Prompt #13

The Prompt: The chairs are all thrown around, the books and papers are scattered, and the coffee is spilled. Write about what happened before or what happened after.

He stood, panting heavily and staring at the mess he had made. Sweat streamed down his face as realized what he had done. This was his school, his work. It wasn’t his home where anything he did remained personal. Anything he did here would have consequences. If he got fired he would never find another teaching job.

Pete sank to his knees amidst the papers strewn across the floor, his face buried in his hands. Something wet and cold began to sink into the right leg of his pants and it took him a moment to realize it was from his coffee, his coffee that he hadn’t had time to drink this morning because- He shook his head as a bitter taste filled his mouth. He kicked the coffee cup away, aware that it was a childish gesture. No one was around to see, what did it matter if he acted like a child?

“Mr. Elliot?” A voice called softly. Pete glanced up and recognized one of his students, a freshman he’d taught for little over a month. “What-?”

He didn’t know why she had stayed this late after school, but a wave of embarrassment washed over him for his tantrum. The rage vanished as quickly as it had come on. “There was a bit of an accident, but I’ve got it under control now.”

She nodded somewhat hesitantly, but when Pete stood up and made a show of wiping up the spilled coffee, she left. He placed one of the chairs upright and sat in it, surveying the mess his tantrum had caused. It had been horribly immature. He hadn’t thrown a tantrum since he’d been a young child and even then they had been infrequent. Pete didn’t know how his maturity had regressed so far as to throwing tantrums. He shakily picked up the book his freshman classes were reading and closed it, placing it on the desk exactly as it had been ten minutes before.

He did this with the rest of the room, hiding any evidence of his brief but uncontrollable rage. The freshman papers were stained brown from the coffee, but Pete carefully shuffled them together and placed them on the desk in a single neat stack. When he was done, the papers were the only remaining proof that anything out of the ordinary had happened and they were easy enough to explain away.

Prompt #12

The Prompt: There’s a reason why I can’t look you in the eye anymore.

I feel betrayed. We were never close, but I trusted you. I trusted you more than I did the rest of them. I thought you were safe. I try to avoid you as much as I can. It’s hard when I have to sit in the same classroom with you for an hour a day.

I keep my head down, sprint out the moment the bell rings. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I can’t stand to be in your presence anymore. Just that single hour in class makes me feel physically ill. You don’t have to say a word and already I want to run far away. I would skip, but I haven’t got anywhere to go and I’m too afraid that would draw me to your attention.

Instead I sit there, your desk not more than fifteen feet away from mine. Everyone else is working busily on their assignments hoping to fall into your good favor. I can’t focus. They don’t know anything. It’s supposed to be a secret. I’m not supposed to know either.

But she told Dana and Dana told me. I don’t know why Dana told me. I never asked to know. It would have been better to live happily in ignorance. But in a way I’m glad I know. What if I had gone on idolizing you? I feel dirty just remembering the way I used to think about you.

And even worse when I think about what you did with her. It wasn’t a onetime thing. It went on and on for weeks, maybe even longer. There were feelings involved. That almost makes everything worse. Feelings.

I glance up at the clock. This assignment carries over as homework so not focusing isn’t going to get me any unwanted attention. Ten minutes left. Ten minutes until I can escape.

Ten minutes is forever in the same room as you.

It’s hard to believe there was ever a time I looked up to you, idolized you even. I can’t imagine going back to that now. It’s hard enough knowing I have to continue to see you every single day when I come into school and pretend that nothing has changed.

I was never an actress. I’m not a part of the theater department. I can hardly tell a lie without being called out immediately. I don’t handle secrets well at all. And this is a huge one. I can’t think of anything else and it makes me wonder about all kinds of things.

Why you did it, for one. Why would you take such a risky chance when it could ruin your whole life? We have the excuse of being teenagers for our stupidity, but you’re an adult. You’re supposed to be mature and rational. You’re supposed to stop things before they go too far.

It all comes down to you. Maybe she made mistakes too, but you’re the adult. That’s why I can’t stand to be around you anymore.

People begin to pack up and I check the clock again. Three minutes. Oh god, please let it be over. Please let me be out of here. It’s a Friday so I know I won’t have to suffer the hour of class again until Monday.

“Lyssa?”

I freeze as you say my name. You can’t want to talk to me. It’s Friday. I’ve just got to get away from you.

But you’re a teacher and I can’t just openly disrespect you. I shuffle over to your desk where you’re grading our essays from last week. You smile up at me, but I look away. Keep my gaze on the ground. Talking to you makes my stomach roll over uneasily so I keep my mouth shut.

“I know I’m not handing the essays back until Wednesday, but I wanted to get yours to you early. Congratulations.” You offer me a paper from the side of your desk and I stare at it a moment before realizing you mean for me to take it. Accepting anything from you seems wrong now, even if it’s only a paper.

I grab it quickly and yank it from your grasp so we won’t both be touching it at the same time. I don’t want any kind of connection with you. The cursive A at the top of the page would have pleased me just a few weeks ago, but now all I can think is that you wrote that A and what else you’ve done with those hands. What else you could be thinking as you graded it.

“Thanks,” I mumble, already heading towards the door. I don’t want to talk to you any longer than absolutely necessary.

You frown at me slightly. “Is everything okay? Anything upsetting you at home?”

The question puts me on my guard. Home. Home’s fine. You’re the one upsetting me. But I can’t say that to you. You aren’t supposed to know that I know.

At that moment the bell rings and I snatch your backpack from the floor. “Gotta go, can’t be late for class,” I say. I just can’t wait to be out of your presence.

“Anything you need, Lyssa, don’t hesitate to come to me, alright?” You stare at me sincerely and I nod jerkily before sprinting out of the room. It’s only then I allow myself to cringe in disgust.

Had you said that same line to her before things started happening between the two of you? Did you offer your shoulder for her to cry on? Or was that offer to me merely innocent, a teacher trying to help his student the way he should?

I can’t take anything you say at face value anymore. I question everything you say, everything you’ve ever said. It disgusts me, sickens me to the point where I have to run away. I know things I shouldn’t, things I never wanted to know.

I don’t know why you did it, though. I’m not sure I want to. I can’t begin to fathom what made you think it was okay. You’re not who I thought you were. Not by a long shot.

Characters: Reya and Mitchell

It's not a true prompt, but I wrote two shorts for my friends' characters. Reya is Katia's because Katia is amazing.

Mitchell:

He tossed the baseball in the air and caught it on its way down. He repeated the action again and again until the knocking on the door ceased. He didn’t want to go outside today. He didn’t want to do anything today, except sit in his room and stare at the ceiling.

There were a few minutes of blissful silence until someone else knocked on the door. The person tried the knob and Mitchell smirked. It was locked. Even if she was rude enough to come in unwelcome, she wouldn’t be able to. Something clicked in the door and it swung open. Mitchell sat up in surprise. His sister stood there, scowling at him.

“Mom says to come down for dinner,” she said, her hands on her hips and her face a scowl to match Mitchell’s. It was what they’d both inherited from their father, although they looked different in all other respects.

“I’m not hungry,” Mitchell replied.

“But Mom said.”

“I’m not a teenager anymore,” he said in an annoyed tone. “I don’t have to listen to what Mom says.”

She glared at him, anything playful dropping from her features. “If you’re so grown up, why don’t you do something with your life?”

Reya:

 “Excuse me, miss, you’ve dropped your-”

Reya turned on the man with a scowl on her face. She didn’t like being interrupted by strangers when she went out at night. Just because she was alone didn’t mean she wanted any company. “What?” She snapped.

“Your watch,” he said, averting his eyes. “You’ve dropped your watch.”

Reya’s eyebrows drew together sharply. He wouldn’t look her in the eyes, she couldn’t abide by people who avoided eye contact. It was an old habit, one that had come from before she got sick. And now when people didn’t look her in the eyes it was because they were scared. Scared or embarrassed for her, embarrassed to be around her.

“Miss?” He implored, taking another step towards her. “Your watch?”

He held out the item for her to take and Reya took a step back. She didn’t want contact with anyone, much less a stranger she’d met on the street at night. It wouldn’t take longer than a few minutes for him to notice something was wrong. To see her sickness.

Reya turned away, brushing off his polite offer. “I don’t have a watch,” she said, continuing on home to her flat.

Prompt #11

The Prompt: Let me tell you a lie.

The first time I told a lie I was six. I’d just broken my grandmother’s favorite vase playing Frisbee with my brother in the house even though we were both old enough to know better. He scrammed and left me to take the blame so I did what any child would have done. I smiled at her innocently and blamed the dog.

Or maybe the first lie I told was when I was four. I was plenty old enough to eat my own food, but refused to eat anything green. Carrots were fine, green gummy bears were not. It had nothing to do with texture or health, I just hated the color green. So when my dad came home and asked if I’d been good and eaten all my veggies, I did what any self respecting four year old would have done. I gave him a big hug and told him of course I had.

But that might not be right either. What if the first lie I told was when I was twelve and for the first time failed a test. The teacher asked me why and I wasn’t about to tell her I’d been online with my friends the whole night before so I smiled innocently and told her I’d studied an hour a night for the previous week.

But is any of that important? Does it matter if I was four or six or twelve? Does the when matter? I did it, I lied. That’s all that is important. Or is the why also important? That I lied to get out of trouble, for my own good, to make people view me better. I don’t need those excuses anymore. A good lie can be for any reason at all.

None of this matters to you. You aren’t here to listen to the story of my lies. That doesn’t interest you. You’re here for a story. To be entertained. So here’s my story.

I was fourteen. A normal fourteen year old with normal fourteen year old friends. And then my life changed suddenly when my friend died in a car crash, hit by a drunk driver going home from school one evening. Everything turned upside down. Everything that felt good and right disappeared.

She was gone. She left a hole in my world. Nothing fit anymore. The puzzle that was my life wasn’t only missing a piece, but it seemed as though it had been reshaped. Tragedies like that happen all over the world, but they aren’t supposed to happen to you. Never in your life.

But they do. And nothing’s ever right again. It changes you, changes the way you view the world. Maybe that’s what made me the way I am.

Only that’s not entirely true. It wasn’t my friend, it was my sister. She was closer to my heart than anyone else in the world. She was my closest confidante and my best friend. We told each other everything. Except her one secret. She was unhappy and never told me even though I told her everything.

She took her own life and I never knew, never suspected. My own sister and closest friend and I didn’t have a clue. It broke my heart. Changed me forever.

Did you like that? Feel any tugs on your heart strings? Entertaining enough for your liking?  Were you invested in my life and my story, perhaps? I thought it might have more impact if I switched it from my friend to my sister. Was I right? Did it add more to my sob story? My poor sister. It could have even been true if I weren’t an only child.

I’m sorry, am I toying with your emotions? Do you not like being manipulated into feeling for me and my lies? Then why did you continue reading? I’m a liar. Lying is what I do. You knew that from the first sentence. I’m probably the most honest liar in the world. And you kept reading anyway. Doesn’t that say more about you than it does about me?

Think about that while you sit there feeling judging me. You want to be lied to, to hear the stories. You just don’t like the liars.

Prompt #10

The Prompt: “I never promised that life would be happy. All I promised was that you would never die.”

She stared at him impassively. She no longer cried. All the pain she felt and he had taken away her tears. Taken away her everything. “Death would be a blessing now,” she said, staring just past his shoulder. She never had the courage to speak frankly to his face. Eye contact with those bottomless pits left her too sick and terrified to continue.

He laughed cruelly and reached out with one long finger to run along her cheek. Shila stood still, refusing to flinch away from his touch. “A blessing?” He let out a high pitched laugh and she couldn’t stand it anymore, she had to move away.

Shila took a step back, her arms raised for protection. They would do no good if he chose to hurt her, but it was instinctual. “You tricked me, lied to me.”

“I never lied,” he said almost playfully. Even though she wasn’t looking, Shila knew he was grinning at her. They’d had this conversation before. “Would you like to reread the contract? You’ll find that I’ve broken none of the clauses, and in fact forgiven you the few times you did.”

She ignored this. “I thought you were here to help!” Emotion broke in her voice and that surprised even herself. She’d grown cold in the years since their agreement, since she signed the contract in her own blood.

“I don’t help anyone but myself,” he said. “You know this.”

She knew it now. If there was one thing Shila could do, she’d go back in time. Go back to when she was fifteen and slicing open her arm to sign the contract in blood. She’d tell herself how things would end up, how she was ruining her life with that one signature.

It was a stupid desire though. Even if she managed to find her younger self, nothing would change. She hadn’t listened to anyone when she was fifteen and hurting. A future version of herself wouldn’t have had any more luck than her peers or mentors, the people who at one point considered her a friend.

She was too wrapped up in her own personal drama and hatred of the world to take notice of anyone else’s thoughts or feelings. Which was how he had found her. He had preyed upon her weakness, offered her a way out and a way to hurt people who had hurt her.

But he ended up being the one who had hurt her the most.

Shila’s form grew still as she breathed shallowly. This time she raised her eyes to meet the holes where his eyes should have been. Those oceans of darkness stared back at her unblinking. “I trusted you,” she said, her voice hardly louder than a whisper. “I trusted you and you betrayed me.”

“Darling,” he said, his voice a slow drawl. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you trusting the devil was a dangerous thing to do?”