27 Apr 2022
Today’s prompt: “Your first kiss”
The bottle wobbles on its clockwise path. Please let it be River please let it be River please please please you’ll never ask for anything else
It stops with the neck pointing right at Cthulhu. Dammit.
“Kiss!” Kara shouts. A chant quickly breaks out, and the other kids around the circle start beating their thighs with their fists or slapping the floor to keep time: Kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss
Cthulhu reaches a clawed hand out to you and bends his face down to your eye level. You swallow, and force a smile. Might as well get this over with.
You aim a little under the tentacles, figuring that’s where his lips are. The next few seconds, your face is flooded with sensations – cold, moist, a little slimy. You feel a gentle tug at the corner of your mouth as one of his tentacles slides between your lips and along the edges of your molars. He’s exploring your mouth with a few cautious tendrils. Your lips begin to feel numb, and then your tongue, and then your gums.
And then, of course, he devours you whole.
25 Apr 2022
Today’s prompt: “Pick a story from today’s news. Imagine one of the people mentioned in the article reading it at the breakfast table that same day. Describe the scene.”
“Musk gets Twitter for $44 billion, to cheers and fears of ‘free speech’ plan,” the headline read.
“Hooray!” Elon Musk said over his waffles. “I’m going to celebrate by making up stupid baby names and blowing up some space junk!” The billionaire Internet troll slid open a wall panel in the breakfast nook and punched a shiny red button, launching a SpaceX rocket into the stratosphere. Soon, flaming hot sattelite shards were plunging toward earth. One of them was large enough that it did not burn up on reentry, and unfortunately, it was the one with a trajectory aimed squarely at you.
22 Apr 2022
Today’s prompt: “You are happily married, but one day you realize you have a crush on someone else. What happens?”
So I’ve been keeping it to myself all this time. I’ve invested years and love and care into my husband, and I still love him, but I can’t deny that I’ve been smitten with one of my female coworkers for months. And I’ve breathed not a word of it to anyone. I make eyes at Kat, but nothing more, and I go home to Jerome and I’m unsparing with my affection as I can possibly be, but I still feel like I’m holding something back just because I have this secret attraction to someone else.
And then you plummeted 12 stories and pancaked into the sidewalk next to me.
I hyperventilated on the call to 911 as I watched your blood seep into the cracks in the sidewalk. I called in sick to work. I ordered takeout Mexican food and watched Netflix for the rest of the day.
And then, once I’d gotten past the shock of things, I told Jerome I wanted to open up the marriage. Because life is short. And you know what? He was relieved! He confessed that he’d been flirting with a woman he met at a conference, but hadn’t taken it any farther than that out of respect for our marriage. And then I talked to Kat, and it seems I wasn’t just imagining the chemistry between us at all. Jerome and I now have happy secondary relationships, but our marriage feels stronger than ever. We don’t have secrets. We talk about what we’re really feeling. And because we can talk to each other about anything, the sex is better.
You’re an inspiration, you know that?
20 Apr 2022
Today’s prompt: “Share that embarrassing story your relatives always tell about you.”
Your brother is in town for a visit, along with his twin daughters, and your parents dredged up all your childhood toys that they must’ve been holding on to for just such an occasion. One of your nieces just ran into the living room pulling a plastic duck on wheels attached to a string. The duck quacks every time the wheels make a full rotation.
“I remember that duck!” your Aunt Joyce laughs. “Isn’t that the duck that [insert-your-name-here] insisted on pulling all the way through the mall?”
“That’s the one,” your mom says. “I tried to pick it up a couple times to stop the quacking, and they just started screaming. They pulled that thing all the way from Mervyn’s to J.C. Penney.”
“Do you have a video of it?” your younger cousin Becka asks.
“Oh, no, we couldn’t afford a Camcorder back then,” your mom says.
“Don’t you feel a little weird keeping that toy around, given that they died in that fight with a horse-sized duck?” your brother asks.
Silence envelops the room, except for the quacks coming from the plastic duck on wheels.
“It’s still a really cute toy,” your Aunt Joyce says.
18 Apr 2022
Today’s prompt: “The best advice for a teen just graduating from high school.”
Wear sunscreen, always try to negotiate upward when you get a job offer, and never buy budget parachutes. My friend [insert-your-name-here] did that. It did not turn out well for them.
15 Apr 2022
Today’s prompt: “What’s the stupidest thing you used to believe whole-heartedly?”
I used to believe people are basically good at heart, but that was before watching that mob of people bathing in your blood on live TV.
13 Apr 2022
Today’s prompt: “Write an ode to an onion.”
One day you were driving near Albion
Behind too many semis to tally ‘em
A jacknifed onion truck
Left the whole highway fucked
And that’s how you were killed by an allium.