing the rich smell of the ground.

This was of no comfort to you when you were bound and buried alive, and the dirt was heaped upon you spadeful by spadeful. It wasn’t even good loamy soil. It was mostly clay.

He Had to Kill Again to Get Enough Material for the Pockets

Today’s prompt: “Write from this quote from Claude Lévi-Strauss, ‘I am the place in which something has occurred.’”

I am the place in which a murderer has sewn your skin into a fabulous new pair of pants.

Semper Fi II

Today’s prompt: “You are a military officer responsible for going to people’s homes to tell them that a family member has died in combat, is a prisoner of war, injured, missing in action, and the like. Describe one of the notification scenes.”

They always know. The instant they see him on their doorstep in the crisp olive drab of his Service Alpha uniform, their faces fall. He used to think it was the chaplain and the medic that gave it away, but he’s notified enough people before a chaplain or medic could be rounded up that he knows it’s not that. Maybe it’s just the presence of a stranger in dress uniform at their door. Maybe it’s his face. He is diligent at composing himself, but maybe it still betrays something.

His impeccably shined shoes echo along your concrete walkway, flanked by your geraniums. His peripheral vision blurs as he focuses on your front door. That’s his mission. He raises his fist, takes a deep breath, and knocks.

Your spouse opens the door, and then their expression crumbles into anticipatory grief. He comes inside. The two of them sit down. Your spouse is perched on the edge of their chair. They don’t know what to do with their hands.

“I’m afraid I have some bad news,” he says. “The commandant of the Marine Corps has entrusted me to express his deep regret that your spouse, [insert-your-name-here], was killed in action….”

One Way to Avoid Time Paradoxes

Today’s prompt: “You have a time machine, but it can only go back in time two days. What would you change?”

You’ve studied the rites of the Old Ones for decades now. You were the foremost living expert on how to bring about – or prevent – the ascension of eldritch gods. So theoretically, if you could go back in time two days, you would have sought out the cultist assassin before she even accepted the job to kill you before you could prevent the ascension of Cthulhu. Lethal blow dart to her neck as she was plotting your demise. Or maybe you would have hired more bodyguards to ward against her plans. Unfortunately, the time machine requires a living participant, so, schucks.

Dear Die-ary

Today’s prompt: “You’d just die if anyone ever saw this diary entry.”

“Dear Diary,” your handwriting loops across the page.

“Today I achieved nigh invulnerability! I drank a potion made of ground narwhal horn, the blood of an ocelot, and sorghum. Then I went on a vision quest for three days, fasting on a trek through the mountains. At the end of my journey, I sat cross-legged in a meadow. Jackals loped around me, vultures circled above me, and mushrooms sprouted up around me. I was dizzy with hunger, but still I sat, my eyelids heavy. As I blinked, I saw one of the vultures alight before me. A jackal broke out from the pack and strode toward me. And one of the mushrooms began growing at an alarming rate. Jackal, vulture and mushroom stood beside each other, and each took the form of a woman, and they said my name.

“‘No man or woman above age 10 can kill you,’ they prophecied in unison, ‘nor any child too young to grow a beard. You will not die by old age or disease. No water will drown you, no fire will burn you. No weapon forged by human hand can kill you. No wound can be inflicted on your skin.’

“So that’s pretty cool, huh Diary? Boy, I hope no one ever reads this and figures out how to turn this prophecy into my greatest weakness or something. Later!”

Your archnemesis closes your diary. He runs the dull edge of his bone knife across the lower edge of his beard, and makes plans to jam the blade into your eye before his next birthday on Leap Day.

The Ambulance

Today’s prompt: “Two paramedics have a patient in the back of the ambulance. The patient has only about 30 minutes to live. It could take 20 minutes or more to get to the hospital. What’s going on in the ambulance?”

The paramedics are so busy using the defibrillator on you and monitoring your vitals that they don’t notice the driver has missed his exit, tacking on another 15 minutes of travel time.

Lights Out

Today’s prompt: “Put your character (or yourself) in the dark. See what happens.”

In an instant, you’re enveloped in blackness. The overhead lights, the blinks from your modem, and every digital clock display in your house, all go dark in a single moment.

You grab your nearby phone and search through your contacts for the power company, who you have programmed in for precisely this situation. You’re just starting through the rigmarole of reporting an outage when you pull open the blinds to let in more moonlight, and realize it’s not just moonlight out there. The streetlights are on. The neighbor’s porch lights are on.

The breaker box, then.

You turn on your cell phone flashlight, take a deep breath, and head for the cellar. The concrete echoes around you as you step downstairs, shadows flickering in the unsteady beam of light. You can imagine spiders all around you, black widows and brown recluse spiders. And just what is that sound? Would the gas furnace be on without the electricity? The water heater? Ugh. You try to tell yourself it’s nothing.

You make a beeline for the breaker box in the corner. You focus your phone flashlight on the switches. Aha. A whole bank of them out.

You flip on the living room switch. The kitchen. The master bedroom and bathroom, and on down the line. But one of the last you hit is the basement. And by the time you do, the black-robed worshippers of the Old Ones have melted from the shadows and surrounded you, scythes and daggers in hand.