Thread: A Prompt for Me and You

Start any work using the following as the introductory.

1) Her name was...

2) I ran the red light...

3) The coffee was black...

4) I have this friend who...

5) They set the tree on fire...

6) A yellow candle sits...

7) He always cries when we go out to the movies...

8] She had an abortion when she was thirteen...



enjoy. it doesn't matter how long it is as long as it helps!

A yellow candle sits flickering in the darkened dinning room. He silently lifted a mug from the table and took a sip. The coffee was black, he hated black coffee. The coffee was also room temperature, sickening. He spat it out, extinguishing the candle. He used his sleeve to wipe his mouth, and set the mug on the table. I should have poured this out last night when I took a sip of it, or maybe even the night before, he thought to himself.

Coffee Black Widow

The coffee was black, and there was no sugar. Not the way I usually take it, and certainly not the way I like to take it. Actually, I don’t much like coffee any way you make it. Gives me a stomachache. But life is as much about those little rituals we do because they are expected of us as it is about the things we do because we want to. And coffee was one of them, so I bit back a grimace and gulped down the bitter black brew.

My stomach made a preemptory flip-flop of protest as if testing the waters for a later, more serious objection, but the woman seated across from me looked pleased; and as she was still pretty in the sober light of morning, I forced a smile and swallowed the rest.

“I’m sorry we didn’t have time for much conversation last night, Mrs. Swanson. What was it you wanted to speak to me about, again?” I paused, thought for a moment. “It is Mrs., isn’t it?” The coffee had been very hot, freshly brewed. I must have scalded by tongue in my haste; it was turning numb in my mouth as I contemplated the shock of scarlet hair down her back, burning against the black satin of her dressing gown.

“Yes. Yes, it’s Mrs., I suppose.” She nursed her cup, turning it delicately on the saucer with long, slender fingers. Maybe she didn’t like coffee, either; I hadn’t seen her take so much as a sip. Her fingers reminded me of the jointed stilt-legs of a spider closing around their prey as she toyed idly with the fancy imported porcelain.

I blinked, hard, trying to clear the cobwebs forming in my mind and at the edges of my vision. You’ve gotta stop going to the pub every night, I reminded myself fiercely. You’re getting too old for hangovers like this every day.

“Well, I don’t mean to be rude, Mrs. Swanson, but if we could just come to the point….” She hadn’t been this damn coy last night, that’s for sure. “It’s just I’m feeling a tad under the weather this morning, and I need to get going.”

She smiled sweetly, and I couldn’t help but remember how those lips had tasted, stolen in the complicity of the dark, silent night.

“Yes, of course. I wanted to say thank you for last night.”

I felt a flood of dizzy warmth rise from the depths of my belly when she said that – she must have been a decade my senior and married and I was swooning over her words like a drunken schoolboy. I could barely even stay on my chair.

“I doubt your husband would thank me, that’s for sure,” I heard myself slur. For some reason, it sounded very far away.

“No. Well, he’s deceased, bless his soul.” She paused.

My mouth seemed very dry all of a sudden, and there was an odd rattle in my throat when I tried to breathe. I opened my mouth to say something, but no words would come out. At least I didn’t think any did; my lips were suddenly too numb to tell and I couldn’t hear over the pounding of blood in my ears.

“Which brings us to the matter of your own impending death,” she concluded, standing slowly.

I fell out of the chair.

Grasping fingers, stiff and without sensation, found purchase momentarily in the lace trim of the tablecloth, bringing pieces of the delicate porcelain tea set raining down around me.

“Oh, dear,” she hummed soothingly as she crouched down beside me, stroking my face and offering her untouched cup to my straining, parched tongue. “Would you like another cup of coffee?”

And like the legs of a black widow spider done devouring her most recent hapless mate, her fingers unfurled from around the cup, pouring the hot, bitter black venom across my bloody, foaming lips.

Something a bit different...

I ran the red light over her body once more... there. The machine had picked up an Abnormality, again.
"Damn this sickness." I muttered, something clanged onto the floor behind me and I felt a cool something pressed against my neck; a sharp, cool something.

"Put the scanner down, Professor.” I felt ragged breath against my head, whoever it was, they were nervous.

“Perhaps you could tell me why you are holding a knife to my neck?” I replied, cool as ice.

“If I told you that… I’d have to kill you” my captor let out a short stream of chuckles and then something in what sounded like Gaelic. Hearing those words seemed to trigger something in my memory. I closed my eyes on the pain.

Ignore it… c’mon go away.

The headaches came on so suddenly my body bucked forwards. The knife sliced across my neck with razor precision. Bright red blood splashed the walls and the man, for I could see him now. He was stood above me, still holding the knife.

“Should have listened to us when we first spoke ou…” he couldn’t finish the sentence for terror. I stood up, my wound totally healed, and smiled.

“Thank you. You have unleashed me from that pathetic prison.” I gestured at the ghost of a body on the floor. “As a gesture of my appreciation I will also release your inner self.” The poor man’s jeans suddenly darkened around the crotch. He turned and started to run towards the lab door. I smiled and held my hand, palm outwards, up at his retreating back. As the light sped towards him the man shouted out in Gaelic once more. The light struck him just as he disappeared in a haze.

“Hmm, I seem to have made a powerful enemy.” I let out a laugh. When I wiped the tears of joy from my eyes I turned once more to the woman on the table. This time I didn’t bother with the scanner. My healing powers did all the work, and I barely had to lift a finger. More like lifting a hand.

They set the tree on fire, the three of them. It started out slow at first, popping and crackling in the cool of night, but was soon ablaze. And they watched it burn, the three of them, each face lit by the massive torch - each face masking the same thought.

Abra, smallest and youngest of the sisters, stared mouth-open as the flames crawled higher and higher up the giant Maple. The treehouse that held so many fond memories of her youth would not last much longer, she knew. And as the first board sputtered and caught, a single tear made its way to the ground. Abra had no idea, could not have known, that both her older sisters were crying too.

Without words, without so much as a nod, the three girls reached out and held hands. They all knew that life would be very different from now on.

Damn. These are good. I want to do my own exercise but I have to write an essay for AP English. whoo hoo. Anyway, great job to all of you!

She had an abortion when she was thirteen and now Lindsay sat and reflected on the child she would never know. Sure she was raped by her mother's boyfriend and after he was sent to prison her mom kicked her out. Lindsay recalls having to sleep in church shelters every night while hustling and stealing during the day to be able to get food. She started turning tricks for cash once she hit fifteen and life got easier after that. Five or six blow jobs a day and she could afford a decent apartment with some friends. She never had anything more than oral sex with any of her tricks. She got her GED and starting taking college classes at night. After year of working hard on and off her knees she finally graduated. Aborting the baby was the best thing she ever did since now at twenty seven she was a fashion designer in Paris.