'paranoia' - short prompted free-write

trying to get into the habit of actually doing a bit of creative writing again, now that i have some time; this is me dipping a toe into the water, I guess.


Prompt: A loud knock on the door
Wordcount: 312
Written Today


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You always jump, when you hear a loud knock on the door. Always the moment of muscles tensed, pulse suddenly shot up - the expectation of disaster, surely present, surely waiting for you behind a single slab of wood and a half-rusted doorknob.

Always you wait with dread for the thumping of boots up the stairs, the particular sound of a certain type of tire and engine pulling up to the curb. Cause and effect: you hear the knock at the door and you gasp. Your hands shake when you go to undo the locks. You fumble it, stretch out the time before the door must, inevitably, open up.

When it does you sigh. It's the post man, with a package and a clipboard for you to sign. Or the neighbor from down the hall, housedress a mess, asking to borrow a cup or two of salt. Or a newspaper salesmen, looking to talk you into a subscription. Or a Jehovah's Witness, with literature for you to read. And so on.

You answer them quickly, eyes darting behind them, down the hall, relieved and yet unwilling to believe your luck, quite. Yes, no, please, okay I will look, go now, you have to go. Sometimes they give you strange looks, when you shut the door so quickly, do up the lucks again. But you must - do up the locks and then sink down on the floor, back against that old door, knowing you can finally breath.

Then you wait again, anxiously, for the next knock on the door, the loud start of a car in the night, the sound of footsteps in the distance. Disaster lurks everywhere, waiting to grab you, to swallow you up the way it did your father when you were four, in a country that no longer exists, decades ago. You wait for it and watch, trembling.

"Denouncement" - Old Prompted Free-write

Revised writing prompt from 12/2008. Setting is loosely based on Stalinist era USSR.

Wordcount: 1073 
Prompt: 'photograph negatives'
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He held the envelope out to her silently. Elena stared at it. His hand remained outstretched, ramrod straight, and slowly, finally, she reached for it. Inside were photograph negatives. The woman flipped through them quickly, first with curiosity, and then with shock, fear, and creeping up her throat like bile, rage.

“What is this, Rudolf?” she asked, her pale blue eyes rising to meet the man’s darker ones.

“You know I like the both of you. Osip was my friend as much as he was your husband. I was as surprised as you were when I….found these. I wish I could throw them out. You know I do. But I can’t, Elena, I just can’t. Do you know what they would do to me if they found out that I did?” Elena knew exactly what they would do. Failure to denounce was, after all, a well known and serious infraction of the criminal code.

“Why are you showing me these?” she asked after a long moment of silence. Tears rose to her eyes, but the woman fought them back, schooled her expression into as neutral a mask as she could manage. It was what everyone did instinctively, it this modern age.

“I like you, Elena, I do. I wanted to give you a chance to…report this…before I have to.” Rudolf said. She understood immediately. Failure to denounce was viewed as a serious crime indeed by the authorities. For her husband to be arrested for such…activities…they would, of course, assume that as his wife she had to know something. That she knew and didn’t say. They would probably arrest her too, if not right away then soon after they came for Osip. She could of course protest her innocence, insist on her ignorance, but… On the other hand, if it was she that brought them the photos, she who denounced her husband’s illegal activities, then well, that was a different story altogether. She looked up again at Rudolf wordlessly.

“You have two days, Elena. Those are the negatives. I have the originals. If you don’t…in two days, I’ll have to. I wish I didn’t, but….two days.”

“Thank you.”

“I have to go now. You have my number, if you need to ring me for anything. Otherwise…well, try to enjoy your afternoon. The weather really is wonderful.”

“Yes, it’s very warm. Have a nice afternoon too.” She said, and shut the door carefully behind him. Afterwards, alone, Elena leaned back against that now dead-bolted door and slowly slid down until she was sitting on the floor. She wanted to cry but now that she had the privacy the tears would not come to her eyes. Her entire soul wanted to retch.

How could he how could he how could he? How could he be so stubborn and stupid? How could he not know better? And now what was she supposed to do?

She could of course destroy the photos, but Rudolf had the originals and would tell and then she really would be screwed. Ten years at the very least. What was she supposed to do, murder the man? She laughed as she imagined herself sneaking into his bedroom in the middle of the night with a steak knife, a clothesline-turned-garrote. No, Elena had been called a ruthless bitch on more than one occasion but murderess she was not. 

She could tell Osip about the photos, tell him to run. But then, of course, when Rudolf told, they’d come and ask where he was. Missing, what the hell do you mean, missing? Men just don’t go missing! How the hell did he know? Who did you tell? Just the bitch? Traitorous cunt warned him, did she? Well, what are you looking at me like that for? Arrest the goddamn bitch! We’ll make her talk! No, if she warned him to run she would have to go with him. And then what? Exist in the wilderness for twenty years? Live off scraps and stealing and melted snow? Elena couldn’t live like that. She wouldn’t. And why should she, for him, when he didn’t even have the decency to tell her, warn her, ask her about the danger he was putting the both of them in?

If she told they would praise her. She would keep all the property. A divorce would be easy to obtain if she wanted….and necessary if she didn’t wanted to be branded as an outcast, a prisoner’s wife. She would be safe and comfortable and he, and he…

Elena ran to the bathroom and retched bile until her teeth tingled and gums burned. Then, hands shaking, spent, she went to prepare dinner. By the time Osip came home her expression was again schooled into an expressionless mask of calm and neutrality. She felt like a doll or a machine as she kissed him on the cheek.

“What’s the occasion?” her husband asked, and it was only then that Elena realized she’d made him his favorite meal. She couldn’t remember cooking at all.

“Oh, nothing,” she said with a small grin. “I got a good deal at the market today, is all.” It was hard to believe, in that moment, that she was only twenty four. She felt ancient. She felt eternal. She watched him eat. The food in her own mouth tasted like lead. It grew stuck in her throat. It was hard to breath. She stared at him, stared, but he didn’t notice, too busy eating and reading the paper.

It’s a good thing we don’t have kids, at least, she remembered thinking.

That night they made love passionately. She kissed him and kissed him and insisted on more, what’s gotten into you, he said, not complaining, and she wanted to tell him that she needed to make herself feel something for him, that she wanted to feel something that would stop her, that would stay her hand and stay her lips but instead she felt everything but nothing and nothing at all.

The next morning, after he left for work, she made a bouquet of wild roses in a vase on the kitchen table. He’d given her such a rose on their first date. One of the thorns cut her hand. She sucked on the blood as she carried a white envelope to the police station. Later, when she tried to remember that day, it was always the taste of iron on the lips was mostly all she could recall. 

A Plague - Prompted Free Write

Prompt: A plague

Wordcount: 1250

written today

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Day 14 of the Month of Julium, Year 1109

Everything was empty when we first walked into the village. The streets were unswept and silent, market stalls closed, windows shuttered up or else hanging open loosely, a curtain half visible here and there, listlessly fluttering in the breeze. It was unnerving to be sure, and gave a man more than a bit of pause. I’d wanted to turn back then, to guide the horses back onto the road: our supplies were not nearly so badly depleted as to necessitate a stop in such a place. Even if they had been, well, few men have died of a day or two of riding on an empty stomach but quite a few, by the look of things, had died from staying in this place. Once we got a few more yards in, the place began to positively stink or rot and disease.

Again I found myself wondering what I was doing amongst these people, for I knew as soon as I opened my mouth in protest that she would disagree, would push forward into the bloody deathtrap. There was no chance of Harman disagreeing with her either – even after four weeks, I wasn’t quite sure what the tie between the two of them was, why such a big man, a warrior clearly trained by one of the Seven Orders, was traveling with a Black Mage as if he was a common mercenary or bodyguard. Of course, one might ask why one such as myself – a journeyman Arcane Mage trained under the auspices of the Royal Academy, was traveling with her as well. That of course is a story described elsewhere in these journals. Suffice it to say that Ayelet was not what you would expect of Black Mage, and on the whole, certainly worthy of our loyalty.

In any case, we soon made out way to the center of the village, which was as empty as the outskirts, though a certain flash of movements here and there in some of the windows let us know that a few of the inhabitants of this place, at least, had not yet perished. Whether we would actually seen any of them, however, was at this point very much in question: the villagers in these parts were never particularly amenable to outsiders – when one of them happened to come wearing the black robes, in the midst of such devastation…well, one could hardly blame them if they came to certain conclusions, and thought it best to make themselves scarce.

Wary of entering any of the buildings, which might be full of disease or hostile survivors, we decided to rest in the village square. I cast a few sigils of light and protection around us, both for our own comfort and in the vague hope that some of the inhabitants still living might recognize these as the marks of the Academy and come forward despite Ayelet’s presence. Such luck was not forthcoming, however.

Ayelet prepared a thin gruel for us out of the remainder of our provisions, which we shared in a muted silence, influenced as we were by the mood of our surroundings. Afterwards, I looked through my apothecary case for any useful supplies, while Harman sharpened one of his blades and Ayelet sat in meditation: loathe as she would be to admit it, this place, the death here, was strengthening her significantly. Of course there were other, much more noxious methods by which a black mage like herself could gain strength at plague site, but she was, as I previously stated, quite different from most of the black mages one is wont to encounter in this world.

After some time, she stood up suddenly, and made her directly towards one of the houses, her posture showing a certain immovable determination. Harman glanced up from his work, his eyes flashing warily. He was up in a flash, grunting in annoyance and hurrying after her. With a sigh and not a bit of dread in my soul, I stood up as well, not wanting to be caught alone when they started whatever it was that they were liable to start. Ayelet pushed open the door to that abode without effort and strode into it, the two of us following close behind her. Inside, we found two children, neither possibly older than his tenth year and both within the final stage of the illness. I noted that the plague they suffered was the blackening illness, which darkened a man’s skin to the color of ash and before breaking out in pustules. In the final stages of that disease, a man vomited blood and sometimes bled from the other orifices as well. It was a terrifying illness, and simply sharing a room with these two blighted wretches sickened me; it was all I could do not to go running out again. Instead I stood in the doorway, tense, and watched her.

Ayelet knelt down by the children, unafraid of their disease (she had that right: as a black magician, she had a certain immunity from illnesses, even the most severe varieties) and laid her hands on them. At that point, she did a certain magic, one I have never observed or read in any volume, an ability that seems to be unique to black magicians and among whom it would seem she was the only one ever to have the inclination to discover and use: she absorbed their illness. We watch their skin clear up, a healthy glow return to their previously ravaged bodies while hers, for a few moments at least, took on the look of a plague-ridden woman moments away from her end. Then of course, her natural abilities manifested, and she healed, grew healthy again, if exhausted. I had seen this enough times not to be shocked, of course, but nonetheless I couldn’t help but be awed just a bit, still, by this most orthodox method of healing.

At that moment of course, the surviving villagers, so scarce until now, appeared not far from the doorway in which I stood, looking none too happy with our presumed interference with two of their dying children. Things might have turned out badly for us of course, if not for the presence of Harman, who took that moment to step forward and explain. Coming from such a big man, clearly a skilled warrior, the villagers, many of whom were still clearly weakened from their trials, relented somewhat in their angry assertions, particularly upon discovering the two children alive and in good health. Of course, that did not stop them from running us out of the village, in spite of the lateness of the hour, but Harman did, through a certain menacing swinging of his axe, convince them to sell us a few measures of grain upon our departure.

Not an entirely unexpected end to a day, I must admit, nor particularly undesirable, from my perspective at least. I was more than happy to spent the night sleeping on a patch of cold, hard earth again, rather than in that accursed place. Once, I’m sure, I would have been mortified to be run out of a place in such a way, but traveling with a black magician, you get used to that kind of thing. We moved onwards the next morning, and even had a rather eventful encounter at a certain bridge, though that is, I must say, a story for another entry.

Until then,
Sub Arcane Mage Timothey das Ostraa
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A Parade - Prompted Free Write

Prompt: A parade

Wordcount: 837

written today

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The black boots, shined to a uniform, gleaming perfection, stomped down against the still-frosty earth, again and again in tandem, in waves. Row after row of black and khaki-clad men moved forward, pulled inexorably by unseen force towards the center of the city. They clogged up the bridges and streets: automobiles and bicycles were nowhere to be seen, nor pedestrians making there way to the stores or their jobs. No, today there was only the steady thrum of footfalls, marching soldiers, and on the sidelines, slightly less uniform in appearance, a long line of drummers working diligently at their craft. There were bright banners and oversized flags strung up on the outer walls of nearby building and on lampposts – words of encouragement and lithographed images of smiling children and of Him, always Him, printed just so and clearly visible above all others.

The sidewalks along the main route were crowded, filled with less-than-enthusiastic bystanders. Some, though not all, had stupidly exaggerated grins plastered onto their faces and waved small, cheap flags with a modicum of energy. The rest stood alone or in small groups, bundled up in thick coats, huddling together in attempts to keep warm. Their eyes darted only occasionally towards the procession. Here and there groups of schoolchildren stood dressed in their school colors, most more intent on gossiping or fooling around than on the proceedings; their matronly teachers stood near them, some giving the children grim, reproachful looks, though many others seemed apathetic.

Karl, like most of the other men and woman shoved out onto the sidewalks at the crack of dawn, longed to be elsewhere. It wasn’t even the cold that bothered him, for the makeshift laboratory where the man spent most of his daylight hours was a drafty space with cracking windows that offered little protection against frigid winter temperatures; Karl was well used to the sensation of cold that chilled down to his very bones. No, for Karl, it was the noise, the obnoxious drumming, the whistles of the so-called Peace Officers making sure everyone stayed in line, and of course, the thumping of the boots. They were heavy boots, those, and Karl could still remember viscerally the pain they caused when one was kicked with them, over and over, right in the center of the gut. Karl remembered broken ribs as well.

More precisely, really, Karl wished that he could disappear. It was almost possible – his current project, the one on invisibility, was progressing well. Invisibility could be obtained, in a very limited way and for very short periods, but the current side effects – a particularly painful and persistent rash of the skin chief among them – were such that its use on such an occasion was still far from advisable.

Sighing, Karl shoved his hands deeper into the pockets of his overcoat and looked up, his eyes drawn to a particularly large and colorfully illustrated image of His benevolence hanging from the roof of a nearby storage depot. What would He, His minions, do if they knew what Karl was working on – that Karl was in fact still working, if secretly and quietly now? Nothing good, certainly. Invisibility was, after all, a very promising technology with many possible uses. Yes, they’d like nothing more than to get their greedy paws on his work. He’d taken certain measures, however, to ensure that this would never happen. Karl had learned from his mistakes: he was careful now, cultivated the image of the doddering, broken old man, lean from years of just getting by, his overcoat always dusty and increasingly covered in mended patches. He almost never spoke with strangers anymore, beyond the vaguest of pleasantries (no one who had sense these days did, come to think of it) and he dutifully allowed himself to be herded to these parades without protest. It was painful, standing here, watching this for what felt like the millionth time, and terribly tedious, but worth the sacrifice for the guise of anonymity it allowed him to maintain.

In the afternoon, after all was said and done, the officials back in their villas and the soldiers back in their barracks, Karl would make his way carefully across the city to the little cellar where he worked. He would meet with his apprentice, who would be waiting (hiding) for him there, and together they would work out a solution to this latest riddle of chemistry and mathematics. She had a mind, that one, and he would train her to be something even better than himself. She would never waste time, years, tricked by His words, by their lies. She would perfect anything he didn’t have time to complete, and well – how much easier would it be, for an assassin to succeed if that assassin was bless with a certain invisibility? The possibilities were astounding.

So Karl remained, standing, perhaps even limply waving a little flag when one was thrust at him by a passing officer, and the soldiers kept marching, marching past in their black boots, their robotic motions.
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"A Stare" - Short Prompted Free-write

Prompt: "A crumpled one dollar bill"
Wordcount: 642
written today
  
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She pays you in crumpled one dollar bills so often you wonder if she is some kind of stripper or whore, though you’d never be so bold as to ask, of course. She doesn’t really dress or act like it though: when she comes into your store, her ash blond hair is almost always tied back in a ponytail or a loose bun with a few strands floating freely here and there, and she wears loose jeans and long cardigans that almost reach down to her knees and always cover her arms. She doesn’t wear make-up or high-heeled shoes or anything of the like, so you have no evidence for your theory, such that it is, except for those dollar bills, and the fact that she always comes in during the day, mid-morning often as not, so who knows what she is doing or dressed like at night.

She always smiles at you, in a vague, distracted way, but rarely speaks more than a word or two as you go through the motions of your transaction. Sometimes the smile reaches her eyes, but usually not. Usually, you think she looks rather sad. You tried to tell her a joke once or twice, to see if you could make her smile, but she didn’t seem to find it funny or really even understand it was a joke you’d just told – most people are like that though, don’t get your jokes, never have. Sometimes you think back on her visit hours after she’s left, trying to imagine what you could have said or done differently, something that would have gotten her to talk or laugh. It’s been months since you’ve first seen her and you still don’t know her name.

You could try talking to her straightforwardly of course, but that never seems to work out very well for you, with anyone. You never know what to say, can’t be bothered with the little things that mean nothing that people are always saying to each other; the things that really interest you, the things you really know, are things that no one wants to hear about. You used to talk about them anyway as a kid, talk and talk to anyone who’d stay still long enough to listen because they were just so exciting and you wanted to share. You lost quite a few friends that way, annoyed quite a few rather larger kids who hadn’t been friends in the first place… These days you know better, stay quiet mostly, and that works out well enough with most people.

With her though, you wish you could speak. You wish you could ask about semi-circular the bruises you saw on her neck once, about why she comes in so often when almost everyone else only comes in once a week or maybe twice at most (you count their visits, keep track compulsively the way you keep track of the number of steps between your counter and the break room, the way you sort your food on your plate or tray by color before you eat, the way you check three times that everything is off before you leave your house in the morning), about the money and the far off look in her eyes and about how pretty she is and whether she would like to…

You ask her in dreams, in lazy flights of fancy born of mid-day ennui, in the little blue ink doodles you scribble on the edges of the paper notebook you keep on the counter at all times. You ask in words that float away, that dissipate before they are ever formed, in jumbled thoughts, in the little cracks and sarcastic remarks that you recite for yourself every day. You ask when you stare so intensly at her back as she walks in and out, at her eyes, her hair.

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An Older Short Free-writing Prompted Exercise

This isn't really complete, but I do like the atmosphere of it, something to potentially expand on later on...

Prompt: “The golden harp...”
Wordcount: 530

written 07/2010

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The golden harp loomed over the left half of the castle’s antechamber, polished, shining, and as always untouched. It was said that the thing was a relic from another age, from when giants ruled the earth or, alternatively, when the kingdoms of man were still so great that a man’s fingers were large and strong enough to pull at its taut strings. These days, there were few brave enough to touch the thing, never mind actually using it for its intended purpose. These days, it stood only to awe and intimidate, kept in near-pristine condition by a good half-dozen overworked servants.

         

In that it was mostly successful, drawing stares from many of the less familiar faces among those milling around below it on some official business or other. It even affected Fiddle, who was perched atop it, though in his case it was excitement, rather than fear or awe, that raised his pulse above its usual steady rhythm. Fiddle was, among other things, a rather musical creature, and even now the young man’s fingers itched with the urge to try to make the old instrument sing. He could almost imagine the shocked, then appreciative looks of his audience – gratifying, yes, but sadly impossible. Fiddle, you see, happened to be invisible at the current moment, a state that granted him the freedom necessary to go about his business unharassed. The enchantment he was wearing cost quite a bit of coin to have cast, and would be quite ruined by an explosion of music in one of the castle’s most frequented chambers.

         

So the young man sighed, gave the golden harp one last forlorn glance, and scurried onwards, silently making his way to the core of the castle, where the most serious of city matters were being conducted. Among the many talents that the young man possessed, by far the most lucrative was his skill as a spy: Fiddle, the boss liked to brag, could not only get you any and all of the information you required, but also do it so the target would never suspect a thing. Spying wasn’t the funnest of activities – not nearly as nice as playing his lute on a street corner or even a good if not-so-honest game of cards, but as far as coin was concerned, nothing else came close. These days Fiddle could easily afford all kinds of nice little luxuries, chief among them these solid invisibility chants that stayed on for hours and didn’t wear off at the slightest hint of stress or moisture. Of course, Fiddle still tried to stay dry and calm, out of prudent habit if nothing else, but it was nice to have some leeway, a bit of just-in-case wiggle room and the like.

          

All that success did have its downsides – these days he had much more to lose if he failed, and the subsequent high-stress background to the missions was almost enough to make the man go back to selling his music for pennies in the street. Almost. “Well, I suppose everything in this world has to cost you something,” he told himself whenever thinking too much about the state of things started to give him a headache.

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