01 Jun 2020
Today’s prompt: “Describe an experience from the point of view of someone who is phobic about that very experience. For example, an airplane flight taaken by someone terrified of flying, an agorophobic lost in a pasture, an arachibutyrophobic eating a sandwich.”
Their gruesome pasty-white pancake makeup, their exaggerated red lips (the big big mouths to eat you up with), their monstrous shoes clop-clop-clopping toward you, their hideous laughter – all of that would have been horrifying enough were the carfull of clowns not marching toward you with nooses in their hands.
31 May 2020
Today’s prompt: “Write down the interior monologue you experience when you sit down to write.”
Okay, how did you die today? Let’s look at the prompt and see if it suggests anything. Nothing? Well. Guess it’s going to be cultists with knives again.
28 May 2020
Today’s prompt: “An hour to go”
With one hour to go, you’re still unconscious, and they’re sharpening their knives.
26 May 2020
Today’s prompt: “Death of a journalist”
This is going to be such a big scoop.
Through a combination of public records requests, gumption and shoe leather, you’ve tracked down the cultists who’ve been running this city from the shadows. This should be their headquarters, here, in this nondescript building in the warehouse district. You tuck your long, narrow notebook into your bag and pull out your camera (the newspaper’s sole photog was out on a different assignment, but you’re pretty good with a 30mm). You hang the camera strap around your neck, grab a rain gutter, and hoist yourself onto the lid of the trash can next to the high window as quietly as you can. Beautiful – you’ve got a bird’s eye view on the action.
Below you, men and women in creepy hooded robes bustle to and fro. A couple of them are painting some kind of symbol on the floor. One of your sources has told you this is a “sigil.” Tomorrow, you’ll see if you can get an expert on cult phenomena to interpret it for you. You take off the lens cap and focus on the sigil. Click. Click.
Over there in the corner, chained up, is that Marie Watkins? Yes, it looks like her. She was reported missing by her parents last week. They’d reported suspicious activity in the neighborhood. They called it gang activity, but you knew better. Gangs use spray paint, not blood, and those symbols – sigils – didn’t look like any tags you’d ever seen before. You’d been hearing whispers of cults worshipping the “Great Old Ones.” You’d heard rumors of human sacrifices.
And over there, milling about with the other cultists in robes, isn’t that the mayor? And wait – over there – isn’t that the governor?
Click. Click. Click. This. Is going to be such. A big. Scoop.
You hear a crackle behind you, and turn your head slowly, not wanting to lose your balance on the trash can. Behind you are three men in creepy hooded robes.
24 May 2020
Today’s prompt: “Link two encounters from your day.”
The contact tracers only had to notify two people from today that you’d potentially exposed them with your fatal case of coronavirus: the woman at the gas pump across from you at the Chevron on Franklin, and the guy walking his dogs past your property while you were raking your yard near the sidewalk.
22 May 2020
Today’s prompt: “Write about the same event from the above prompt with the intent of convincing the reader that you were fully to blame. Which version of the story is more convincing?”
“You know, if you hadn’t eaten all those magnets, I’d be having a lot harder time drilling all these screws into you,” the man in the expressionless white mask and hooded black robe says as he holds another Phillips head screw up to your chest and presses his finger into the trigger of his cordless drill.
20 May 2020
Today’s prompt: “Write about a time someone completely screwed you over. Endeavor to convince the reader that you were entirely blameless in the events.”
“Seriously, what did I do wrong?” you wail, your wrists tugging at your shackles.
“Right? Wrong? That’s not what this is about,” the man in the expressionless white mask and hooded black robe says as he holds another Phillips head screw up to your chest and presses his finger into the trigger of his cordless drill.