Writing Prompt #12

817297234557171375

Write a short story about a conspiracy theorist or psychic who predicts something awful, but can’t get anyone to believe him.

Chapter One

What would you do if you woke up in history class and realized that the whole town had beeen abandoned

and it looks like it has been for hundreds of years…

 

My name is Declan Peterson. I’m 18 years old, well, I think I’m 18. That’s how old I was when all of this started. Let me back up and explain. I know it sounds crazy, but I swear, the following story is true.

It all happened on the last day of school before Christmas break, my senior year of high school.

The day started out pretty normal. My mom banging on my bedroom door, hollering something about me being late for school and that if I wasn’t ready to leave in ten minutes I’d have to walk. She always threatened that, but its 0 weather out, she‘d never follow through.

School was uneventful. My right arm started itching pretty bad during math class. I pulled up my sleeve and noticed I had two weird bug bites on my arm. They were side by side, and super swollen. It seemed a little odd, it gets so cold in Maine in the middle of December that bugs are practically extinct.

Maybe I got bed bugs or something.

But I don’t have bites anywhere but my wrist, which is weird.

History class is where it all went down. Mr. Larkin was lecturing on the black plague. I don’t know why it takes a whole class. People died. It was scary. I didn’t really care. He was so old that he probably lived through the actually black plague.

Well, at some point during class I nodded off, which I did, at least 3 times a week in that class.

No matter how many times I fell asleep, I always woke up when the bell rang, but apparently this time I didn’t.

When I woke up, the lights were off, the room was empty, and it was dark outside, which really irked me. Was Mr. Larkin really that annoyed that I slept through his class that he just left me there after everyone went home? That’s a low blow Mr. Larkin, a really low blow.

This is where things got really weird. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I noticed some things in the room looked askew. The white board was half hanging off the wall, and several desks were over turned.

img_5592-hdr

I got up to turn on the light to see what had happened, but the light wouldn’t turn on. What is going on?

I zipped up my coat and headed for home. As soon as I walked outside, I knew something was wrong. It wasn’t cold. It was hot. And it’s never really hot in Maine. It gets warm, but not hot.

The bites on my arms are itching again, but when I glance at my arm, the bites aren’t even there anymore.

I start walking home and everything is silent. There’s no breeze rustling the leaves of the trees. There’s nothing. Just silence.

But it gets worse. As I pass the town square, the buildings look completely abandoned. Like no one had been there in years and years. Rooves were caved in and trees were growing through the holes. The pavement was cracked in places and completely overgrown in others. I have no idea what happened here. I just slept through history class, how could so much have happened in such a short time? How long was I really asleep?

Cu0T2Kr

I get back to my house, and it looks like the rest of the town. Windows were shattered, the lawn was overgrown, and the roof had holes in it. Both our cars are there, but they’re covered in rust and vines.

Our mailbox was missing the box part, leaving just a wooden post at the end of the driveway.

I have to pull away several long thorny vines from the doorway just to get myself into the house.

“Mom? Dad?” I whisper into the darkness. I don’t know why I felt the need to whisper, but after all the silence, anything louder feels off wrong.

But it’s not silent in my house. I hear a rustling from upstairs. There’s someone in my room. I can hear them pacing, their steps are muffled, but every few steps the floor creaks. I try the light switch by the front door, but as expected, nothing happens.

I drop my bag on the dusty floor and move toward the stairs.

“Mom?” I’m still whispering. Something is off. More off than it already was. I don’t feel good about this.

I didn’t encounter another living soul my entire walk home, but there’s someone in my room. It doesn’t make sense.

I stop outside my door, hand on the knob. I take a deep breath. I must be insane for going in here. Every horror movie I see ends with the characters dying after going in the creepy room. But I need to know what is going on here and something tells me the answer lies behind that door.

I open the door, slowly. The hinges scream like a banshee in labor, they never did that before.

I peer into the darkness and see a slight figure standing in the middle of the room. I was sure it was a woman, she wore a long dress but I couldn’t make out much more. She moves slightly.

“Mom?” I ask one more time. But it wasn’t my mom.

Read Chapter Two HERE

 

Writing Prompt #11

When-Humans-Disappear

After years of research the first working time machine has been finished.  You volunteer to be the first human to travel through time.  The trip will take you one year into the future.  When you step off the time travel pod, you realize all of humanity, across the entire globe, are gone.  What happened?

I Would Like To Introduce My Sister

10801801_10152597162971032_2722940635550611968_nI would like to take a moment & introduce my sister Jennifer. She will be a contributing author here on Geeks Anonymous, and we are very excited to be starting a new project. For several years my sister and I have discussed and talked about writing a story together.

But, like so many things, there is a catch. We have no idea what the story will be, who the characters are, or how the story will play out and end. Why? Because both Jennifer and myself will be writing in such a way as to befuddle, flummox, and annoy the other person.

Still confused? Good! Our plan is working!

Seriously though, the way this story will work is we will each write one chapter at a time. Starting with Jennifer, and then with me. Once a chapter has been written, regardless of where the story goes, the other sibling must continue the story to the best of his or her ability.

I have a feeling that this story will have a lot of interesting plot twists for our impending characters.

So wish us luck, and I hope you all enjoy!

I’m Stuck – Dilemmas in Writing

writersblock

-The following post is going to be a form of free writing.  I am trying to get myself out of a hole I have written myself into.  I am working on my book Dragon Riders: The Fall and am having difficulty describing a concept.  The book centers around 6 main characters.  3 of them have the gift of magic, however they have been ignorant of the ability for 21 years, so when they start manifesting their abilities it comes as a bit of a surprise.  Here is the problem I am having.  In my book magic is an ability that people are born with.  Its an instinctual ability like breathing is to humans, or swimming is to fish.  Its just something they know how to do.  It flows from them naturally and with little effort they can control the elements around them. When these three characters start to manifest their abilities each of them manifest in a different way.  While each experience is different they all share one common trait…The experience feels normal to them.  When they share their first magical experience with their friends they all recognize that they are talking about magic, and that they should think that is bizarre and weird, but for some reason they don’t.  They accept it, without question, and that is what is weird to them. Finding the right words to express this is proving difficult.  So enough procrastination.  Time to get back to work.  While I may be having trouble finding the words they are not going to write themselves. Have you struggled with a difficult writing concept before?  Something that you can understand in your head, but have a hard time decision on paper? How did you work yourself through it?

134. NaNoWriMo

November is National Novel Writing Month, also known as NaNoWriMo. This is the second week of NaNoWriMo, and I am fighting hard to stay motivated. The goal of NaNoWriMo is to write 50,000 words of a new or existing novel by months end. To reach this goal the writer has to write on average 1666 words a day. Thats a lot of words!

The first week I found to be REALLY easy. Each day I was looking forward to writing, and I didn’t fall behind once. In fact most of the week I was ahead of schedule. But then I had one day where I just didn’t have time to write. I was busy from sun up to sun down and before I knew it day was over and I was 1666 words behind. I havent caught up since.

I have written every day, and I have been writing a lot, but I simply am not making my word count. Currently I have 12,888 words. That means I am behind by 3,772 words. Its killing me!

On the upside my story is going VERY well. Although a few of my friends dont like that I have redefined what it is to be a Zombie. I have a feeling I am going to have a lot of people feel that way, but since I am making it all up as I go along I figure I will stay with it.

Anyways, back to writing!

109. What inspires you in life? What makes you want to reach for the stars and do something truly extraordinary?

Throughout my life I have enjoyed putting projects together. The harder the project the better I enjoyed it. In fact if you really want to get me fired up tell me it cant be done. Tell me its impossible and I will prove you wrong!

Last February I became inspired to go to work for myself. I came to this conclusion for a few different reasons. While I am good at my job, and I find it a challenge some days I don’t feel like I am creating anything or building anything. I am not passionate about safety, just good at running a safety program. The idea of building my own business from the ground up excites me like little has in a long time. Working for myself sounds amazing!

Specifically I want to open my own comic book and gaming store. Its been a dream of mine for a long time, and I want to do it right. Gaming and stories and comics are something I love. Finding a good comic shop is so hard, and I was so lucky to have one right down the street from me when I moved here to Olympia.

Wanting to do this right I struck out to gather information from the world wide web. I was disappointed to find that so many people out there have the same dream as mine, but so few followed up by going through with their dream. I was also disappointed to find that many of those who did follow through hated the experience, and wrote in very negative tones about it, going as far as warning others from attempting such a feat. From what I have read so far those who hated the experience didn’t do enough research or start with enough money, and so had to suffer through those mistakes.

I have found a few helpful sites out there that have given me some great optimism and hope. I have even found a few blogs who have outlined step by step details on what is needed and what to expect. These are VERY useful! I am in the process of reading up on all of these wonderful sites and learning as much as I can. The more I can learn the better chances I have for being successful!

I am also really grateful to have my friend Gabi who has been an inspiration to me in my hope to one day own my own comic shop. Gabi owns the largest comics shop here in WA. She has worked really hard to make that shop a reality, and I can only hope that my future shop will be as successful.

What drives me in this is the need to work for myself, do something I enjoy, and create something out of nothing!