#ca prompts

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Carrie Autumn’s October Writing Prompt #4

Carrie Autumn’s 2018 October Writing Prompts Prompt 4: The Holes

“Not a one knew where they came from. Not a one knew where they went. Holes the size of wagon wheels opened up in the ground. Out in the fields, in the city streets. The ground did not shake, or pay mind to where people where stepping. Some, unlucky, fell in that way. People turned to look beside them, and find their companion gone without so much as a whimper. They were punch holes in the earth, the ground collapsed inward as if the it were a mere hollow shell with none beneath its surface. They can’t find the bottom of it neither, it might very well go on for eternity. The clear smoke that rippled out of it against the sky like heat waves in summer had no smell or taste. It’s not hot and it doesn’t catch fire. It is, like as not, what’s making folk act so darn strange. People get up in the middle of the night, and they don’t know why. Say they hear people calling for them. My wife did as much, scared me to death and back when I saw her sitting up in bed one of those nights. Said it sounded like kin calling her, I might have been naked in December for how cold I went. I asked her, ‘You mean like your ma?’ Thinking she might mean spirits or the same. She said ‘No.’ ‘The ones coming back.’ I tried to get answers out of her, but by morning she couldn’t remember a thing of what had happened. She wasn’t the only one either. People were in a daze, walking around confused, running places for reasons they couldn’t fathom. A woman fell into the river and drowned, her husband said she had stopped paying mind to where she was stepping, walked right off a hillside and slid down into the currents. A lot of little strangeness like that happened, and everyone knew it was them holes. I don’t know if that’s true, that all these little incidents were the result of some phenomenon, or unfathomable occurrence, but there was too much happening for me not to think on it.  

Right when you couldn’t think it stranger the holes start filling up, filling up with this course and grainy, black sand. No matter how deep you tried to dig through it, you couldn’t hope to get past a foot deep. Some scientists, and people from the government came, the lot of them took up in some convoy on the edge of town. They quarantined areas in over half the city that people had to go about their lives walking through a maze of red tape and rope. Then overnight it was over. Like the holes hadn’t been there at all. New grass grew over the spots and black circles began to look like asphalt and dark spots on the pavement. Those spots began to mimic their surroundings, you couldn’t point out a spot where one had been if someone paid you. It looked as if the holes were ‘healing’ like a blemish on the skin. Not so much time after some people talk like they were never there at all, like everyone had just imagined the entire thing. They aren’t fond talking about such weirdness, and they’ve essentially bullied the ones who can’t shut up about it into silence.

I have no idea what happened. No one came back to tell us anything. No one with any authority promised that it wouldn’t happen again neither. Personally I’ve forgotten most of it, there’s no real point in dwelling on it past a certain extent. Not a thing can be done. There is that one night though, with my wife and what she said. That bit I think on more than others. I have dreams too. Dreams about holes opening up until there is no where left to stand. Until it’s nothing left to block the way.”

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Carrie Autumn’s Magic March Writing Prompts!

Hello! Tomorrow is the beginning of my March Writing Prompts, twice a week I will be posting my answer to the prompts above. However, if you read below you will notice each prompt is a twist on typical tropes and cliches found in magic based fantasy literature. As I answer each of these prompts I will edit this post to put a link to the stories I come up with. I plan to do this with older challenges I have done in the past too...No telling when I will get around to that though.

Here’s the spin I’m putting on each of these, feel free to do any of these prompts and share if you do! I’d love to see what people can do:

 1. Her whole life she dreamed of becoming a Magical Girl. After finally meeting a Magical Girl in person, she learns they are nothing at all like she imagined. 

2. In a world suffering from magical corruption and pestilence there is one school where the young can go to rid themselves of its burden altogether. It is a school of Unmagic.

3. The days of master mages and bearded wizards is at an end. Just when it seems the old ways will die out for good, a young street magician shows up on the doorstep of the last great wizard on the planet.

4. No one is more underappreciated than the folks who work in the Magic IT department.

5. Becoming a magical creature zoologist means taking courses in all manner of creatures and working with them up close. It can be a dangerous and stinky job, however, this year you got stuck with the worst creature EVER.

6. The fabled item that was meant to bring eternal peace to the world was never sought, and it is not happy about it. Said item is now for sale on Ebay.

7. The weavers of fate are unhappy when the prophesied incarnations of prophesied incarnations of Good and Evil keep becoming friends instead of bringing about the ultimate war to decide the fate of the world.

8. A naive youngster’s wish to visit a magical world ends up being a terrible idea. They are transported to a world that is extremely utilitarian, bureaucratic, and where magic is all business.

The tag is #magic march

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Carrie Autumn’s Love Letter Writing Challenge

Hello it’s late in the day but here I am with today’s post for my February/Valentine writing challenge. Today’s prompt is Lost Love, but as always I tried not to go the expected route. If you want to see this challenge follow this link : https://carrieautumn.tumblr.com/post/170096004985/february-writing-challenge . If you want to read my answer to this prompt just read below!

Letter 2: Lost Love

Title: Stage Love

To Ronnie the suitcase might as well have been a coffin. It was on the bed, open and empty. She edged back and forth, gripping her fists, ready to bolt to the dresser beside her. She could see it in her head, she would yank it open, pull everything out, and shove it into the case without worrying whether or not it was perfect. Things would fall to the floor, and she would leave them there, it wouldn’t be her problem anymore. She did not move outside of her head.

Car lights lit up the bedroom wall, casting the silhouette of the curtains and Ronnie’s shadow into a one woman show. She slammed the suitcase shut and threw it under the bed. She got on her knees and pushed it, bending her shoulder at a weird angle, until it was completely under the center of the bed. She hustled into the kitchen for an encore of yesterday’s performance, her stage makeup caked heavily under her eyes. Say your lines, hit your marks. Ronnie was the heart of the show, she did it all. She was the leading lady, stagehand, prop, and director. And yet, she had zero control of the show’s direction, contrived and tired portrait of the American life it may be. It’s hard to manage anything when your opposite is played by a hurricane. So every night they put on the same show, and Ronnie was waiting it out until the final curtain call. She sat at the table pushing peas around her plate, thinking about the suitcase under the bed. He’ll start it. She can say nothing, she could ad lib and ask about his day, but either way it’ll end the same.

*

He rolls off of her, but she has to wait until he’s snoring before she can get out of bed. It’s not hard because she’s gotten very good at lying still, and thinking about nothing. Nothing bothers her anymore. She’s an old hand at this by now, performing on the fly as a magician who draws the eye away. Look over here, look over there, but don’t look too closely at what’s up my sleeve. There is a sort of sick pride she takes in it. She used to feel good about taking care of him, because the teenage her thought that that was what love was; not abandoning people who need you, accepting them for what they are unconditionally. He didn’t have anyone else, he’d fall apart without her. She’d seen it the few times she managed to get past the door. He stopped functioning. He would die without her. He wasn’t so awful, after all he still loved her. He could be kind, and no one else told her Happy Birthday anymore. Was she supposed to let him starve? It was just sad, deep down he was a child, and when a child drives everyone away you don’t abandon them. They were tragically in love, and you couldn’t just stop loving someone. It didn’t matter if it made no sense to anyone else, love comes in all kinds.

Then he started seeing Jessica. When Ronnie found out she thought, for one moment, she was finally free. It had shocked her like being in a coma and then thrown into a winter ocean. Under all the heartbreak, underneath the feeling of the world crumbling to dust, there was a feeling of relief. Her shoulders rolled, featherlight from the burden that had fallen away. It all ended with a phone call. The weight returned and it was heavier. There was a new weight holding her down, the guilt of wishing he hadn’t pulled through. He had no one else so she had to pick him up from the hospital. He begged her, he promised her. It would all be different now, he had almost died. It made you see how horrible you’d been. He changed for a while. He always did. He was the star for a reason. She knew though, she hadn’t relaxed for a second. He stopped trying, he didn’t change, he only got meaner. Jessica is still around. And so is she. She stopped asking herself why a long time ago. Now she asks where would she go? It’s a big, dark, empty world out there. All she’s good for is a bit part. She cleans her face, and downs several pain pills.  

There are moments when she looks through old pictures of the self she doesn’t recognize, and wonders if there was ever any love there. If love is real, or if it’s just a human construct built on biological imperatives. If love is trapped in the moment and then gone forever, or something that grows and shifts overtime. Whatever good was there is lost. She stopped crying for herself a long time ago, she stopped crying for him even longer than that. When she does cry, she weeps at nothing. Little things set her off. Then there are the moments the moments where she think this might be IT. She’s scared of the darkness that looms above her though she isn’t sure what it is, it is greater than this. That’s the thing that keeps her bound to this life. The only thing that scares her more than the darkness inside him.  

*

She’s tired of sitting in the bathroom. She’s cold, and tired enough to try to sleep. She has work tomorrow. She goes to bed dreaming, of a full suitcase. She’s sitting in the audience, she watches herself leave the prop set. Exit Stage Left.

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February Writing Challenge

Hello! I’m back with another writing prompt challenge. I’m posting it a little early to give people a chance to think about the upcoming challenge. With Valentine’s Day around the corner I thought I’d go the obvious route.

Everyday, starting from February 1st to the 14th (V-Day), I will be posting my response to these prompts. I encourage others to do the same. I am always willing to reblog so let me know you’re participating. You can do one, a few or all of these prompts. Feel free to do them in whatever style you want. Bonus points if you do them in Love Letter format!

#LoveLetterWriting