Horror and Hallmark

[float_on_alright]

I didn’t write anything fictional yesterday after having worked so hard on my Alien Story so I wanted to make sure to play with some fictional prompts today. I did two. In case anyone is curious, the book I'm getting the prompts from is "A Year of Creative Writing Prompts" which has three prompts for each day in a Leap Year. I've liked several of them so far. One of them is what eventually got me to the Alien Story I just wrote though I'd already been thinking I'd never written about aliens before... at least not other than like Thor and maybe a few other aliens from popular culture... that I can remember. Anyway. Point being, like the prompts and the structure even if I'm not using it exactly as it's set up to be used (five minute free write word in the morning and then a  full prompt each for "midday" and "dinner"). 

Anywayyyyyyy, the first one said that the shadows on the wall were talking to me and to describe the conversation. That one I wasn’t in love with because it is creepy and I have to be in the mood to do creepy I think. At the same time I probably could write a story about shadows on the walls and maybe the little bite that I wrote will eventually spin in my head to something else. I’ll definitely hang onto it for later. 

The second one was just a “five minute free write” on the word “circlet” which I expected to be difficult but turned out to be kind of fun. I wrote a little bit that I actually do want to come back to. I’ve been thinking that I want the next story I write to be a sappy Hallmark type (I wanted a number of their Christmas movies while they were doing the “Christmas in July” thing) with angst and fluff and an absurdly happy ending. I just want it to be gay. Hallmark has all the fanfic tropes except no one is ever gay. Or at least none of their main characters are. And I get it -- from a brand standard thing even if I hate it. I will give them that they have had a slightly more diverse cast as of late. It seems like they have been trying to do a little better so there’s that at least. Anyway, the thing is, I love the schmoop. I do, I can’t help it and I totally want to write queer schmoop. And this prompt could be it. Friends to lovers thing, maybe. We’ll see. I’ll post them here so I can remember to look back at them. 

There are shadows on my wall that shouldn't be there. They aren't there, they can't be there. Except they are. And they're whispering, low and hissing. I stare at the sun and it's trek across the sky hoping for a few more hours of sun but I know there's only a matter of minutes before the light sinks below the tree line. And then it will be dark and the shadows will blend and rise. They're always stronger at night. No one believes me. 

They put me on drugs but they don't help. The shadows are still there but I don't confess to hearing them any more. I don't want them to up the drug dosage again. I can't fight back when the drugs are too strong. And I must fight back. There is no weapon against a shadow that isn't there. But light helps, weakens them. Makes them fainter and quieter than usual and it's a relief on those long summer days that the light is out so long. But it's fall now and the days are shrinking and the nights are stretching and shadows are growing and they're getting louder. They're hisses are more like words now. I can almost make them out. I catch a word here and there and I try to block out the words. They want something. I can tell they want something. I can't tell yet what they want me to do but I'll know soon and I'll have to resist. It'll be so hard to resist. I've begged for more lamps but the desk light and the night light are all I'm allowed. They don't want to validate my hallucinations they say, but I know they're not hallucinations. They're not. 

The circlet sat gently on her forehead and for a moment she looked so positively royal I wanted to bow. I managed to avoid that. If I hadn't she'd have tortured me about it for weeks. My stomach swoops when she laughs. It's a beautiful sound. Like if a flower blooming made a song or you could hear the music of the smell of chocolate chip cookies, sweet and bright. It wasn't fair. It just wasn't. She was beautiful, even without the elaborate dress she'd put on for this event and that circlet, as fine and precious as it was, wasn't good enough to sit on her head. It wasn't just that she was beautiful, though I thought she was. My friends always said she was a solid "7" and I understood, sort of. They were just looking at her from the outside. She was pretty but people didn't stop in the street to stare at her... She did get the occasional wolf whistle but we lived in a small town and she had been known to kick a man in the nuts if they got too close to her. She was amazing and I wondered what she was doing hanging around with me. I wasn't anything special. I was basically a 5 on a good day with make up. Someone once suggested she hung out with me because I made her look good, but they didn't know her. And what would be the point of hanging out with me at my house, just the two of us if she was only using me to make herself look better in the eyes of others? Not to mention that she was a total dork. I say that with love and the full acknowledgment that I am also a dork. We had competitions on who was dorkier which was how I knew without a doubt that she was not friends with me just to make herself look better. No one tried to make a fool of themselves like if they were trying to make themselves look better.