FOWC – Memoirs of Madness

Forged from an Old Soul

2025/10/28Posted in ProseTagged creative writing, daily exercise, FOWC, Ink and Wounds, writingLeave a comment

He wasn’t born lucky. Nobody handed him a map.
He learned early that some of us come into this world half-built, and the rest is on us.
So he carved his name into time, steady and deliberate — a slow rebellion written in scars.

The city didn’t raise him. It tolerated him.
Concrete and glass can’t teach you much, but they’ll listen if you bleed honest enough.
He made peace with that kind of silence — the kind that hums between streetlights and memory.

There was a facility once — a place that smelled like rust, regret, and second chances.
He wasn’t supposed to be there, but he stayed.
Sometimes, a man doesn’t need comfort — he needs a place where the noise inside his head finally echoes back.
In that echo, he found rhythm. In rhythm, he found himself.
No blueprints. No saviors. Just repetition.
Each motion a prayer, each mistake a gospel of survival.

He doesn’t worship. He works.
He doesn’t beg. He endures.
And if you ask what drives him, he’ll tell you the truth —
it’s not pride or anger, not anymore. It’s the memory of a boy who promised a broken world he’d walk out standing.

Half in shadow.
Half in light.
All his.

Litany in Black 3

2025/09/302025/09/30Posted in SplintersTagged books, creative writing, daily exercise, fantasy, Fiction, Fiction Series, FOWC, RDP, short-story, Splinters, Word of the day, writing2 Comments

Chapter 3

Eli’s fingers hammered the Underwood, the platen ratcheting like a drumbeat inside his chest. Words crashed onto the page raw and unprocessed, each keystroke sharp as broken glass. He didn’t try to catch his thoughts; they lagged behind anyway, always scrambling, always too late. Second-guessing was for people with softer bones.

The typewriter filled the basement like a predator pacing. The ding of the carriage bell jolted him at every line, each return snap a small guillotine. He welcomed the violence. As long as the machine roared, the silence couldn’t close in and strangle him.

Behind him, Iris moved. He didn’t look—didn’t dare. He knew the sound of her presence: drawers opening, papers shifting, the glide of her feet across concrete. She spoke sometimes, soft nothings that dissolved into the cinderblock walls, too sweet to be trusted. He kept his eyes forward, certain that if he broke rhythm the spell would snap and something worse would rise.

She spoke in platitudes—surface shit that didn’t mean a damn thing, not even to the person saying it. She knew I hated them. She knew I’d rather choke on silence than fill it with low-grade noise. And after everything, don’t I rate the premium line of bull? Instead—clichés. Cheap ones. Wrong on too many levels.

The words poured, jagged and necessary. He bent closer to the keys, fingers aching, shoulders burning. The smell of paper and machine oil clogged his sinuses. His job was to write. One job. Write.

Then—click. Whirr. The clatter of vinyl.

His trance shattered. Eli shot up from the desk. “NNNNNOOOOOOO!”

The speakers coughed dust. A warped guitar riff crawled from the jukebox.

Arnold Layne had a strange hobby…

The lyric nailed him to the chair. His body froze, his heart battering too fast against his ribs. A high metallic screech tore through his skull. Somewhere in the sound he swore he heard a howl, long and low, as if the memory itself had found a voice.

The world went black.

—

He blinked awake in a different room. Bare bulb. Cracked mirror. The stink of disinfectant.

In the glass, Iris stared back—hair damp, eyes too wide, skin gone bare and bloodless.

Jonquil’s shape coalesced behind her, a figure lit by candlelight. She smiled, but her mouth never moved.

“You had one job,” Jonquil said, velvet over stone. “Keep him writing. Don’t let the memory in.”

Iris clutched the sink, knuckles white. Words failed her.

Jonquil’s gaze sharpened. “You know what happens to leaky vessels.”

The memory ripped through Iris: a Guild meeting, Uncle Bug tearing into a junior agent, the sudden hush, then the impossible sight of Bug blowing softly in the man’s direction. The agent’s outline wavered—and collapsed into vapor. The smell of iron had clung to her clothes for days.

Iris trembled. If Jonquil told Uncle, she’d be next.

—

The bar hit him like a punch—heat, smoke, neon fractured on dirty glass. Bodies surged to the music, sweat and whiskey thick in the air. Eli stood in the middle, drowning in it.

Onstage, a woman with cropped hair and a voice like gravel tore through Dead and Bloated. She wasn’t covering the song; she was burning it down and rebuilding it from ash.

Her eyes found his. She grinned, stepped off the stage, and cut through the crowd like she owned it. Her hand snared the back of his neck. She kissed him hard, tasting of blood and whiskey, breath hot with hunger.

The taste hit him like déjà vu—sharp and sweet, like a kiss he’d lived before in another life, though he had no memory of whose lips had given it.

Then she pulled back, lips almost brushing his ear. “You don’t belong here. Go back. Now.”

She shoved him. The bar collapsed, light and shadow swallowing the floor. Eli fell.

—

He jolted awake at his desk, lungs empty, head pounding. The Underwood sat waiting, a fresh sheet rolled in.

On the corner of the desk, a tabby cat licked her paw. She froze mid-motion and fixed him with a single stare.

“Meow,” she said, clipped and final, before resuming her grooming.

Eli’s hands shook as he reached forward. Beside the typewriter, on a square of yellow paper, a single word was scrawled in black ink:

Frog Creek.

The letters burned into him. His stomach turned cold.

He remembered.

Something he had sworn never to speak of again. Something only he had survived.

The typewriter, the cat, even the walls felt suddenly foreign—no shelter at all, just a trap waiting to close.

Why was it surfacing now?

Author’s Note

When I released Litany in Black, my editor didn’t mince words. The call was short and sharp: “I want more.” So here it is—the next chapter, pulled from the dark seam where memory, myth, and madness overlap.

This piece draws on three of my favorite community sparks: FOWC, RDP, and Word of the Day. Those prompts slip into the prose the way shadows slide into corners, sometimes obvious, sometimes hidden in plain sight. If you caught them, you’re paying attention. If not, maybe the story is working on you the way it should—sly, unsettling, creeping in under the skin.

Chapter 3 is about fracture—Eli caught between the rush of creation and the trap of memory, Iris learning that mistakes echo louder than excuses, Jonquil tightening her grip on both. Frog Creek has finally bled through the page, and with it, the reminder that some stories don’t just haunt you; they claim you.

To those following along, thank you for walking with me into the dark. The deeper we go, the less clear the ground beneath us becomes—but that’s the only way to find out what’s waiting on the other side.

Litany in Black

2025/09/212025/09/21Posted in FictionTagged creative writing, daily exercise, fantasy, Fiction, FOWC, RDP, romance, short-story, Splinters, Word of the day, writing6 Comments

Rain glazed the neon crescent above Second Moon Books until it gleamed like a razor’s edge slicing through the night. Elias Moreau’s fingers trembled as he flipped the weathered placard to CLOSED. The paint on the letters bled, fading faster every September—as though some unseen smart-ass on the other side of the door was trying to erase the word before last call.

Inside, the air carried the sour bite of old glue and the metallic tang that seeped up from the subway grates. A crooked chalkboard behind the register wore last week’s proclamation in smudged white chalk:
BIRTHDAY BLOWOUT – A FULL WEEK OF HORROR & HOPEFUL DREAD
A Tribute to Stephen King

Eli’s pulse ticked in time with the neon strobe outside. Every year he staged this seven-day ritual for King, the undisputed monarch of macabre wonder. King’s uncanny magic felt almost domestic, like discovering an old friend hiding in the crawlspace. But Gordon Weaver—now that was a different kind of haunt. Weaver carved the American family like a butcher who’d gone to seminary, exposing grudges and betrayals with a quiet precision that left scar tissue. Friends nodded politely at Eli’s King obsession but flinched at Weaver’s hushed horrors, as if the silence of a fractured household couldn’t follow them home harder than a demon ever could.

Counting bills at the till, Eli listened to the upstairs dehumidifier hum and a distant patrol siren wail. The shop was empty—until the door chime rang.
One polite jingle.
He froze, chest tightening, waiting for the echo that never came.

A damp breath rose from the basement stairs. Twelve years of half-formed chapters and midnight revisions leaned against a dented Underwood down there, sulking. He’d promised himself an extra hour—maybe two—before trudging home. Perhaps he’d finally finish the scene about a stranger who knocks after hours, demanding a book that doesn’t exist.

The bell chimed again, louder this time.

He jerked his head toward the door. Beyond the glass, a wet silhouette lingered: coat collar turned up, hat brim low—someone who moved like yesterday’s regret. A third jangle, brittle and hollow, and the lock clicked itself open. A gust of rain-scented air swept in, carrying a soft undercurrent of cedar. Then she stepped across the threshold.

She was impeccable, as if traced by a meticulous pen. Mid-forties maybe, but she wore her age like a tailored alibi—each line on her face an elegant footnote. Dark hair, slick with rain, clung to the sharp planes of her cheeks. Her long coat shimmered under the flickering fluorescents. But it was her eyes—gray, or green, the light shifting like a flame—that snagged him and refused to let go.

A needle-sharp ache blossomed beneath his sternum, radiating into his left arm. Heart attack, his mind hissed. He slammed a hand on the counter, breathing ragged, every inhale a serrated blade.

She paused just inside the door, lips curving in a small, almost tender smile. He didn’t know her—he was sure of that—but some buried page of his past fluttered to life. Familiar and impossible in the same breath.

“You okay?” Her voice was low, calm—the kind you’d use to coax a frightened animal out of traffic.

He nodded too fast. “ I-I’m fine. Long day. Sale week.” The words tasted like he’d chewed them wrong.

Her smile deepened, unreadable. She turned toward the chalkboard, fingertips trailing through the chalk dust. BIRTHDAY BLOWOUT – A FULL WEEK OF HORROR & HOPEFUL DREAD…

“Do you still read Gordon Weaver?” she asked, voice soft as velvet smoke.

The name hit him like a dropped stone. Weaver wasn’t on the board. He hadn’t said that name aloud in months.

“How… how do you know about Weaver?” he stammered.

Her eyes glinted with something not quite amusement. “Oh, Eli,” she breathed. “You always did love a good story.”

Weaver: Count a Lonely Cadence, the battered paperback he’d rescued at a college sale, pages yellowed and reeking of cigarettes. Weaver peeled back the American family like skin from bone—quiet betrayals, unsaid resentments, love rotting in plain sight. Then Such Waltzing Was Not Easy dragged him deeper, mapping small domestic wars in brutal intimacy. No demons, no ghosts, just everyday hauntings that never left his marrow.

Now this rain-soaked stranger spoke Weaver’s name as though she’d plucked it from the private margins of his soul.

“Have we… met?” he asked, voice smaller than he felt.

“Not in the way you mean.” She stepped closer, eyes roving the shop’s towers of paperbacks and the narrow aisles of hardcovers balanced like drunk skyscrapers. “You look familiar.”

He swallowed. “Or maybe you’re a character I’ve been writing for years.”

Her smile flickered—a blade wrapped in silk. His chest flared, nerves taut with something like fear or longing or the first line of a story he couldn’t put down.

An echo of his own unfinished draft whispered through his mind: She enters like a paragraph he rewrote a hundred times and could never perfect. Named only by his yearning for her to hurt him.

The shop inhaled. Somewhere beneath their feet, the basement typewriter began to tap—slow, deliberate keystrokes spelling out a narrative Eli no longer commanded.

She gestured toward the narrow stairwell. “Shall we?”

The basement smelled of damp brick and stubborn paper. She eased into the swivel chair beside his desk and crossed one elegant leg over the other. From some unseen pocket, she produced a long cigarette holder—old Hollywood glamour in a room that smelled like busted neon dreams. She slid a thin cigarette into the mouthpiece, fingers steady, and lit it with a soft gesture. Smoke curled around her like a velvet sermon.

Above them, the Underwood sprang to life, keys clattering in a jagged, confident rhythm. Each strike was a heartbeat in steel. The carriage dinged, bright and final. With every mechanical echo, the vise around Eli’s ribcage loosened, the stabbing ache receding to a dull throb. He inhaled freely at last.

“Iris Devine,” he whispered—the name he’d once given a character who refused to stay on the page.

She watched through the smoke, eyes glimmering with triumph. “Have you figured it out yet?”

The typing slowed. A new line appeared:

The writer clutched his chest as the pain returned, sharp as a rusted nail. Would the story kill him before the final word?

Eli’s breath caught. His knees trembled. Darkness edged in.

“Oh, Eli… darling, you can stop this. You know,” Iris whispered, leaning close, breath a warm brush against his ear.

Keys clattered again—then the ding of the carriage returned, harsh as a gavel.

“Eli,” she said, voice closer still, “I know who you are.”

The typewriter fell silent.

“Who am I?” she asked, tilting her head.

“You’re… a character. You can’t be real. This must be a delusion—right?”

Her smile sharpened, sudden and fierce. “Then why are you bleeding inside one?”

She pressed a soft kiss to his cheek, then a slow, deliberate lick that left warm proof on his skin.

“You feel that? Real enough for you, darling? Be a dear and fetch me something to drink—bourbon, if you have it.”

He stumbled toward the stairs—and above him, glass shattered.
He wheeled around. The chair was empty. In its place, a ghost of smoke curled where she’d sat.

“Darling, you need to come upstairs—hurry,” her voice drifted down from the shop above.

He climbed into the main room to find broken glass strewn across the floor. A lone policeman stood by the register, uniform soaked, cap pulled low.

“Elias Moreau?” The officer’s voice was soft, almost uncertain.

“Can I help you, officer?” Eli’s hand dove beneath the counter, grasping the cold comfort of an old revolver. He cleared his throat, voice steady. “Step back.”

The man froze, rain dripping from his shoulders. Eli’s finger curled on the trigger—then he exhaled and let the gun clatter onto the countertop. Instead, his hand found something heavier: the knowledge that stories kill cleaner than bullets.

The shop flickered—
And when he blinked, everything was normal.
No broken glass.
No officer.
Only a dark, wet outline on the floorboards where the stranger had stood.

A single ding drifted up from below.

Eli descended again.
Iris sat beside the desk, sipping bourbon, a neat stack of crisp pages at her elbow. A half-empty tumbler caught the amber light. She raised it in a silent toast.

“Welcome back, darling.”

He slid a fresh sheet into the typewriter. The carriage clicked forward, awaiting his command. His fingers hovered—then struck, each letter unfolding with deliberate clarity.

CHAPTER 1

Writing has always been bigger than the writer and the story.
A kind of theology.
The religion between the writer and the story is a spell cast upon them.
The reader sits back and deciphers this literary kung fu.

Writing is a living theology.
A way of life, not just an ideal misunderstood by its practitioners.
Something real, and genuine. Something absolute.
The page is a pulpit, the keys a busted rosary, each prayer hammered out like it owes you rent.

Iris placed her hand on Eli’s arm, warm and insistent.
“Do you know,” she said softly, “that a marmot will chew through its own trap rather than stay caged? Writers should do the same.”

Her thumb traced a slow circle on his sleeve.
“Don’t be the marmot that gnaws in silence. Write until the steel bends for you.”

The typewriter answered with a single, eager ding.

Eli exhaled, a small, resolute smile breaking through the shadows on his face.
“This is where I belong.”

She rose with unhurried grace, smoke trailing like a benediction.

“I’ll put on the coffee,” she said.

The Underwood offered one final, gentle ding—a promise, not an ending.

Author’s Note

Today is Stephen King’s birthday, so I decided to play around with the supernatural and other weird stuff.
The prompt words used today were theology, marmot, and literacy.
Again, as always, thank you, FOWC, RDP, and Word of the Day for your inspiration.

Casino Queen Loretta

2025/09/19Posted in FictionTagged books, creative writing, daily exercise, fantasy, Fiction, Fiction Series, FOWC, RDP, short-story, writing7 Comments

Episode 3: Coffee, Cigarettes, and Catastrophes

The casino smelled like burned electricity and desperate paydays—a mix of ozone, sweat, and somebody’s bad decision wafting from the all-night buffet. Carpet patterns swirled like a magician’s trap, designed to hypnotize losers into forgetting the way out. Overhead, fluorescent lights hummed their mechanical hymn while slot machines shrieked like possessed pinball saints.

And there she was—Loretta—flicking cards across a felt table with the precision of a surgeon and the calm of a predator. Each shuffle was a threat wrapped in velvet. Her nails flashed red beneath the lights, a warning flare in a sea of bad odds. I caught her eye for half a second, and it felt like being measured, priced, and politely declined.

I should’ve kept walking. Any man with a functioning survival instinct knows the house always wins, especially when the house wears black eyeliner and a smile sharp enough to cut rope. But I stood there anyway, watching her hands work the deck like she was dealing fate one snap at a time. The dry snap of the cards carried a rhythm—quick, clean, lethal—that made my chest tighten.

From somewhere near the buffet, a mushroom cloud of fryer grease floated in, mixing with cigarette smoke until the air tasted like deep-fried temptation. I took a step closer. Maybe it was curiosity. Perhaps it was stupidity dressed up in a lucky jacket. Either way, I was already in the game before I touched a single chip.

I slid into an empty seat like a man sneaking into his own execution. The felt smelled faintly of disinfectant and other people’s bad luck. A stack of chips clinked against my palm—cold, weightless, and already halfway gone in my mind.

Loretta looked up, one eye narrowing just enough to register amusement.
“First time at my table?” she asked, voice a dulcet rasp that wrapped itself around the racket like silk over a buzz saw. “Or you just here to donate?”

“Thought I’d give fate a fair chance,” I said, trying to sound casual while my heartbeat tapped out Morse code against my ribs.

She cut the deck with a snap that echoed louder than the slot machines. “Fate doesn’t take chances,” she said. “It takes payment. Minimum bet is twenty. Hope your soul’s worth at least that much.”

I slid my chips forward, the plastic edges slick with sweat. Around us, the casino blared its mechanical choir—coins clattering, bells chiming, a drunk couple laughing like they’d just found the secret to eternal youth. The air tasted of bourbon and fryer grease, with a faint mushroom tang drifting in from the buffet like a dare.

Loretta dealt with surgeon’s precision, each card a quiet insult to my odds. The way she moved—wrist flick, chip rake, half-smile—was an integrated system of seduction and slaughter. I knew the house always wins, but for one reckless heartbeat, I wanted to be the proof that it didn’t.

She leaned in just close enough for her perfume—cheap vanilla with a hint of gasoline—to mix with the smoke between us.
“Hit or stay, handsome?”

It was the first choice of the night, and already I could feel the house collecting its fee.

The casino floor bled into early morning, the crowd thinning until the slot machines were mainly talking to themselves. Loretta tapped the table twice, a dealer’s benediction, and announced a smoke break. I followed like a moth after a neon sign that said Mistake This Way.

The staff break room sat behind a gray security door, far from the glitter. Inside, the air smelled of burnt coffee and tired ambition. A humming soda machine threw a sickly blue glow across scuffed linoleum, turning her black vest into a patchwork of shadow and static. The only sound was the dull buzz of a flickering light bulb—like the world’s most apathetic cricket.

Loretta lit a cigarette and exhaled a thin plume toward the ceiling. Without the clamor of chips and bells, her movements slowed, almost tender.
“Funny thing about luck,” she said, voice still carrying that dulcet rasp but softened by fatigue. “People think it’s random. Truth is, luck’s just math wearing lipstick.”

I leaned against the vending machine, the metal cool against my back. “That a house secret or a personal sermon?”

She gave a crooked smile, eyes fixed on the smoke curling upward like a lazy patrol looking for trouble. “Both. My daddy taught me cards before he taught me to drive. Said life’s nothing but stacked decks. You don’t win—you just lose slower.”

Her words pressed against me with intense weight, an integrated blend of confession and warning. The worn carpet beneath our feet carried the faint musk of fryer grease, and I caught a drifting hint of the buffet’s mushroom funk through the vent. I became aware of the frayed fabric of her vest brushing her arm each time she shifted, a small sound in a room starved for music.

I wanted to ask why someone with eyes sharp enough to cut glass chose to live inside a rigged game. Instead, I said, “You ever dream of cashing out?”

Loretta flicked ash into a Styrofoam cup. “Dreaming’s free. But dreams don’t tip.”

The way she said it—quiet, almost gentle—told me there were stories folded into that silence, stories even the house couldn’t count.

The diner sat two blocks from the casino, a twenty-four-hour shrine to grease and bad decisions. Its neon sign flickered like a tired heartbeat, bathing the parking lot in a pink haze that made even the potholes look romantic. Inside, the air smelled of scorched coffee and fryer oil, a perfume that clung to the cracked vinyl booths like a stubborn memory.

Loretta slid into a corner seat, the fabric of the booth squeaking in protest. She shrugged off her vest, revealing a black T-shirt peppered with faint burns from a thousand careless cigarettes. The sudden absence of casino noise felt almost intense—like stepping out of a hurricane into a vacuum. Only the low hum of the jukebox and the occasional sizzle from the grill broke the silence.

A waitress with a face like an unshuffled deck dropped two menus without asking. Loretta didn’t bother opening hers.
“House specialty’s heartburn,” she said, that dulcet rasp curling around the words like smoke around a flame. “But the fries are honest.”

We ordered greasy eggs and a shared plate of mushroom hash browns, the kind of meal that sticks to your ribs and your conscience. Loretta stirred her coffee, eyes fixed on the lazy whirlpool of cream.
“Love’s just another bet,” she said finally. “You ante up, hope the dealer’s distracted, and pray you don’t draw the fool’s card.”

I tried to joke—something about odds and insurance—but the look she gave me stopped it cold. Her eye held a challenge I couldn’t calculate.

“You ever win?” I asked.

“Nobody wins,” she said. “Best you get is a slower loss.”
She smiled then, a small, crooked thing that carried more warning than warmth. Outside, a lone squad car cruised past like a midnight patrol, lights off but authority intact.

For a heartbeat, the diner felt suspended, an integrated pocket of stillness where the rest of the world couldn’t intrude. The jukebox crooned a half-forgotten ballad, the smell of coffee and salt hung heavy, and I realized I wasn’t hungry for food anymore. I was hungry for the risk she carried like a second skin.

A week later, I walked back into the casino with the stupid optimism of a man who believes lightning might strike twice—preferably with a jackpot attached. The air hit me like a recycled storm: cigarette haze, perfume, and the faint mushroom stink drifting from the buffet vents. The carpets, all hypnotic swirls and migraine reds, felt softer underfoot, like they’d been waiting to cushion my next mistake.

Loretta was at her table, shuffling with the calm precision of a surgeon prepping for an operation. She wore a deep-blue vest tonight, its worn fabric catching the overhead lights in quiet rebellion. Her eyes flicked up and locked on mine—one eye cool, the other almost amused. If she was surprised to see me, the house-trained mask didn’t show it.

A man already sat in the chair I’d claimed as my own the week before. He was loud, cologne-heavy, and lucky—chips stacked like tiny ivory skyscrapers in front of him. Loretta leaned in close, her dulcet rasp carrying across the felt as she dealt him a perfect blackjack. The way she whispered “Winner” was almost intense enough to drown out the slot machines.

I stood at the rail, chips sweating in my palm, watching her fingertips glide over the cards with that integrated rhythm of seduction and slaughter. My pulse ticked with every snap of the deck. It felt like being forced to watch my own slow-motion eviction from a dream I never paid rent on.

The lucky guy laughed, the kind of laugh that begs to harass everyone within earshot. Loretta tossed him another wink—small, surgical, lethal. It was a move I’d once thought belonged to me.

I wanted to step forward, to challenge the hand, the man, the house itself. Instead, I let the chips slide back into my pocket and walked away, the neon glare chasing me like a disappointed patrol.

Outside, the night air smelled of cold concrete and freedom. For the first time all evening, I felt the odds shift in my favor simply by leaving. Sometimes the only winning play is to fold before the cards are even dealt.

The desert night greeted me with a slap of cold air, sharp enough to cut through the stale perfume of the casino still clinging to my jacket. The parking lot stretched wide and empty, a blacktop ocean broken only by puddles of sodium light. A flickering neon sign buzzed overhead, its glow turning the asphalt into a patchwork of molten blues and bruised purples.

I lit a cigarette and watched the smoke twist upward like an intense prayer nobody planned to answer. The silence was so thick I could hear the faint scrape of gravel beneath my boots and the whisper of worn fabric whenever I shifted my weight. Somewhere in the distance, a lone squad car cruised by—a lazy patrol tracing the edge of the night without hurry or purpose.

Loretta’s voice haunted the dark like the echo of a dulcet song that ends mid-note. Every shuffle, every half-smile, every small mercy of her hands on the cards played back in my head with the mechanical precision of the slot machines we’d left behind. The memory carried a scent—faint mushroom grease from the diner, the cheap vanilla of her perfume—woven into an integrated knot I knew I’d never fully untangle.

I thought about the man at her table, the wink she’d tossed like a spare coin. Jealousy should have burned hotter, but instead, there was a strange calm. Maybe I’d finally learned the math she’d been teaching all along: the house always wins, but you don’t have to stay and watch it happen.

I flicked the cigarette into the dark and exhaled the last of the night’s poison.
Love, luck, life—same deck, same dealer. You don’t win. You just choose when to walk away.

I walked.

Author’s Note

Tonight’s gamble was powered by two prompt dealers—FOWC and RDP—who keep this old storyteller’s chips on the table. Their words slipped into the episode like hidden aces, shaping every shuffle and smoke trail. Sometimes the best hands aren’t the ones you win, but the ones that push you to lay your cards down and walk out into the night air.

Delores the Detour

2025/09/16Posted in Fiction, ProseTagged creative writing, daily exercise, fantasy, Fiction, Fiction Series, FOWC, RDP, romance, short-story, Word of the day, writing4 Comments

Episode 2: Coffee, Cigarettes, and Catastrophes

The morning coffee tastes like wet asphalt today, bitter and a little metallic, which feels right because Delores was the human embodiment of a detour sign—bright, tempting, and guaranteed to land you somewhere you didn’t plan on going.

We met outside a dive bar that smelled of stale gin and Monday failures. I was waving for a cab, she was leaning against one—hair slick with streetlight, cigarette ember pulsing like a tiny warning flare. Delores fixed one eye on me through the smoke and said, “Get in if you’re brave or drunk enough.”
I was both, and apparently suicidal enough to think that sounded like romance.

Her cab smelled of gasoline and fading leather, the heater coughing a lukewarm breath that carried the ghost of every passenger before me. Delores drove like the city owed her a favor and she meant to collect, slicing through alleys slick with last night’s rain. Each turn came with a commentary delivered in that dulcet rasp of hers—soft velvet laid over broken glass—that made even a near-miss feel like a bedtime story.

Dinner was a mushroom pizza balanced on the hood at three a.m., steam rising into the amber glow of streetlamps. Sirens wailed in the distance, a crooked lullaby. She’d gesture at the skyline with a grease-stained hand and tell me where she’d hide when the world finally caught fire. I believed her. There was already a bunker behind her smile.

Our nights blurred into an integrated system of near-misses: her ex calling mid-shift to harass her over some ancient grudge, my wallet sliding between cracked seats, the sudden realization that her idea of commitment was showing up before dawn. Every mile carried the taste of exhaust and the thrill of maybe not making it home.

I loved the motion more than the woman, though I didn’t admit it then. The rush of wet tires on pavement, the neon flicker on her cheekbones—it all made me feel like my own stillness might finally shake loose. Trouble is, you can’t build a life at thirty miles over the limit. Motion only disguises the void; it doesn’t fill it.

The night it ended, we hit a traffic circle she called “The Bermuda Triangle of Bad Decisions.” She didn’t slow down. I grabbed the dash, she grabbed my knee, and whispered, “You ever wonder if we keep driving fast enough, maybe the past can’t catch us?”
Her words slid into me like smoke through a cracked window—seductive, poisonous, and half-true.

I stepped out at the next red light and let the cold air slap me awake. Behind me, the cab’s taillights smeared into the wet dark, a pair of crimson commas on the sentence we’d never finish.

Moral of the story? Detours thrill the blood, but every one of them bends back to the same brutal truth: you can outrun traffic, but not yourself.

Author’s Note

This late-night joyride is fueled by the unholy trinity of prompts—FOWC, RDP, and the Word of the Day—each one a pothole I was happy to hit. The required troublemakers—eye, dulcet, and harass—slipped into the story like sirens in the distance: sharp, unavoidable, and just loud enough to make you check your rearview.

Writing Delores the Detour reminded me how motion can masquerade as meaning. It’s easy to chase neon streets and mistake adrenaline for affection; harder to admit that speed only hides the quiet parts of ourselves we’d rather not patrol. Consider this your friendly warning from the passenger seat: detours are thrilling, but the bill always comes due—usually in gas fumes and unanswered questions.

Nineteen and Nowhere

2025/09/09Posted in Stories from the Edge of ChangeTagged creative writing, daily exercise, fantasy, Fiction, flash fiction, FOWC, Ragtag Daily Prompt, RDP, romance, short-story, Stories from the Edge of Change, Word of the day, writing11 Comments

Stories from the Edge of Change – Volume 2, Part 1

“They said the system lost track of him. But he was never theirs to keep.”

The morning rain didn’t bother Ren. He’d learned that water was gentler than people.

He crouched beside the alley dumpster behind the drop-in center, shoulders hunched under a threadbare hoodie two sizes too big, sleeves eaten at the cuffs. His shoes—untied and uneven—squished when he shifted his weight. Rain pooled around the soles, but he stayed put, drawing loops on a soggy intake form with a chewed Bic pen. The form was from three weeks ago. He didn’t remember if he ever turned it in. Didn’t matter.

It was quiet this early. The kind of quiet that makes everything louder. His breath. His heartbeat. The clack of metal shutters two streets over. His fingers trembled, but not from cold.

He hadn’t slept inside in nine days.
But he knew where the cameras were, where the streetlights stopped working. Which stairs stayed dry?

He used to think that was survival. Now it just felt like memorizing a test he’d never pass.

A city bus hissed to a stop up the block, brakes squealing like something in pain. He looked up for a second, then back down. He’d been in those buses, once. With trash bags full of his stuff. Being transferred. “Transitioned.” “Placed.” Words that meant temporary. Always.

The folder in his backpack held every proof of his existence that the county ever gave him:

Two expired Medicaid cards
A GED prep schedule with coffee stains
A letter saying he was denied transitional housing
A single photograph, sun-bleached and wrinkled: him and Miss Tanner, his last foster placement, grinning with sparkler smoke behind them

He’d never shown that picture to anyone. He wasn’t even sure if the smile was his.
Sometimes he felt like that photo was the only place he still left a fingerprint.

Inside the drop-in center, they’d already started handing out coffee and hygiene kits. Ren didn’t go in. Not yet. He didn’t want to be seen with wet hair and a panic attack crawling just beneath the skin.

He’d been in a group home once that called itself “trauma-informed.” They still lock the bathroom at night.
He’d rather piss in the alley than ask permission again.

A man passed by, muttering to himself, trailing a shopping cart full of pillows and clinking bottles. Ren didn’t flinch. The cart guy nodded, as if he knew him. Maybe he did.

He did know the feeling: You’re alone but not exempt. Not from the weather. Not from the noise. Not from the memory of being fifteen, hands shaking as a caseworker said, “We’re placing you in a new home.” She said it like it was an opportunity, not another stab wound in a file no one would read.

The sky split open with a gust of cold air, and Ren finally stood. Pulled his hoodie tighter. Slipped the intake form into his back pocket. It had his name spelled wrong anyway.

He stepped out from behind the dumpster, not into confidence or comfort, but into motion. He moved the way you do when no one’s expecting you—not slow, not rushed, just enough to stay above notice.

As he passed the shelter entrance, he saw a boy younger than him sitting on the stoop, wrapped in a trash bag and drawing in the condensation on the glass door.

They didn’t speak. Just exchanged a glance. The kind that said: Yeah, I see you. No, I won’t say your name.

Ren knew that sometimes a glance was the only shield you had left.

He kept walking toward the corner, toward the same coffee shop he never entered, where the manager never made eye contact and the workers tossed day-old bagels out at 11:00. He’d wait nearby. Not to beg. Just to exist adjacent to someone else’s comfort.

This was the work.
Not recovery.
Not healing.
Just… enduring without disappearing.

He passed a torn flyer taped to a lamppost—one of those mental health outreach posters that still had a suicide hotline and a QR code for free therapy that didn’t exist anymore.
Someone had scrawled across the bottom in Sharpie:

“Hope is just the thing they say when they have nothing left to offer.”

Ren stopped.

He stared at that line for a long time.
Then smiled, just barely.

Not because it was funny.
But because he’d believed in hope once—and he’d watched it falter in real time.

Author’s Note

Written for Stories from the Edge of Change – Volume 2.
This piece responds to today’s word prompts:

Falter (FOWC – Fandango’s One Word Challenge)
Shield (Ragtag Daily Prompt)
Fingerprint (Word of the Day Challenge)

Ren is fictional, but his story is rooted in reality—lived, endured, and too often ignored.
This piece isn’t about rescue or redemption. It’s about what it costs to keep going when the world has already filed you away.

Some people carry their past in manila folders.
Some names vanish before they’re ever called.
And some stories live in silence until someone listens.

Thank you for reading. Let me know if you’re ready to meet the others.

The Corner Again

2025/08/20Posted in Stories from the Edge of ChangeTagged books, creative writing, daily exercise, fantasy, Fiction, flash fiction, FOWC, RDP, short-story, Stories from the Edge of Change, Word of the day, writing4 Comments

MoM Series: Stories from the Edge of Change – Part 5

Jake slipped back to Maple and 9th, just before the day’s first sirens.
The sky was a cold bruise overhead—indigo leaking toward gray, the city below still sullen and half-swallowed by fog. Jake’s route here was always the same: the recycled bus air, the smell of new concrete and old bleach at the transfer station, the long walk down streets that still remembered him in all the wrong ways.

He’d liked it better in the days when a hangover let you lie to yourself.
Being sober meant memory was out to get you, every hour of the day.

He hadn’t told anyone he was coming, and wasn’t sure anyone would care. Maple/9th wasn’t home, not really, but the corner had a way of calling him back when the rest of the world got too bright and too loud. Where everything had fractured. Where, by some backwards logic, something like a beginning had managed to dig in and take root, though even now Jake couldn’t explain why.

He stepped off the curb, the city unspooling around him in the blue-tinted hush of pre-dawn. Chains of streetlights blinked uncertainly overhead, fighting the thick mist that made them look like distant, drowned stars. Gutter water gurgled past slumped trash bags, and a wind—sharp and chemical, the kind you only got east of the river—whipped Jake’s soaked collar tight against his throat.

It had rained all night, the kind of slow, pounding storm that got past old window seals and filled alleys with shallow, fast-moving currents.
His boots were soggy from the first block, each step a cold squelch that made him feel both present and exposed.

He carried a dented thermos of black coffee in one fist, and two foil-wrapped breakfast sandwiches in the other. Not an offering; nothing so grand. More like insurance, or ballast, a way to keep his hands busy while waiting for the morning to decide what kind of day it wanted to be.

Jake found his bench across from the bus stop, same warped planks as always, streaked deep with mildew and the ink of other people’s initials. He sat with a practiced slouch, elbows braced on thighs, letting the bench’s damp give him a chill. The wood was beaten soft by years of sun and rain and the pressure of bodies like his—bent, but holding.

The crust of the world here was thin. Every sound cut through.
The city at this hour was a hungover beast, makeshift and miraculous: somewhere a dog barked in warning, a power transformer hummed in gradual crescendo, and a garbage truck, like the planet’s own heartbeat, thudded trash cans up and down the block.

Jake finished his first sandwich in three bites, washing it down with coffee so bitter it felt like punishment. He watched steam coil off the thermos and disappear.

He’d been clean for 343 days—he counted, because not counting was the first step to failure in his book—but the mornings punched hardest. Not cravings, exactly, but the thin, raw quiet where the old engine used to run. The ache was in the absence now, the stretches of time where nothing screamed at you from the inside.

He wondered if he was the only one who found the lack scarier than the compulsion.

People talk about recovery like it’s a sunrise, he’d heard at every group and meeting and shelter table in the city, but that was a lie.
Recovery was more like hitting bottom, and instead of dying, realizing you were still clutching the shovel.

The old-timers called it “the work.” Jake wasn’t sure he believed in the work, but he did believe in gravity, and he knew how easy it was to fall back down the hole.

He wiped rain off his forehead and stared at the bus stop across the street.
The city here was built in layers, old and new pressed together without much logic: a granite Gothic church wedged between a vape shop and an all-night copy center, tenements with windows starting to glow against the gray, stairwells already moving with the first shift crowds.

The light grew by inches. Jake’s eyes stung; he blinked, forcing himself to watch the street, not the rearview movie in his head.

A figure emerged from the alley behind the liquor store, hood low, gait ragged.
Jake tensed—still, after all this time, the old alarms worked.
Then he recognized the walk. Shoes caked in mud, chin up, hands buried deep in a jacket two sizes too big: Angel.

Angel had been a regular at the shelter through four of Jake’s own city-sponsored relapses, which made him family, or as close as anyone got these days. Compared to the Angel of last summer, this version moved with more purpose—less side-to-side drift, no fresh scabs or glassy stare. Angel’s jaw was bruised, but healing. The eyes were alert, focused, like he’d learned to see himself again.

They shared a nod—the kind that says, I see you and I know what you’ve been through, and also, let’s not make this a big deal.
Angel slid onto the bench beside him, landed hard, and let his backpack fall at his feet. Water pooled around their boots, the surface speckled with cigarette ends, leaves, and plastic fork tines.

Neither of them spoke for a stretch.
Jake thought about the time, months ago, when a rehab flyer had drifted down onto his lap from a passing outreach worker. He’d already been clean then—technically, anyway.

Time had a way of flattening out, making you forget how long you’d actually been at it. The city kept its own clock, indifferent to anniversaries.
Some mornings, like this one, Jake felt it pressing in, the weight of nothing left to want except to stay above water.

Angel broke the silence first. “You been coming here a lot?” His voice was hoarse, wary, but there was something sturdy in it, too.

Jake shrugged, tracing a finger along the bench’s warped grain. “Now and then. Corner doesn’t judge.”

Angel pulled a sandwich from the foil and bit in, chewing slowly. “Doesn’t judge—but it remembers,” he said, mouth half-full.
The words hung in the fog, true in a way that made Jake’s teeth ache.

They watched the city wake up.
A woman jogged by—neon sneakers, rain-spattered leggings, earbuds locked into some other world. Down the block, a man in grimy overalls hosed vomit from the stoop of a shuttered bar, his movements quick and practiced.
A bus hissed to a stop, doors gasping open. Nobody got on or off.

Jake passed the thermos to Angel, who sipped and grimaced.
“You still at the center?” Angel asked.

Jake nodded toward the east, where the sunrise was starting to show. “Nights only. Fewer ghosts after midnight.”

Angel wiped his mouth with the back of a sleeve. “Heard you made it eleven months,” he said.
Jake didn’t correct him; time was a rumor on the street.
“I’m two months today,” Angel added, voice almost too soft to carry.

Jake tipped the thermos, spilling out a little coffee to mark the moment.
“That’s something,” he said.

Angel stared out at the rising light, sandwich forgotten in his hand.
“It feels like it could vanish any second,” he said. “Like, if I turn around too fast, it’ll all come back.”

Jake leaned back, the bench groaning under his weight.
He studied the old traffic light—still stuck on red, despite the empty streets.
“Sometimes it does,” he said, “but you don’t.”

The words were barely a whisper, but Angel nodded.
They both knew the math: most of the people who made it this far didn’t stay far for long.
The city was littered with their ghosts—names Jake remembered from the group, faces half-blurred by time and by the drugs that used to be his only way to see clearly.

Angel finished the sandwich and wiped his hands on his jeans. “Ever think about running?” he asked, eyes fixed on the pale clouds.

Jake didn’t have to ask where. “All the time.” He closed his eyes, felt the rain seep through his sleeves, and pictured a map with every city crossed out except this one.

Angel laughed, short and sharp—almost a bark. “I dream of a boat, man. Offshore. No laws, no meetings, nobody waiting to see if you fuck it up again.”
There was a wildness in his voice, but also a kind of longing.
Jake recognized it: the fantasy of disappearance, of finally outpacing your own story.

“You take yourself with you,” Jake said.

Angel let out a breath, not quite a sigh. “Yeah. That’s the problem.”

Across the street, a man in a threadbare hoodie sorted through a heap of cardboard, folding it into a sign.
His hands shook just enough to notice. The buses kept rolling by, ignoring him.
Jake watched as the man scrawled something—maybe a prayer, maybe a joke—across the cardboard and propped it up for the world to see.

Angel noticed, too. “You going to say something?” he asked.

Jake shook his head. “Not yet.”

“Why not?”

He thought about it. “First time, nobody listens. You wait until they look up without asking. That’s when they’re ready.”

Angel stared at the man for a long time. “And if he never looks up?”

Jake pressed his boots flat against the concrete, feeling the water squish beneath the sole.

“Then we stay,” he said. “Until he does. Or until someone else comes along who knows how to wait.”

Angel didn’t answer. But he didn’t move either. That was enough.

There were mornings when Jake imagined leaving—not running, just… slipping away. Boarding a train headed somewhere nameless, getting on a boat, disappearing into the haze like an offshore storm no one tracks.
But he never moved. Never packed. The fantasy was like a scar: it only hurt when you pressed.

He stayed because someone had once stayed for him.
That’s all it had ever taken.

The bench creaked beneath his shifting weight.
The corner, as always, said nothing.
But it remembered.

And Jake—sober, scarred, still learning—remembered too.

🖋️ Final Author’s Note:

Today’s story incorporates the prompt words offshore, downpour, and creed from FOWC, RDP, and Word of the Day.

This marks the final chapter in the first arc of Stories from the Edge of Change, a MoM original series about survival without spectacle.

Jake didn’t get a miracle. He didn’t get closure. He got a bench, a corner, and a reason to stay long enough to matter.

Sometimes, that’s all we get.
And sometimes, it’s enough.

Above the Churn

2025/08/12Posted in FictionTagged creative writing, daily exercise, Fiction, FOWC, FSS, life, love, Madness Made Visible, mental health, RDP, writing4 Comments

“You funny little man.”

The words slid through my dream and cracked it in half. I came up out of the dark slow, like surfacing through tar. The TV in the next room kept spitting out canned laughter, each burst bleeding through the plaster like a bad memory you can’t scrub out.

I left breadcrumbs for them to find me. Hell, I practically lit the path in neon. So why the delay? They should’ve been here hours ago. Unless this is the variant where they let you stew first, make you sweat until you start negotiating with yourself. I’ve seen that play before.

I hope they come. No—I need them to. It’s the only thing holding the walls together. But hope’s a sucker’s bet. Optimism’s for pretty people and the kind of bastards who get served first in every bar. The rest of us? We know the rules. They get champagne. We get the backwash.

Paranoid? Maybe. But paranoia’s just the truth with the varnish stripped off. And here I am, sitting in a sweat-stained chair in a mildew-sick motel room with a suitcase full of cash at my feet. Waiting for men without faces to come take it—and maybe me—with them. People say those types don’t have a code. That’s bullshit. Everyone’s got a code. Theirs just doesn’t match yours, and it sure as hell doesn’t care about your pulse.

The suitcase sits there like a loaded confession. The clasps are worn, the handle tired, but the weight… Jesus, the weight hums in the air. Life-changing kind of weight. The “fresh start” kind. But that’s a fairy tale for the clean and the lucky.

Me? I’ve got ghosts baked into my bones. Every choice I ever made cut a groove I can’t climb out of. And no matter what’s in that case, I’m not getting out clean.

Author’s Note:
It’s been weeks since I’ve thrown down a little flash fiction. I’ve been neck-deep in the world-building swamp for a project that keeps getting bigger every time I turn a corner. Figured I’d come up for air before it swallows me whole. This one’s thanks to Fandango’s Story Starter and FOWC for tossing me the match—sometimes you just need the right spark to remember you still know how to burn.

The Elevator to Nowhere

2025/07/30Posted in Forecast RegretTagged books, creative writing, daily exercise, fantasy, Fiction, Forecast Regret, FOWC, RDP, short-story, Word of the day, writing4 Comments

Forecast: Regret – Episode 3

Julian had been through storms before. But this one wasn’t weather—it was a squall of circumstance, and it smelled like old whiskey and bad intentions.

He leaned against the chipped brick of the ancient building, rain dripping off the brim of his hat like the world couldn’t stop reminding him of its bad mood. The sign above the doorway read: “Elysium Apartments”, letters half burned out, as if hope had checked out decades ago. Somewhere inside, a tip waited. Or maybe another mistake he’d put on his tab.

He stepped in, shoes squelching with every move, the kind of soundtrack that reminded a man of all the dignity he’d lost along the way. The lobby was empty except for a single elevator whose doors looked like they hadn’t closed properly since Prohibition.

The button flickered weakly when pressed. The elevator groaned like it was waking from an ancient sleep, chains rattling in protest, before the doors lurched open.

“Going up?” asked a voice from inside.

Julian squinted. A man in a bellhop uniform leaned casually on the railing, smiling like someone who knew where all the bodies were buried—and probably where they were rented out on weekends.

Julian hesitated. Everything about the moment screamed nope. But his life had been one long argument with common sense.

He stepped inside. The doors screeched shut with a sound that could file your teeth for you.

“Top floor?” the bellhop asked, already pulling the lever.

“Okey dokey,” Julian said, because sometimes sarcasm was the only shield a man had left.

The elevator jolted violently. Numbers on the panel blinked, but not in order—3, 7, 2, basement, 99, question mark. Rainwater dripped down his neck as the cage rattled. For a second, Julian wondered if this was it—if all his choices were finally cashing out in a metal box headed somewhere past destiny’s curbside.

Then the bellhop grinned wider, showing teeth that were far too sharp for customer service. “Relax,” he said. “Everyone’s going up eventually.”

Stories from the Edge of Change III

2025/07/27Posted in FictionTagged books, creative writing, daily exercise, fantasy, Fiction, FOWC, RDP, short-story, Stories from the Edge of Change, Word of the day, writing6 Comments

Chapter 3

Finch

Jake hadn’t meant to come back.

He told himself it was a supply run—donate some canned goods to the church pantry, maybe check on a guy from group. But his body betrayed him. It always did when he got too quiet. So instead of downtown, he found himself standing at the edge of the block he’d avoided for almost four years.

Same cracked sidewalks. Same rust-colored brick and crooked porch rails. It smelled like last night’s rain and rotting leaves and fried onions from the corner store. The same ghost-town warmth that made the cold worse.

Finch had lived longer than expected.

Mrs. Eldridge had kept him alive. A neighbor. Not a friend. She never offered forgiveness, just water bowls and unspoken understanding. Jake had overdosed two rooms away from where Finch used to sleep. The paramedics saved Jake, but left the dog pacing in circles around a pile of vomit and needle caps. Mrs. Eldridge took him in after that. No speech. No fanfare.

Now, Finch lay curled in a fleece blanket on her enclosed porch, his gray snout twitching in sleep, ribs pressing against skin like old bones trying to escape.

Jake crouched in the doorway.

“Hey, boy.”

Finch opened his eyes slowly. The gaze wasn’t surprised. It was tired. Familiar. He blinked once, let out a rattling sigh, and put his chin back down like, Oh. It’s you.

The porch smelled like cedar planks, sour dog breath, and dust. A cracked radio whispered gospel from another room. Jake sat with his knees pulled up, feeling the wood grain bite into his back.

He had spent so many nights talking to this dog, when words failed around people, when dope blurred the edges of memory. Finch never barked. Just stared at him like he understood too much.

Jake rubbed his temples. His fingertips felt greasy with sweat and guilt.

“I thought you’d be gone by now,” he said quietly. “Guess we’re both too stubborn.”

Finch let out a half-sigh, half-snore. The kind of sound that made you ache behind the ribs.

Jake remembered the last night. The screaming. Dani in the hallway, crying, holding her son with one arm and blocking the door with the other. Jake had tried to push past her. Not with violence, just desperation. That’s the problem—desperation doesn’t always care about the difference.

Micah, barely seven, had clutched Finch’s leash and screamed, “Don’t hurt Mommy!”

Jake hadn’t. Not really. But the way he grabbed the leash—hard, clumsy—made the boy scream louder. Jake saw his own reflection in a hallway mirror in that moment, and it scared him more than anything. The wildness in his face. The failure.

He ran. It didn’t feel brave. It felt like a retreat. Like every other time, he’d chosen the exit over the consequence.

The air smelled of impending rain—ozone and something metallic. A low rumble rolled across the sky. Jake reached down and brushed his knuckles against Finch’s paw. The pads were rougher now. Cracked. Familiar.

He’d read once in a recovery forum about how animals mourn. How they carry memory in ways we don’t understand. He believed it. Finch had always known things Jake never said.

“I’m sorry,” Jake whispered.

It wasn’t just for the dog.

Mrs. Eldridge came out with a bowl of water and a towel. She looked like she hadn’t aged, just weathered down into something harder. Not brittle—stone.

“He’s not eating,” she said. “Won’t last the night.”

Jake nodded.

“Can I stay?”

“You should’ve never had to ask.”

He stayed.

All night. The porch grew colder. The rain finally came, misty at first, then steady, like it meant something. Jake didn’t talk much. Just sat with Finch under the dim porch light, watching shadows shift and windows glow in the distance.

He thought about all the ways he’d tried to escape himself. Pills, powders, rage, silence. But Finch had always brought him back—anchored him when he floated too close to the edge.

Finch died an hour before dawn. No drama. No sound. Just one last slow breath, and stillness.

Jake buried him in the alley garden, near the back fence where Finch used to bark at raccoons. He dug with his hands. Let the mud ruin his jeans. Let the wet earth crawl under his nails and the blisters stab open without complaint.

He didn’t want gloves. He wanted it to hurt.

He wrapped Finch in the towel and laid him down gently, like the way you close a book you’re not ready to finish. On impulse, he cut a strip from the leash and buried it with him.

No stone. No cross. Just the dirt and the sky and the silence.

Before leaving, Jake walked to Dani’s building. Same rusted mailbox. Same flickering porch bulb. He paused at the door, soaked and shivering. Thought about knocking.

Didn’t.

Instead, he slid a letter under the door. It wasn’t long. Just honest.

I buried him. He waited longer than I deserved.

He stood there a moment, listening.

Nothing.

Jake turned and walked into the soft gray morning, the rain trailing behind him like a prayer left unfinished.

Author’s Note:

This piece was written for today’s FOWC, RDP, and Word of the Day prompts.

Stories from the Edge of Change is a quiet fiction series about reckoning, recovery, and the long, uneven road back to ourselves. This one is for the ghosts we leave behind—and the ones who wait anyway.

Stories from the Edge of Change II

2025/07/262025/07/26Posted in FictionTagged creative writing, daily exercise, fantasy, Fiction, FOWC, RDP, romance, short-story, Stories from the Edge of Change, Word of the day, writing2 Comments

Chapter 2

The One Who Stayed

They called him Angel. Not because he was good—he wasn’t. But because that was the name his mother had scrawled on the back of a birth certificate before vanishing into whatever hole the meth and the men had dug. That’s what the caseworker said, anyway. He never knew if it was meant as a blessing or a dare.

Maple Street didn’t care what your name was. It didn’t give a damn about backstory or trauma files. It just asked if you had something worth trading—dignity, a story, sometimes blood. If not, it lets you rot in its shadow. Cold. Dirty. Forgettable.

Angel’s coat smelled like salt and mildew. His jeans were stiff with city grime and sweat. He kept his hoodie pulled low and his mouth shut. That was his trick—if you kept your eyes on the pavement, people passed by faster. If you sat still enough, maybe the shame wouldn’t boil over.

He didn’t want sympathy. He wanted protein. He wanted socks. He wanted to fall asleep without twitching awake to sirens or wet cardboard collapsing under him.

And maybe—though he’d never say it out loud—he wanted someone to call him by his name without checking a clipboard first.

The man who sat next to him that day didn’t look like much. Worn hoodie, creased face, tired eyes. Same as the rest. But he didn’t try to hawk salvation. Didn’t flash a business card or mutter some rehab mantra through a forced smile. He just lowered himself down, exhaled like it hurt, and offered a protein bar.

“You don’t gotta stay here.”

That was all he said.

Angel didn’t answer. But the words landed anyway, quiet as dust, sharp as memory. There was no lecture in the tone, no brag in his posture. Just something steady. Like a man who knew what a long fall looked like and still chose to climb anyway.

Angel watched him walk away. There was a patience to his stride, not fast, not dragging, more like a hawk circling something that hadn’t happened yet.

The protein bar felt heavy in his hand. Real. He unwrapped it hours later behind the train station, fingers cracked and trembling from the cold. It tasted like chocolate and chalk. Like something that might matter.

That night, he couldn’t sleep.

Not because of the cold—he was used to that—but because of the quiet. Something inside him had shifted, and he didn’t like it. He wanted the usual numbness back, the hollow where hope had once lived.

He kept hearing that sentence. You don’t gotta stay here.
It scraped against the walls of his skull.

Because what if the here wasn’t just the corner? What if it was his skin? His blood? His whole damn life?

The wind picked up and pushed trash through the alley. A soda can clattered down the curb like it was running from something. He pulled the hoodie tighter. Even wrapped in layers, he couldn’t shake the chill. It wasn’t just cold—it was recognition.

He thought about every report, every meeting, every incident on file. His whole existence was a debt—an account he didn’t remember opening but kept getting billed for. A chain of overdrafts, each mistake compounded by the last. And the thing about that kind of debt is, no one wants to co-sign your recovery.

The flyer was still there in the bench slat. Creased and slightly damp, but readable. The rehab center’s logo had a bird on it—a dove, maybe, or a pigeon pretending. “Supportive, Long-Term Recovery,” it said in round, hopeful font, like a band-aid on a bullet wound.

Angel stared at it for a long time. Then shoved it in his pocket.

He didn’t go in. Not that day.

Instead, he drifted. Three more nights outside. Two sober. One was so drunk he pissed himself in his sleep and woke up shaking. He thought about mugging someone at the red line platform. Didn’t. Thought about calling Marcus—his old foster brother, who once tried to stab him with a pencil during a group home fight. Didn’t.

Then, one morning, he was there.

Just standing outside the center like a sleepwalker. He didn’t remember making the decision. His feet had dragged him there like they were on auto-pilot. He kept his hands in his pockets and stared across the street.

A nurse with dreadlocks carried a cardboard box of snacks through the door. A man with sunken cheeks and a twitch stood outside arguing with security, begging for one more chance. A woman in pajama pants and slippers stormed out, phone in hand, yelling at her sponsor that she was done doing this bullshit.

It was clear enough—nobody was exempt from the wreckage. No matter how clean you looked walking in, the ghosts still followed.

Angel lit a cigarette. Took slow, deliberate drags. He didn’t cross the street. But he didn’t walk away either.

And somehow, that felt like the start of something he didn’t yet have the words for.

Author’s Note:

Written for today’s FOWC, RDP, and Word of the Day prompts.

Stories from the Edge of Change is a slow-burn series about survival without spectacle. It’s for those caught in between the ones who haven’t crossed the threshold, but also haven’t run. This story belongs to the uncertain, the reluctant, the almost ready. We see you.

Stories from the Edge of Change

2025/07/252025/07/26Posted in FictionTagged books, creative writing, daily exercise, Fiction, FOWC, short-story, Stories from the Edge of Change, Word of the day, writing7 Comments

Chapter 1

The Corner Knows

Jake had a name once. Not the kind of people muttered when they passed him on the corner—junkie, beggar, waste. He had a name that once meant something. It was stitched onto a work jacket once. It was on birthday cards, driver’s licenses, and bank forms. But time has a way of chewing the edges off a man until even he forgets what he started as.

Maple Street didn’t ask questions. It didn’t brag about what it took. It just waited—like a dog in the rain. Took your warmth in winter, your pride in spring, and your last dollar in the fall. Jake used to think the city was cruel. Now he wasn’t so sure. Maybe it was just tired.

The slab of concrete on the corner became a sort of confession booth. You sat there long enough, and the sidewalk started remembering for you. Jake’s cardboard sign said, “Anything helps,” but that was a lie. It was a cover-up. What he wanted was for someone to look at him and not flinch.

He remembered the last time Dani, his sister, saw him. Her kid, Micah, clung to her leg, watching Jake wipe blood off his arm in the hallway. The forty bucks he’d taken from her purse sat folded in his sock. That money bought him silence for a night. It cost him her voice for three years.

He told himself he didn’t blame her. But in the quiet—when even the street was empty—he hated how much he missed being loved.

Then came the flyer. Wind-blown, smeared, half-crumpled trash. A rehab center. Big blue letters promising dignity, as if it could be laminated and handed back to you. Jake picked it up because it was the only thing around that looked more beaten than he felt.

He walked to the center wearing a loaner hoodie from the shelter bin, pockets frayed like open wounds. The front desk didn’t blink when he gave his name. That undid him more than judgment would have. Kindness, he realized, cuts deeper when you know you don’t deserve it.

Rehab wasn’t a clean arc. It was tremors and teeth-grinding nights, screaming into pillows, praying to a god he didn’t believe in just to shut off the screaming in his spine.

Then there was Pete.

Gruff, scabbed-over, loud. “You think surviving means you’ve earned something?” he growled one day after Jake mumbled about being ready to try. “You haven’t even apologized to the mirror yet.”

Jake almost left that night. Got as far as the lobby. But there was a vending machine in there—half-lit, full of stale snacks. He stood staring at it for thirty minutes, realizing he didn’t want chips. He wanted a reason to not disappear.

He stayed.

Progress didn’t feel like progress. No one clapped when he made his bed. No one wrote a headline when he chose water over whiskey-flavored mouthwash. But he kept showing up. He kept writing Dani letters. First few ended up in the trash. Then he mailed one.

The reply came weeks later. Just a text: Still clean?

That was all. But it didn’t sound angry. It didn’t sound like goodbye either.

When they handed him his discharge folder, he stared at it for a long time. He didn’t feel done. He didn’t feel new. He felt like wet clay. Still soft. Still shaping.

He passed by Maple Street that afternoon. Same corner. Same stains on the sidewalk. But now someone else was sitting there—a kid, maybe twenty. Hoodie pulled low, cardboard sign shaking in his grip.

Jake didn’t stop with a speech. He didn’t have one. He sat next to him. Quiet. Like the way an old scar settles under your skin.

Pulled a protein bar out of his pocket.

“You know,” he said, voice low, “you don’t gotta stay here.”

The kid didn’t look up. But he took the bar. Hid it fast, like it might be stolen. Jake nodded, stood up.

He wasn’t saved. He wasn’t clean in the way people brag about. He still had nights where the dark got too loud and the past whispered things in voices that sounded like his own. But he hadn’t used. He’d stayed.

The sidewalk didn’t cheer. It just stayed where it was. Cold. Unforgiving. Familiar.

But this time, it didn’t hold him down.

Author’s Note:

This piece was written in response to today’s prompts from FOWC, and Word of the Day. Sometimes, the words given feel random—until they don’t. Until they crack open something real.

The Corner Knows is the first in a quiet series about what it means to crawl back from the edge without knowing if you’ll be welcomed. No heroes here. Just people trying not to vanish. The street remembers. So do we.

I Scream Every Time I’m Asked to Compromise

2025/07/15Posted in ProseTagged creative writing, daily exercise, FOWC, Ink and Wounds, life, mental health, poetry, Prose, RDP, Word of the day, writing6 Comments

I scream every time I’m asked to compromise who I am, what I believe.
There are days I walk through this like a ghost—quiet, invisible, barely tethered to the world. I’ve worn this skin too long to pretend anymore. I’ve learned that silence is never neutral. It collects. It bruises. It builds a coffin for the self.

How long did I expect integrity to outweigh ignorance?

The shame cuts deepest when I remember the things I was asked to do to be accepted. Asked to perform, asked to mute the fire, asked to shrink for the comfort of others who never deserved my story in the first place. And like a fool, I tried. I polished my voice. I spoke in softened syllables. I tiptoed like I was walking on eggshells—not to protect myself, but to protect their illusion of safety.

But here’s the truth:
Their comfort was never my duty.

This world has corrupted too much, taken too many of us who had something real to say. It props up empty vessels and paints them gold, calls it culture, calls it “marketable.” Meanwhile, those of us who bleed truth are told we’re too much, too raw, too difficult to brand.

They wanted me to smile like some hollow doll—something quiet, something that won’t fight back when they put words in my mouth. But I’m not plastic. I’m not hollow. I don’t bend like that anymore.

I carry my scars with intention now.

Let them call it anger. Let them call it ungrateful. I call it knowing. Knowing that every time I was asked to “adjust,” they weren’t asking for kindness—they were asking for obedience.

I’m done apologizing for the shape my soul takes.

Author’s Note

This piece was inspired in part by prompts from FOWC, RDP, and WOTD. Thank you all for the sparks you give. Your work matters.

The Dame, the Drizzle, and the Dumb Luck

2025/07/11Posted in Forecast RegretTagged books, creative writing, daily exercise, fantasy, Fiction, Forecast Regret, FOWC, RDP, short-story, writing7 Comments

FLASH FICTION – FOWC & RDP

It started, as most questionable decisions do, with a woman, a trench coat, and a very hedonistic craving for street tacos.

Julian wasn’t even supposed to be out. The rain was biblical—Julian half expected to see Noah waving him aboard. His socks were soaked, his spirit soggy, and the umbrella he carried had the structural integrity of a wet paper crane. But tacos were calling, and Julian—private eye by day, glutton by destiny—answered.

Midway through the park, a lamppost flickered like it owed someone money. Julian stepped into the golden spill of light like he was in a film noir. All he needed was the dame holding a cigarette to her ruby red lips, waiting for him to light it. His coat flapped dramatically, mostly because it was two sizes too big and purchased during a clearance sale he mistook for fate. He imagined someone, somewhere, narrating: He was a man torn between purpose and guacamole.

That’s when it happened.

A squirrel launched from a tree like it had just discovered espresso. It landed squarely on Julian’s shoulder, using his necktie as a zipline to destiny.

He screamed like a man whose dignity had just filed for divorce and taken the house.

The umbrella went flying. The squirrel somersaulted off his head. And Julian—formerly mysterious, now flailing—slipped in a puddle with the grace of a ballet-dancing refrigerator.

As he lay on the sidewalk, soaked and stunned, the only thing colder than the rain was the betrayal in his burrito-less stomach.

A couple walked by. The woman whispered, “Was that performance art?”

Julian lifted his head with all the levity he could muster. “Only if you clap.”

They did.

He took a bow from the pavement. Somewhere, a squirrel chittered in applause.

All That Remained

2025/07/102025/07/10Posted in ProseTagged creative writing, daily exercise, FOWC, Madness Made Visible, RDP, writing2 Comments

PROSE – FOWC & RDP

The static clung to him like ash—faint, choking, inescapable. He’d stopped keeping track of the days. Time was foremost a suggestion now, something smeared across the ceiling in mildew and regret.

They said he was a man once. Strong. Reliable. The kind that shows up on time and keeps his word. The kind that doesn’t cry at hospital bedsides or stare too long at old photographs. They said that.

But memory plays tricks. Rewrites endings. Paints the villains in softer hues and leaves the heroes out in the cold. His reflection no longer argued. It just blurred at the edges, refusing to confirm or deny what he had become.

The sink dripped. The fan rattled. The voices whispered. Still, he sat there, jaw clenched, knuckles white, a prayer caught somewhere between his teeth and his shame.

He collapsed into the corner of himself—the part that still remembered how to feel.

He heard a child giggle, smelled lavender and lilac.
But from where?

That door had been closed for years, bolted by memory, corroded by silence. Yet tonight, something had stirred.
Not hope.
Just the echo of what it used to sound like.

Do I Look Happy Enough?

2025/07/072025/07/08Posted in Poetry, ProseTagged FOWC, happiness, life, love, Madness Made Visible, mental health, mindfulness, RDP4 Comments

A quiet reckoning with the expectations we wear and the joy we fake.

When was the last time you were truly happy?

No—
not the curated kind.
Not the smile you wore for someone else’s comfort.
Not the polite laugh that tasted like performance.
Not the checklist joy: house, job, partner, post, repeat.

I mean the kind of happiness that sneaks up on you in bare feet.
The kind that doesn’t make sense but fills your ribs like breath you forgot you were holding.
The kind that doesn’t ask for an audience.
Doesn’t post itself.
Doesn’t need to be liked to be real.

Most days, we confuse peace with silence, and silence with defeat.

You tell yourself you’re content. That this is what adulthood looks like—responsibility, stability, being “grateful.”
You wear that word like a bandage.
But underneath?
There’s a pulse of something unsaid.
A throb you ignore until it bruises.

You smile at strangers. You meet deadlines. You show up.
And in between the commutes and compromises,
you start to wonder if you buried yourself in the crud of being acceptable.

The barrage is constant—
what you should want, who you should be, how you should smile.

But no one ever asks if you’re still in there.
Not really.
Not the version of you that danced alone in the kitchen at 1 a.m.
Not the you who found joy in dumb little things that didn’t need justification.
Not the version of you that wasn’t tired.

You’re silently screaming.
Every day.
And you do it with perfect posture.

Because to speak it—
to say “I’m not okay”
feels like betrayal.
Like failure.
Like you’re too much and not enough, all at once.

But here’s the quiet truth:

Maybe you haven’t been happy in a long time.
Maybe you don’t even remember how it felt.
But maybe that question—when was the last time you were truly happy?—
isn’t meant to shame you.
Maybe it’s a breadcrumb.
A way back.

Not to the person you were before the world smoothed your edges,
but to the one still flickering beneath the noise.

The one who still believes in joy,
even if they haven’t seen it in a while.

🪞Reflective Prompt

Take a moment.
Find a scrap of paper, the back of a receipt, or the notes app on your phone.

When was the last time you felt joy that wasn’t expected of you, sold to you, or shared online?
What did it feel like in your body?
What part of you still remembers?

The Feathered Ones

2025/07/04Posted in FictionTagged creative writing, daily exercise, fantasy, Fiction, FOWC, random fiction, RDP, short-story, writing2 Comments

FLASH FICTION – FOWC & RDP

Every morning, she wrote to keep the birds at bay.

They came with the light—first as shadows dragging themselves across the windows, then as a rustle, low and persistent, like wind thinking too hard. Doves mostly, though wrong somehow. Their eyes were too still, their feathers too quiet. Occasionally, darker birds arrived—sleek as oil, with glints in their beaks like pins. They didn’t chirp or coo. They watched.

She used to think they were hallucinations, symptoms of grief. Her brother had drowned in the river five years ago. No body, no real goodbye. After that, the house changed. Or maybe she did.

The birds began showing up shortly after the funeral. Perched on curtain rods. Nested in the corners of the ceiling where cobwebs once clung. They moved like smoke. Never flapping, just shifting, gliding, like time with feathers.

She had never written a word before he died.

Now, she couldn’t stop.

At first, it felt like a compulsion. Survival. Write or unravel. But soon, the stories took on a shape of their own. They came through her fingers in long, fevered bursts—narratives that looped and twisted and whispered through the typewriter-like incantations. Whenever she paused, the birds stirred. Paper fluttered. Air thickened.

One morning, she stayed in bed. Her arms wouldn’t move. Grief sat on her chest like a second ribcage.

By mid-afternoon, the house was breathing.

Not creaking—breathing. The walls rose and fell in slow, silent exhales. Books slumped off shelves. The floorboards quivered like violin strings underfoot. And the birds—dozens, maybe hundreds—lined the walls, all facing her. Eyes like eclipse moons. Waiting.

She crawled to the desk. Typed three words: He was lost.

The air calmed. The birds blinked once. Vanished.

After that, she understood.

They weren’t punishing her. They were pushing her. Urging the story out. She didn’t know why. She didn’t know what for. But she knew the birds were part of it. Maybe even keepers of it. Strange, spectral editors in feathered cloaks.

The typewriter, an old rusted Royal, began to type without her. At night. Quiet, rhythmic, like a heartbeat. She woke to new pages. Pages she didn’t remember writing. One had a map scrawled on the back—inked in spirals and loops. Another contained a letter addressed to her in her brother’s handwriting.

I saw the ice crack. I saw the light inside it. I’m not afraid.

She burned that one. She burned the next three as well. But they always came back. Not charred. Not even creased. Just waiting on the desk like polite ghosts.

The stories that came through her grew stranger. Boys who vanished into mirrors. Houses that forgot how to hold their shape. Rivers that swallowed memories and returned them in riddles. Always, always, a boy at the center. Sometimes drowned. Sometimes glowing. Sometimes stitched together from stars.

She never gave him her brother’s name. But the birds knew.

They began bringing her things. A button she remembered from his jacket. A library card he’d lost in third grade. A page from a notebook she hadn’t seen since they were children, filled with a crude comic he’d drawn—“Captain Birdbrain and the Time Vultures.”

She laughed. She cried. She kept writing.

She began to understand the birds weren’t birds at all. Not really.

One blinked at her one morning, and she swore she saw an entire galaxy in its eye—planets spinning, stories coalescing, a thousand unnamed lives passing through. Another unfurled its wings, and letters spilled from its feathers, fluttering like snow, dissolving on contact.

She no longer felt afraid. Not exactly.

They were eerie, yes. But so is truth when you haven’t looked at it in a while.

The house shifted in small ways. The closet no longer opened to coats but to mist. The attic smelled of saltwater. She didn’t question it. She followed the thread.

She wrote not to escape grief but to appease it. To make it into something legible. Something she could carry. Each word formed a tiny act of negotiation between what was gone and what remained.

One night, she fell asleep at the desk. When she woke, a new story was finished—clean, structured, heartbreakingly beautiful. The final line read:

“And when she opened the door, there he was—smiling, whole, and made entirely of light.”

The birds were utterly still.

One—larger than the rest, with a sheen-like moonlight on bone—landed on her shoulder. Its weight was real. Solid. She reached up gently, and it leaned into her touch.

There was no song. Just presence.

She folded the page and placed it in an envelope marked For Him.

The next morning, the birds didn’t come.

The house was quiet in a way it hadn’t been in years. She waited. She made coffee. Nothing stirred. For a long time, she thought they were gone.

Then, around dusk, the light shifted. Just slightly. The world outside the window tilted toward a kind of blue she’d never seen. Deeper than twilight, warmer than dawn. The birds returned—not many, just a few. But they glowed now. Dimly. Like coals before fire.

They perched around the room. Silent. Peaceful.

The largest one dropped a page at her feet. It held only a title:

Chapter One.

She smiled.

She had learned to write not to fight chaos, but to give it order.

And the story was just beginning.

Unapologetically Unedited

2025/07/03Posted in ProseTagged creative writing, daily exercise, FOWC, life, love, mental health, personal-growth, Prose, Weekend Writing Prompt, writing6 Comments

Is it hard to be a beautiful woman? People think you have the world at your feet. They think doors open for you, heads turn for you, and life bends around your presence. But they don’t see the trade. They don’t see the constant calibration—how much of yourself you shave off each day to fit into someone else’s frame. Beauty is not freedom. It’s exposure. A spotlight you didn’t ask for, that you can’t turn off.

You’re seen before you’re heard. Assumed before you’re known. People don’t meet you—they meet the idea of you. Their version. Their fantasy. Their fear. And if you don’t match it? You become a threat. A disappointment. A target. It’s not just tiring—it’s erasure in slow motion.

So you patch yourself together—smile here, soften there, silence the part that wants to speak too loudly. Over time, your identity becomes a kind of repair job. You keep the strongest parts in storage, hidden from view, waiting for a time when it might be safe to bring them out. You begin to wonder: Who am I without all the edits? What’s left when I’m not translating myself for someone else’s comfort?

You learn to play roles just to survive. To be warm but not inviting. Assertive, but not “difficult.” Intelligent, but never intimidating. Every room becomes a stage. Every glance is a calculation. When will it be okay for you to step out from behind their idea of you, letting you be who you are, not who they’ve imagined or prefer? How many masks do you have to wear before one of them finally feels like skin?

The tension doesn’t just live in your body—it rewires it. It clutches your voice before you speak. It lingers in your posture, in your smile that’s a little too careful, in your silence that’s mistaken for grace. They don’t see the moments when you swallow yourself to keep the peace. When you feel the full ache of being looked at but never seen.

Every day, you make choices that feel small but cost you something: how to walk into a room, how to hold your face, when to speak, and when to stay quiet. You tell yourself it’s just for now. Just until it’s safe. Just until they see you for real. But how long can you stay edited before you forget the uncut version?

The woman in the photo is not just posing; she’s done shrinking. Her posture is not elegance—it’s exhaustion turned into boundary. It’s defiance without apology. It’s a question you can’t ignore anymore: What happens when a woman stops choosing what’s expected, and finally chooses herself?

Not your version of her. Not the one that plays nice. Just her. Fully, freely, finally.

Author’s Note
This piece was written for Esther’s Weekly Writing Prompt, with a word prompt from Fandango’s FOWC.
Big thanks to all of you for keeping the creative fire lit week after week, day after day. These prompts aren’t just words—they’re jumping-off points, gut checks, and sometimes lifelines. Appreciate what you do more than you know. Keep ‘em coming.

Threadbare Hearts

2025/06/27Posted in FictionTagged 3TC, creative writing, daily exercise, FOWC, random fiction, RDP, SocS, Writer's Workshop, writing6 Comments

I’m unravelling.
The separate pieces of my mind no longer whisper—they scream, each one tugging in a different direction.
I ask the mirror for answers it never had the decency to learn.
A note—creased and crumple-worn—falls from my jacket pocket like a ghost too tired to haunt.
I run my thumb across the ink, smudged but still cruel in its clarity.
Somewhere beyond the silence, someone begins to strum a guitar, the melody raw and familiar, like the ache of memory.
My thoughts form a jumble too dense to untangle, yet too fragile to ignore.
Love, it turns out, is antithetical to survival when your heart’s been set on fire.

Author’s Note:
This piece was stitched together using a patchwork of prompts from FOWC, RDP, 3TC #MM103, SoCS, and the Writer’s Workshop. I tend to write like I’m walking barefoot through glass—deliberate, a little reckless, and always bleeding something honest. If it stings, good. That means it’s real.

Wordless Wednesday – 06252025

2025/06/252025/06/25Posted in ArtTagged 3TC, Art, creative writing, daily exercise, FOWC, RDP, writing4 Comments

ART – AI GENERATED IMAGE – CONCEPT ART – FOWC/RDP/3TC

My submission for Hugh’s Views & News blog, Wordless Wednesday post.

The Clocksmith’s Dominion

Inside the curved brass of the pocket watch, time did not tick—it breathed. With every rise and fall of its mechanical lungs, reality flexed. Past and present danced together in the glow of burnished gears.

Inspector Tallow leaned in, monocle gleaming, his breath caught at the threshold of something ancient. Through the glass, nestled in a city of golden cogs and miniature spires, a bearded man knelt in reverence over a humming engine. Steam curled upward like incense, and the air shimmered—not with heat, but memory.

“I wasn’t allowed to speak of this place,” said the watchmaker, his voice threading through the ether, though his lips barely moved. His hair, coiled and thick, caught glints of starlight from nowhere. “But you asked the right question, Inspector. You asked why time is astoundingly merciful to some… and merciless to others.”

Tallow blinked. “You’re saying… time is shaped?”

“Forged,” the watchmaker whispered aloud, though the word echoed as if spoken from a temple buried in mist. “Shaped like clay, whispered into the grooves of a gear. Not watched—but woven.”

The inspector’s hand hovered above the device, fingers trembling as if crossing into prayer. “And who decides its form?”

The clocksmith turned. His eyes shimmered like twin moons reflected in oil. “I do. But only because no one else remembered how.”

Time held its breath. A single gear turned with celestial finality.

And Inspector Tallow vanished—like a name exhaled from the lips of a dream.

Chronically Challenged: A Friday the 13th Love Story III

2025/06/17Posted in FictionTagged books, Chronically Challenged, creative writing, daily exercise, fantasy, Fiction, FOWC, RDP, short-story, writing2 Comments

FICTION SERIES – FOWC & RDP

Chapter 3:

1776 Problems

There was no welcome committee.
Just the smell of firewood, horse sweat, and a stranger yelling “HEATHENS!” at a woman holding a spoon wrong.

Fiona sat on a wooden bench outside what might’ve been a tavern—or maybe just a house with more than one bowl—trying not to throw up from stress or the smell of something roasting nearby. Her body was sore from the jump, and her brain was short-circuiting in two languages.

This is real. This is happening. I’m in 1776. In borrowed pants. I time-traveled on a date.

Every time she thought that sentence, her stomach did a full somersault.

Elliot sat beside her, smudging his glasses with the corner of his hoodie, blissfully unfazed. She wasn’t sure whether to envy him or throttle him.

“I can’t believe I’m wearing linen pants someone died in,” she muttered.

Elliot squinted at her. “We don’t know that.”

“There was blood on the cuffs, Elliot.”

“Well, maybe he died near them.”

She stared at him. “Do you hear the words that come out of your mouth?”

He gave her a crooked grin. “Not always.”

She pressed her palms into her eyes. You can do this. You’ve taught physics with the fire alarm blaring. You’ve testified in front of a grant panel full of skeptics. You can withstand a little history.

But history was proving to be loud, itchy, and profoundly uninterested in her credentials.

Already today she’d bartered a paperclip for two apples, tripped over a cobblestone, and been told by a man named Jedediah that she had “the posture of a godless widow.” She didn’t even know how to begin unpacking that.

“Okay,” she said under her breath, trying to calm her breathing. “List your assets.”

Elliot perked up beside her. “Do mine count too?”

“One broken time device,” she continued, ignoring him. “Two 21st-century brains. Zero friends. No clean water. No wifi. No deodorant. I’m one itchy shift away from a total psychological event.”

“You’re handling this remarkably well,” Elliot offered, leaning back like he was on vacation.

“I am actively repressing a meltdown,” she replied flatly. “This is emotional duct tape. It’s not coping.”

He nodded with mild approval. “Still counts as functional.”

“Are you seriously not worried right now?”

“I mean, I’m not thrilled,” he said. “But worry won’t solve it. We need a plan.”

Fiona turned toward him slowly, one brow twitching. “A plan?”

“Yeah. Blend in. Gather resources. Find soft places to sleep. Possibly invent sunscreen.”

She stared. “We have no ID. No income. I had a burrito punch card in my wallet, and now it’s probably a war crime.”

“Technically, we still have half a taco.”

“That taco is in another century.”

He held up a hand. “We don’t know that for sure.”

She let out a sound somewhere between a groan and a laugh. He’s doing it again. Defusing panic with deadpan optimism. Pretending this was a mildly inconvenient camping trip and not a rupture in the laws of time.

Fiona stood and paced. The hem of her borrowed skirt brushed against her ankles like a rope. The air smelled like ash, mud, and anxiety.

“You’re right about one thing,” she said. “We have to withstand it. All of it. The cold. The lack of toothpaste. The judgmental goats. For a month.”

Elliot sat up straighter, brushing crumbs from his lap. “We’ve both survived worse.”

“You mean you survived grad school by printing your dissertation at a Kinko’s while actively hallucinating.”

“And you survived your committee asking why your paper didn’t include lipstick.”

She smiled grimly. “Fair.”

They sat together quietly for a moment. A breeze rustled the leaves. Somewhere nearby, a woman shouted about leeches.

Fiona hugged herself, the texture of the coarse shirt making her skin itchier by the second. “I miss hot water,” she murmured.

Elliot looked at her, his voice soft for once. “I miss your blazer.”

She blinked. “What?”

“You always looked confident in it,” he said, a little shy now. “Like you could run the world and correct my posture without raising your voice.”

Her mouth betrayed her—just a slight curl at the corner. Not quite a smile, but close enough to feel dangerous.

They sat in silence again until a goat trotted past and made direct, unsettling eye contact with them.

“Do you think there’s a place around here that sells coffee?” he asked, hopefully.

They looked at each other.

Then laughed.

Kimonogate

2025/06/132025/06/21Posted in Fiction, KimonogateTagged creative writing, daily exercise, fantasy, Fiction, flash fiction, FOWC, FSS, Kimonogate, love, RDP, short-story, SocS, writing10 Comments

FLASH FICTION SERIES – FOWC/RDP/SoCS/FSS #203

A suburban saga of secrets, sequins, and sabotage.

Episode 1:

The Mayor, the Kimono, and Capote’s Forbidden Love

The text the mayor received simply read, “I know what you buried, and it wasn’t just a time capsule.”
He dropped his spoon into his cereal with a neutral thunk and slowly looked toward the back garden, where the freshly disturbed earth sat like a guilty secret under a patchy rhododendron. He took a deep breath and tugged at the collar of his robe—not the pink kimono, no, that one was currently six feet under with a copy of Mamma Mia! Live at the Greek in a glittery DVD case.

He clutched his phone with one hand and his cereal tube with the other. The mayor didn’t own bowls. Too vulnerable. Too open. Like a confession with handles.

Across the hedges, Myrtle McKlusky—seventy-nine, semi-retired, fully judgmental—was watching him from her sunroom. She sat in her recliner like a falcon in a floral nightgown, sipping from a pint glass of prune juice and fanning her three Chinese Crested dogs, each trembling with a different neurosis.

The largest, Capote, was vibrating like an old blender. He had recently discovered his feelings for Misty, Myrtle’s black Chow, and now stared out the window with the unrelenting passion of a Tennessee Williams heroine.

Capote had needs.

The mayor knew Myrtle had seen him. She always did. She had binoculars shaped like opera glasses and judgment shaped like artillery. He had tried to be discreet, but it’s hard to bury shame quietly when you’re panting in crocs and elbow-deep in mulch.

The kimono was silk. It had a peacock on the back. A punt of brandy had been involved.

And now someone was taunting him.

He stormed out of his house in cargo shorts and a tank top that said “Hot Dogs Over Handguns,” and made a beeline for Myrtle’s porch. She met him at the screen door, holding her smallest dog, Pontius—Pont for short—who barked like he was doing Shakespeare.

“Spying again, Myrtle?” the mayor growled, wiping sweat from his forehead and trying not to pant.

Myrtle narrowed her eyes behind rhinestone bifocals. “I would hardly call ‘having working eyes’ a crime.”

“That text wasn’t funny.”

“I didn’t say it was,” she said coolly. “Capote typed it. He’s quite dexterous. Especially since he caught your Misty presenting.”

The mayor’s eyes widened. “That’s my dog.”

“And that’s my Capote,” Myrtle said, lifting him proudly like a neurotic Simba. “And he’s in love.”

“She’s fixed.”

“So is he. Love finds a way.”

The mayor clenched his fists. “Call off your pervert dog or I swear, I’ll—”

“You’ll what?” Myrtle leaned forward, dangerous now. “Threaten three hairless angels with names from the Harlem Renaissance? Do it, Mayor. The HOA already wants your head after that incident with the inflatable disco duck.”

He froze.

She smiled.

“You wore the kimono to Dancing with Myself, didn’t you?”

Silence.

“And you did the full choreography. With backup. Solo.”

He turned and stormed away, sweat rolling down his temple, heart pounding, ears pent up with the ghost of Billy Idol.

Capote licked the glass longingly as Misty rolled in a pile of mulch. Somewhere, a wind blew through the garden. Somewhere, a love story had just begun.

And under the rhododendron, a peacock shimmered in the dirt, waiting.

Whispers in the Orb

2025/06/12Posted in PoetryTagged creative writing, daily exercise, FOWC, Moonwashed Weekly Prompt, Poems from Another Time, poetry, RDP, writing5 Comments

POETRY – MOONWASHED WEEKLY PROMPT – FOWC & RDP

Beneath a moon half-lost in thought,
Where trees remember what time forgot,
A glassbound world, alone, unmoved,
Rests on a stump by starlight proved.

The sphere it hums with silent ache,
A dream too bright for souls to wake.
Its castle floats on woven haze,
A ghost of long-forgotten days.

No foot has trod its cloudy halls,
No voice resounds against its walls.
It knows no flame, no feast, no war—
Just longing locked forevermore.

From the shadows, I feel their presence,
It keeps from entering.
It keeps from discovery.
Who are they?

A figure passes — swift, unseen,
A thread between what is and dream.
It doesn’t speak, it doesn’t stay,
But mourns what light cannot allay.

Within the orb, still skies suspend
A world that chose not to descend.
A world untouched by fear or alarm,
Yet haunted still by love’s disarm.

And I — I watch with anchored eyes,
As wonder folds into disguise.
Is this the cost of peace so pure—
To live untouched, yet feel unsure?

Perhaps the truest kind of grace
Is not escape, but facing place.
Yet still, I yearn to cross that line—
To walk the fog and call it mine.

This poem is a part of a five-part series called The Forgotten Orb

The Twist

2025/06/122025/06/22Posted in Fiction, The SpiralTagged creative writing, daily exercise, fantasy, Fiction, flash fiction, FOWC, FSS, horror, Ragtag Daily Prompt, random fiction, RDP, short-story, writing6 Comments

FLASH FICTION – FOWC/RDP/FSS #204

Carla sprinted from the archaeological site, clutching an artifact that could either save or destroy the world.

The desert wind tore at her coat, slicing her cheeks with grit and heat. Behind her, the canyon bellowed—low, deep, the sound of stone waking from sleep. She didn’t look back.

The artifact pulsed in her palm—black stone, veined with silver that moved like quicksilver, coiling and recoiling. Cold as ice, yet burning her skin. It didn’t make a sound, but its pressure settled in her jaw and spine, like a voice she couldn’t quite hear. A warning. A dare.

She had read the glyphs. Scratched into bone, buried beneath layers of false chambers and cursed earth. Left twist: seal. Right twist: release. A simple choice.

Until it wasn’t.

A sound cracked the sky—a roar too wide to come from a throat. Carla reached the ridge and turned.

The site had vanished. In its place stood a figure made of shadow and ruin, shrouded in strips of black that bled smoke. It held a scythe that scraped the air, hissing with each movement like it sliced through time. Beneath its feet: a field of skulls. Beyond it, the expedition fortress, aflame, its banners melting mid-flap.

Her legs went numb. Her breath caught in smoke. She wanted to run. To cower. To vanish. But the heat from the artifact anchored her. Reminded her: she had opened the door.

She had let it out.

The spirals on the artifact shifted. A recess opened. The mechanism waited. Her thumb hovered over it, trembling.

It was her sister’s voice she heard next. Not real. A memory, maybe. Or a trick.
“The world’s been broken before, Carla. Someone always seals it shut again. Someone just like you.”

The creature stepped forward. The ground cracked. A second sun burned in its wake.

She twisted left.

The silence after was total. Not peace. Something worse.

Then, screaming. From the air itself. The creature reared back as spears of molten light stabbed down from the clouds. Chains wrapped its limbs. It shrieked, stumbling, clawing at the sky—but the light yanked it downward, tearing the world around it like cloth.

Then—nothing.

Carla collapsed to her knees, chest heaving. The artifact lay in her hand, cracked down the center, the silver threads gone dark. The sky was still red. The smoke still stung. But the screaming had stopped.

She stood, slowly, scanning the charred remains of the site. The fortress. Her team.

Gone.

She was lost now. A savior with no witnesses, no one left to remember the choice she’d made.

And just as she turned to leave, the wind shifted. Cold, sharp.
Somewhere far off, something laughed.

Closet Quest: A Steampunk Sock Saga

2025/06/072025/06/07Posted in FictionTagged Art, books, creative writing, daily exercise, FOWC, Photography, poetry, Ragtag Daily Prompt, random fiction, RDP, Travel, writing8 Comments

FLASH FICTION – FOWC & RDP

In the heart of a creaky old workshop, Reginald the Raccoon, steampunk engineer extraordinaire, adjusted his brass goggles and stared at his latest invention: the Interdimensional Sock Locator 3000. His mission was clear and absurd — recover The Sock. Not just any sock. The one embroidered with tiny mechanical gears and the words “Wrench It Like You Mean It.”

But the sock had vanished into the most feared place in the entire workshop — The Closet.

The Closet wasn’t just a closet. It was a legendary abyss, sealed with a handwritten warning: “ENTER AT OWN RISK — MAY CONTAIN WILD TOASTERS”. Inside were decades of misplaced inventions, rogue gadgets, and sandwiches from questionable eras.

Reginald wasn’t afraid. He was prepared.

He packed his essentials: a grappling hook, a glowing morale-boosting lightbulb, a peanut butter sandwich (for negotiations — mayonnaise had backfired last time), and his trusty spanner. Thus began The Closet Quest.

With a deep breath, he cracked open the door. The closet sucked him in with a WHOOOOOMP — the kind of sound a vacuum cleaner would make if it suddenly gained ambition.

Inside was chaos: umbrellas lunged like javelins, toasters flung shuriken-bread, and an especially grumpy bagpipe band oozed around, playing nothing but angry honks. Reginald ducked and weaved, narrowly avoiding a spatula attack.

Halfway in, he encountered the sandwich kingpin — a towering club sandwich wearing a tiny crown of pickle slices.

“I demand mustard!” it bellowed.

Reginald, calm as ever, offered a jar of peanut butter. The sandwich sniffed, grumbled, and waved him through with a soggy lettuce leaf.

After what felt like three Tuesdays and one awkward staring contest with a unicycle, Reginald spotted it — his sock, perched on the back of a six-legged chair scuttling like a nervous crab.

With a battle cry that sounded suspiciously like “FOR SOCK AND GLORY!” Reginald launched himself through the air, snagging the sock mid-tumble while the chair skittered away, squealing in defeat.

Victorious, Reginald emerged from the closet, slightly scorched, moderately crumbed, but grinning wildly. He slid the sock onto his paw like a puppet and proclaimed, “No sock left behind!”

He celebrated by installing three more clocks — all wrong — and scribbling a new warning on the closet door: “STILL HUNGRY.”

Just as he was polishing his spanner, a tiny scroll slipped out from under the door. It was a ransom note, scrawled in mustard:

“Next time… Dijon. – Sandwich King”

Worse yet, the new clocks he’d installed began to tick backward, forward, and sideways. Time hiccupped, and a second Reginald — equally confused but holding a jelly jar — blinked into existence.

Reginald sighed. “Guess it’s Tuesday again.”

Glossary of Reginald’s Workshop Essentials (coming soon):

Spanner of Questionable Durability — works until it doesn’t.
Sock Locator 3000 — still missing a “find” function.
Emergency Sandwiches — one per dimension.

How I Became Secretary of Seeds

2025/06/06Posted in ProseTagged AI Generated Images, books, creative writing, daily exercise, fantasy, Fiction, FOWC, Ragtag Daily Prompt, RDP, short-story, writing10 Comments

PROSE – FOWC & RDP

The bluebird glared at me from its perch on the fence post like it had been waiting all day just to start something. It was a deep, suspicious blue, like the sky on a day when the weather can’t make up its mind. The bird’s feathers shimmered in the sun, and its eyes were full of judgment.

“You’re staring,” it said.

I blinked. I hadn’t expected this. Birds usually don’t sass me.

“Sorry,” I said. “It’s just… you remind me of when I was young. I used to think birds had secret meetings and built tiny cities out in the fields.”

The bluebird fluffed up. “Yeah, well, we do. You think this is just a fence post? This is the Capitol building.”

I squinted at the worn, splintery wood and the sagging barbed wire. “Seems a little… low budget for a capital.”

“Budget cuts,” the bird said flatly. “Also, you’re standing on the public square. Watch the granola crumbs.”

I shifted awkwardly. Nostalgia hit me like a soap bubble — light, slightly annoying, and somehow sticky. I remembered chasing birds in the backyard, shouting important speeches to them about imaginary kingdoms. I thought they listened. Turns out, they just had bad exit strategies.

“So what’s the bird government up to these days?” I asked, genuinely curious now.

The bluebird tapped its beak thoughtfully. “Mostly snack acquisition. Some squabbling over real estate. And we’re still figuring out how to unionize against cats.”

It flapped its wings once, a grand, slow-motion move like it had just delivered a very important decree. “Anyway, I gotta fly. Press conference in a cedar tree at noon. But before I go—” it paused dramatically, “you’re appointed Secretary of Seeds.”

I blinked again. “Wait, what? I didn’t even apply.”

“Exactly why you’re qualified,” the bird said, very seriously. “No one who wants the job should have it. Now go forth. Scatter responsibly.”

And just like that, it took off, leaving me alone with my nostalgia, a few leftover granola crumbs, and a brand-new title I hadn’t asked for.

I brushed my shirt off with as much dignity as I could muster and gave a solemn nod to the fence post capital. It’s not every day you get conscripted into bird government. Diplomacy with birds was a tricky business, but I like to think I made progress.

Shred for Me, Pretty Lady

2025/06/04Posted in FictionTagged creative writing, daily exercise, FOWC, Ragtag Daily Prompt, random fiction, RDP, writing2 Comments

FLASH FICTION – FOWC & RDP

He heard her riff from the other side of the park — sharp, ragged, alive — and it hooked him deep.

She wore ripped jeans, grease-smeared at the thighs, and a black tank clinging like second skin. Her wedge sandals cracked against the pavement, loud in the dead night air. Neon from the bodega stuttered green and pink across her face. The street smelled like hot concrete, burnt coffee, and metal.

The park was a ghost — limp swings, bleeding graffiti, trash twisting in the wind. She crossed barefoot, her wedges abandoned like broken shells, toes flexing against the grit.

Guitar slung low, she slammed a chord that split the silence.

He was already moving — hoodie up, sneakers scuffing, sweat trickling down his spine. His mouth tasted like rust and cheap beer. His pulse, steady but hard.

She extended an arm, fingers loose, head bobbing deeper into the groove — lost, or somewhere he couldn’t follow. Each beat hollowed out the night until it was just her.

He crossed the street, the music pulling him in.

Two steps. Three.

She hit a final shred — sharp, blistering, reckless — tearing the night wide open. Then she stopped.

Looked straight at him.

For a second, the whole city held its breath.

She smiled first — small, real.

He smiled back.

No words. No need.

Forged Within the Ether

2025/06/042025/06/03Posted in ProseTagged AI Generated Images, creative writing, daily exercise, FOWC, Poems from Another Time, Ragtag Daily Prompt, RDP, writing2 Comments

PROSE – FOWC & RDP

Before gods bore names and before stars had patterns, she was promised to the beast.

She was not born—she was forged—beneath an aurora that tore the heavens open, a raw seam of color bleeding across the void. The elders spoke of it in fearful whispers: the girl born beneath a wound in the sky must one day walk alone into the dark and not return.

And so she did.

The tiger awaited her at the threshold where the world ends — not as a beast, but as a remnant of a forgotten order. His fur shimmered with the dust of collapsed stars, his stripes like scars left by ancient battles. He was more than the creature, less than a god. He was a memory of what the cosmos used to be before time taught it to decay.

She should have been afraid.

Instead, she felt something deeper: the pull of recognition. The silent knowledge that she, too, was a relic — born out of step with the age that claimed her. She had carried it all her life, that ache that no mortal hand could soothe.

When their foreheads touched, she did not kneel. She did not beg. She listened.

In his steady breath she heard the slow exhale of dying stars. In his pulse, she felt the ancient patience of mountains that crumble and are reborn as sand. He spoke no words, but she understood: to be mine is not to be possessed, but to be remembered.

Her hands, steady now, sank into the thick, impossible warmth of his fur. She thought of how the world would forget her, how her village would carry on, how even the memory of her name would dissolve in the slow acid of time. But here — here she was seen. Known.

And if oblivion was the price, she would pay it gladly.

Above them, the etherlight burned brighter, fierce and beautiful, a scar that would never heal.

When she vanished into the folds of the night, no one marked her passing.

But somewhere beyond the reach of history, she still walks beside the last Skyborn, two relics out of time — bound not by chains, but by the quiet, immutable truth that even in a universe of endless forgetting, some things — some bonds — remain.

Earth Girls Are (Not) Easy

2025/06/02Posted in FictionTagged creative writing, daily exercise, fantasy, Fiction, flash fiction, FOWC, horror, Ragtag Daily Prompt, RDP, short-story, writing5 Comments

FLASH FICTION – FOWC & RDP

Zog had traveled 27 light-years for this nonsense.

He’d battled through the fray of the Andromeda-Fermilab skirmishes, dodged a black hole that smelled suspiciously like burnt popcorn, and bribed a customs agent on Venus — all for what Earth’s glossy travel brochures promised: an authentic campfire night.

Now he sat paralyzed in a splintery lawn chair, staring at a pit of flaming sticks like they were a personal insult.

This is it? Zog blinked slowly. Fire. In a hole. Congratulations, Earth. You’ve reinvented the sun, but dumber.

The smoke was relentless. Shift left — it followed. Shift right — it hunted him like an ex with a grudge. His oxygen filters strained, and he already smelled like scorched pine and bad decisions.

Two Earth juveniles gawked at him from across the yard.

“Is he okay?” one whispered, chocolate smeared across his wrist.

“Maybe he’s meditating,” the other said, as if Zog was one deep breath away from achieving Nirvana.

No, Timmy, Zog thought grimly. I’m rethinking every life decision, starting with trusting Mon.

Ah, Mon — fellow traveler, distributor of lies. Earth girls are easy, Mon had said, smirking, right before getting ejected from a Martian dive bar. You’ll be knee-deep in interspecies romance before you can say, “Take me to your leader.”

So far, Zog hadn’t even been knee-deep in conversation. The only intimate contact he’d had was with the mosquito drilling into his forearm.

A marshmallow flung from a crooked stick splattered onto his lap, instantly fusing to his exosuit.

He didn’t flinch. He didn’t dare.

Perfect, Zog thought. Now I’m paralyzed, smoke-drenched, and sticky. What an exotic species I must appear: a confused, flammable piñata.

Across the fire, someone strummed a guitar and began mumbling a song about truck beds and heartbreak. Zog stared blankly, mentally composing his one-star review.

Earth Girls: False Advertising. Fires: Aggressively Enthusiastic. Hospitality: Threat Level Marshmallow. Would Not Recommend.

Still, he thought, if he could survive the fray, he could survive this. Maybe even find a girl — though at this point he’d settle for someone who didn’t accidentally set him on fire.

The Strength in Fracture

2025/05/27Posted in ProseTagged creative writing, daily exercise, Fiction, FOWC, life, mental health, Poems from Another Time, poetry, Prose, RDP, writing2 Comments

PROSE – FOWC & RDP

We find strength when we crack, not despite it, but because of it.

There’s something deeply human about breaking.

Not the kind of collapse that’s loud and chaotic—but the quiet kind. The kind that sneaks in slowly, pressing against your foundation until one day, without warning, you feel it: the shift, the splinter, the give. And then the silence that follows. That’s the feeling these images evoke. A visceral, wordless Yikes that lingers in the gut.

You don’t see the break coming. But when it arrives, it’s undeniable.

In the first image, we see a heart—not soft, not red, but forged from slabs of cold, cracked stone. Split down the center, it doesn’t bleed. It doesn’t scream. It simply opens, revealing a light that neither heals nor blinds. This is not a symbol of destruction. It’s a portrait of vulnerability. Of strength that dared to yield. And that’s the paradox: what we build to protect us can also be the very thing that prevents us from feeling, from growing, from becoming.

There have been times I cracked. Times when all I could do was sift through the rubble and pretend I was okay. On the outside, I held. On the inside, it was layers of damage—quiet, hidden, untreated. It wasn’t dramatic. It was ordinary, and that’s what made it dangerous.

And just when you think it can’t go deeper, it does.

The second image strikes harder. A head—presumably human—layered with thick, dry slices of rock, features obliterated by the burden of their own defenses. You don’t see eyes, mouth, or even expression. You see the consequence of endurance.

We do this, don’t we? We pile on the layers: expectations, roles, trauma, silence. One by one, they smother the self underneath until we become unrecognizable, even to ourselves. And when someone asks us how we’re doing, the reaction is automatic: “I’m fine.” But the truth is buried somewhere deep, wedged between layers too heavy to lift alone.

But what if the face we hide becomes the face we lose?

The final image is a tunnel of shattered stone tiles, a fractured pathway bathed in harsh, white light. It’s hard not to see this as a metaphor for transformation. The path isn’t smooth. It’s jagged. Uneven. And yet it leads forward.

That light? It’s not salvation. It’s exposure. Clarity. Maybe even a challenge. The only way through is through. You walk over the wreckage of everything you thought would last, everything you thought you were, and you move anyway.

These images aren’t just art. They’re mirrors. They ask you to look closer—not at the cracks in the stone, but at the fractures within yourself. The places you’ve gone numb. The truths you’ve buried. The parts of you are still waiting to be unearthed.

So yes, Yikes might be your first instinct. But maybe that discomfort is the doorway to something deeper. Maybe the real reaction isn’t fear, but awakening. What if breaking is not the end of the structure, but the beginning of something raw, real, and finally alive?

What have you layered over instead of facing?
What parts of you are still buried beneath the rubble?
And if you followed the cracks, where would they lead?

One Liner Wednesday – 05212025

2025/05/24Posted in ProseTagged AI Generated Images, creative writing, FOWC, One Liner Wednesday, photo editing, writing4 Comments

ONE LINER WEDNESDAY & FOWC

“Think of it this way: cleavage is the downfall of man—and honestly, no one’s complaining.”

Too Bright to Touch

2025/05/24Posted in ProseTagged creative writing, daily exercise, Fiction, FOWC, Poems from Another Time, Prose, Ragtag Daily Prompt, RDP, romance, short-story, writing9 Comments

PROSE – FOWC & RDP

She moved like a memory caught in motion—half real, half reflection.
Blue light wrapped her like prophecy, like warning.
Everything about her shimmered.
Not from joy, but from exhaustion lacquered into beauty.

There was a cost to being seen this way.

Every inch of her radiated curated power—eyes rimmed in defiance, lips painted in precision.
She looked flawless. Untouchable.
But nothing about her was effortless.
She was sculpted in silence, shaped by scrutiny, smoothed by survival.

The world adored the Gloss.

They called it strength.
They mistook stillness for peace.
They praised the image and ignored the ache.

Because Gloss blinds.

And beneath it, something primal waited—untamed, uninvited, and fully hers.

Fur.

Not for decoration—for defense.
It was everything she’d learned to hide: the mess, the wildness, the depth.
The part of her that could not be branded, couldn’t be edited.

She’d buried it to belong.
But it never stopped breathing.

Now it whispered again.

I want to love.
I want to find peace.
I want to find the real.

But in a world that feeds off illusion…

They tell her lies, in a delicious way.
Wrapped in compliments.
Scented with approval.
Only palatable if she never breaks character.

She tried to believe.
Tried to play along.
But the silence inside her was louder than any applause.

Though she is surrounded, she feels alone.

People held the projection.
No one held her.

Who is the person peering from the cage?
She doesn’t want to be here, but there she is upon the stage.

And one day, without ceremony, she stopped pretending.

She stripped away everything, stood as she truly was.
No gloss.
No pose.
No apology.

And in the rawness of that moment—

To dream of the moment is not insane.

Not foolish.
Not naïve.
Not a weakness.

It’s a kind of rebellion—
To believe in softness after survival.
To imagine stillness after the storm.

Perhaps, she will learn the answer—just not today.

Today is enough.

Because in the stillness…

She not afraid.
She not afraid.
She began to breathe.
It almost easy.

No spotlight.
No mask.
Just breath.
Just truth.
Just her.

Too Strong for You

2025/05/24Posted in ProseTagged creative writing, daily exercise, Fiction, FOWC, life, love, Poems from Another Time, Prose, Ragtag Daily Prompt, RDP, writing4 Comments

PROSE – FOWC & RDP

She wore the veil not to disappear, but to survive.

It wasn’t for tradition, or rebellion. It wasn’t a performance. It was protection.
It was her way of saying: I decide what you get to take from me.

They never handed her chains. They handed her mirrors. Bent ones.
Peer pressure didn’t demand. It seduced. Do what we do. Be what we expect. Not because we said so—but because you’ll be alone if you don’t.

Then secular pressure followed, wrapped in freedom’s clothing.
Be who you are—as long as it’s curated, as long as it looks good, as long as it doesn’t disturb.
Express, but don’t confront. Create, but don’t challenge.
Believe in nothing but your brand.

And for a while, she drifted. Trying to belong. Trying to disappear inside approval.

But inside the silence, something broke open.

“Weak as I am…”

She said it like an admission. But it was the beginning of truth.

Weak—not because she failed, but because she felt.
Because she hadn’t let the world harden her into something hollow.
Because even in survival, she still longed for something more than existing.

Because she can’t change the world, but she control how it molds her.
And she refused to be shaped by fear. She chose to be shaped by memory. By presence.
By scars she didn’t hide.

Stay alive. Keep on fighting.

Some days, she did.
Some days, she didn’t.

Like a fugitive on the run—from becoming unrecognizable to herself.
Carrying the weight of all she’s done—and all that’s been done to her.
She was born from regret, yes. But that regret made her conscious. Aware. Awake.

And still, the questions haunt her:

What is she fighting for?
What is she running from?

The answers shift, day to day.

Sometimes she fights for the quiet.
For the small version of herself she abandoned to survive.
For the right to not have to explain.
For the chance to feel something other than fear.

And yes—there are moments. Moments where escape feels like mercy.

What if she wanted to run? Leave it all.
What if she crumbled, and couldn’t fight anymore?

These thoughts don’t scare her anymore.
They keep her honest.
They remind her that strength isn’t the absence of breaking—
it’s the choice to return to yourself after.

Because at the end of all the noise, all the pretending, all the shrinking and reaching and rebuilding—

She is left with one quiet, unshakable truth:

This is who I really am.

No polish. No filter.
Veiled, but not invisible.
Wounded, but not erased.
Tired, but still reaching.

So when the world looks her way, squinting through its own discomfort, trying to place her in a category, or strip her down to something simpler, something safer—

She doesn’t flinch.

She lifts her gaze and speaks with a voice that carries every weight she never dropped:

“With this tainted soul, in this wicked world…
Am I too strong for you?”

And if the answer is yes—so be it.

She never asked for permission.
She only asked to be real.

She Sings Forward the Fire

2025/05/12Posted in ProseTagged 3TC, creative writing, daily exercise, FOWC, Poems from Another Time, Prose, RDP, SocS, writing2 Comments

PROSE – FOWC, RDP, 3TC #MM57, SOCS

Her face, a still sea at twilight, holds a world behind closed eyes — a world scorched and sacred. Beneath the surface of her skin, time moves differently. The tear sliding down her cheek isn’t sorrow alone; it’s layered, like sediment pressed by centuries. It’s the weight of what was lost, and the stubborn, aching beauty of what still lingers.

In the palm of her silence, you can almost hear it: the laughter of ancestors, brittle with joy; the soft rustle of silk on temple floors; the sweet hush before a prayer. Memory lives here not as a ghost, but as a fire — not to destroy, but to illuminate. What we love, we do not forget. It settles into us, builds its shrine in the quietest chambers of the self.

She is witty, yes — but her wit is not for show. It’s forged from survival. Every word she withholds is a choice, every glance a negotiation between pain and pride. She has learned to speak with her silences, to wield them sharper than swords.

Wilful — not out of defiance, but necessity. She resists erasure. She refuses to dim. Within her, temples rise from ashes not as ruins, but as rebirth. Her breath is a hymn to endurance. Her heartbeat, a drum summoning the past into the present.

There is something wondrous in the way she holds it all — grief, fire, memory, and light — without collapsing. As if her soul was built to hold contradictions, to sing through them. A tear falls, yes. But it falls like a bell chime, echoing inward. Each note asking, not “Why me?” but “What now?”

She does not seek to escape the past.
She sings forward the fire.

Mistakes Were Made: The Shame pt 1

2025/05/09Posted in FictionTagged books, creative writing, daily exercise, fantasy, Fiction, FOWC, RDP, short-story, writing2 Comments

FICTION – FOWC & RDP

The Morning After

If you ever wake up and immediately regret being alive, congratulations—you’re probably me.

My skull was hosting a drum circle led by caffeine-deprived raccoons. My mouth felt like an unnamed beauty had sandpapered it with a vendetta with every man who dissed her ever, and my limbs responded to commands in defiance like they were on strike. Everything hurt, especially my dignity.

I groaned, rolled over, and promptly fell off the bed onto my work boots. Those lace hooks really hurt. Classic.

As I clawed my way upright, fragments of last night teased my consciousness—neon lights, slurred toasts, someone yelled “SEND IT!” (possibly me), and the faint memory of interpretive dancing to an EDM remix of Ave Maria.

Then it hit me.
Something was missing.

I patted myself down. Phone? Somehow still miraculously clinging to life under the pillow. Keys? Jangling mockingly on the nightstand. Wallet?

No wallet.

I picked up my jeans from the corner and checked the pockets. I wondered how they got there. Then realized that nothing was going to be normal today.

Cue the internal scream.

I scrambled to check under the bed, between couch cushions, inside the fridge (don’t ask), and even in the washing machine. No dice.

Panic was slowly rising like a bad dubstep drop when the door creaked open.

Harper, the Roommate of Judgement

“Lose something, hero?”

There she stood: Harper. The kind of roommate who alphabetized the spice rack and judged you silently when you microwaved leftover fish. She was holding a mug that said, ‘I Tolerate You’, which honestly felt generous.

I blinked at her, attempting to appear casual while definitely radiating the aura of a feral raccoon.

“My wallet,” I croaked. “I think it… wandered off.”

Harper leaned against the doorframe like she was starring in a sarcastic soap opera. “Well, unless your wallet’s name is Travis and it yells about late-stage capitalism when drunk, you left with someone else last night.”

“Travis?” I asked, brain lagging.

She sipped her coffee with the grace of a smug swan. “Tall, loud, wore a tank top with a motivational quote that was both inspirational and wildly inaccurate. You two were in a budding bromance bonding over tequila shots and something about ‘seizing the narrative’.”

“…I’m scared of me,” I whispered.

“You should be.”

I collapsed onto the couch. “Tell me we didn’t go clubbing.”

“We did. Or at least, you did. You left this apartment yelling ‘THE NIGHT IS YOUNG, AND SO AM I!’ “Drink, dance, and Conquer!” even though both those statements were lies.”

I groaned. “Please tell me we ended at the diner.”

“We always end at the diner,” she said. “You made out with a corn dog and a bottle of mustard.”

“…Romance is dead.”

She tossed me a bottle of water and a packet of aspirin with the precision of someone who had done this before. Too many times. “Find your wallet. I’m not covering your avocado toast debt again.”

With the grace of a hungover possum, I stood up. “Time to retrace my shame.”

“Godspeed, wallet warrior,” Harper called after me, already halfway back to bed. “And try not to lose your soul this time.”

The Pub (Where It All Went Wrong)

The sun assaulted my retinas like it had a personal vendetta. I stumbled onto the sidewalk, blinking like a mole emerging from its hole, while Harper followed behind me, arms crossed, coffee in hand, deeply regretting her life choices.

“Are we walking into your shame voluntarily now?” she asked.

“Retracing my steps. Like a detective. A very dehydrated detective with a bad haircut and no clue.”

She snorted. “So… yourself.”

We reached The Pickled Elbow, the pub where the descent into chaos had apparently begun. It looked innocent enough in daylight—wood-paneled charm, cheerful chalkboard sign out front. Like the kind of place that would lull you into bad decisions with discounted craft beer and 2000s pop playlists.

Inside, the bartender looked up as we entered. She wore the tight smile of someone who’d seen it all and did not want to see any of it again.

“Oh,” she said, narrowing her eyes at me. “It’s you.”

“Hi,” I said, sheepishly. “I think I lost my wallet here last night.”

“You mean after you got on the bar and tried to convince the crowd you invented the espresso martini?”

Harper burst out laughed so hard she nearly spilled her coffee. “You what?”

The bartender—Gina—shrugged. “He was passionate. Loud. Slightly wrong.”

I flushed. “Right. So, no wallet?”

Gina shook her head. “Nope. But you left with a guy named Travis. Tank top. Looked like he got rejected from a CrossFit cult.”

Harper nodded like it all made sense. “The prophet of bad life choices.”

“Also,” Gina added, pulling a wrinkled napkin from behind the bar, “you made me promise to give you this.”

I unfolded it. It said, in my own handwriting:
“IF I GET LOST, CHECK THE MEAT PALACE. THE TRUTH IS THERE.”

Harper peered over my shoulder. “What the hell is the Meat Palace?”

I stared at the napkin. “I think… it might be the club.”

She sighed. “Of course it is.”

As we turned to go, I found myself reflecting on just how often I ended up here—metaphorically and literally. A bar, a mistake, a blackout, and a joke that stopped being funny. I wasn’t just losing wallets. I was losing my grip on being someone I recognized in the morning. There was a certain bewilderment in that realization that dug deeper than I’d like to admit.

The Club (A.K.A. The Meat Palace)

We stood outside a neon-soaked warehouse with a line of people already queuing like they were about to enter battle. The bass thumped like a distant migraine.

Harper looked up at the glowing sign:
CLUB INFERNO.
Below it, in smaller font: Home of the $5 Mystery Shot.

“This place smells like Axe body spray and desperation,” Harper muttered.

“I vaguely remember trying to backflip here,” I said. “I cannot do a backflip.”

“You also can’t walk straight, so that checks out.”

The bouncer stopped me. “ID?”

Harper raised an eyebrow. “This is the part where you realize the comedy of your situation.”

I gave the bouncer my saddest eyes. “I lost my wallet. Can I just ask the bartender something real quick?”

He folded his arms. “No ID, no entry.”

“I have a photo of him doing the worm in here last night,” Harper offered, holding up her phone. “In a banana costume.”

The bouncer looked. Blinked. Grunted. “Five minutes.”

We had to scoot around a line of club kids in rhinestones and mesh to get through the door. Every one of them looked like the embodiment of my hangover’s worst nightmare.

We pushed through the crowd toward the bar. The lights flashed violently. My brain considered self-immolation.

At the bar, the bartender gave me a once-over. “Oh, God. You again.”

“I was hoping that was a collective fever dream,” I said.

“You kept shouting ‘THIS IS MY SONG!’ during a techno remix of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,” she said. “And tried to tip me with lint.”

Harper let out a strangled noise. “Please. Tell me there’s security footage.”

“No wallet,” the bartender added. “But you were ranting about karaoke. Something about reclaiming your narrative through power ballads.”

I turned to Harper. “It’s worse than I thought.”

She looked at me a little more closely then. Not just annoyed or amused—concerned. And maybe I saw it too. This wasn’t just another night out. It was a pattern. I wasn’t looking for a wallet. I was looking for proof I hadn’t completely lost myself. That some idealistic version of me still existed beneath the chaos.

“Yeah,” she said. “We’re going to a karaoke bar.”

Caught in the Heavy

2025/05/08Posted in FictionTagged 3TC, creative writing, daily exercise, Fiction, FOWC, horror, Image Animation, Ragtag Daily Prompt, RDP, Short Stories, short-story, writing4 Comments

FICTION – FOWC, RDP, 3TC

Caught in the Heavy

The corridor stretched on like a memory he couldn’t escape—narrow, dim, damp with a cold that clung to the skin like breath on glass. Mildew, rusted metal, and aging wood tinged the air, a scent that settled into the lungs and whispered of long-forgotten places. Floorboards groaned beneath his boots, their brittle creaks echoing like old bones remembering how to hurt.

He stood in the middle of it all, unmoving. Not frozen by fear exactly—more like resignation. The kind that seeps in after the tenth mistake, the last apology, the moment you realize the story you’ve been living might never shift its ending. He used to think time would fix it. But time, he’d learned, doesn’t heal. It settles—like dust.

The walls pressed close with peeling wallpaper and old nail holes where lives once hung. He scanned them as if he might find his past nailed there, too. Maybe a younger version of himself in a photo frame, smiling with someone whose name he couldn’t say out loud anymore.

An unfortunate truth surfaced: he’d chosen this silence. No one forced him here. He pulled away. He locked the doors before anyone knocked. They called it being guarded—he called it survival.

On a crooked table sat a lone candlestick, melted to a stub. Its wax clung like a memory—dried, useless, but still intact. He reached for it absently, fingers brushing tarnished brass. Cold. Solid. Real. A reminder that even forgotten things still leave traces.

He wondered how long he’d been standing here. How long had he been waiting for the hallway to say something? But hallways don’t speak. They listen. They hold your silence for you until it grows too loud to ignore.

Everything around him felt heavy. His coat, soaked with damp air. His thoughts sagged with years of unanswered questions. Even his heartbeat felt labored, as if each thud carried the weight of something he refused to let go.

He closed his eyes and thought of the words he never said. The calls never returned. The glances he turned away from because he didn’t trust what he saw in them.

Regret was a slow grief, the kind you wear like skin. And the mind, cruel and calculating, was its favorite weapon. Not a blade, not a gun—just memory sharpened to a whisper that says, “this is who you really are,” when you least expect it.

Still, a thought rose unbidden through the noise—quiet, but firm:

We always try to overlook the past, because we can’t change it. But we forget the important factor about the past… the wisdom we gain from it.

He let the idea settle, warm against the cold inside him. Maybe that’s what he’d come here for. Not punishment. No escape. But understanding. A reckoning not with the pain itself, but with the lesson buried beneath it.

He didn’t move. Not because he couldn’t—but because this was the only place he could hear himself. This hallway wasn’t just a space. It was a mirror, a memory, a confessional.

A bulb overhead buzzed, casting him briefly in light—harsh, unflattering. His reflection in the warped glass at the far end looked like a man still mid-sentence, still caught between what he was and what he feared he’d never be.

Just enough light to prove he was still there.

Just enough to remind him that some corridors don’t lead out.
They lead in—and if you’re not careful, they never let you leave.

Coffee, Heels, Ramen, Commutes, and the End of the World

2025/05/04Posted in FictionTagged books, creative writing, daily exercise, Fiction, FOWC, life, Ragtag Daily Prompt, random fiction, RDP, writing4 Comments

FICTION – FOWC & RDP

For most people, the holidays are a time for joy, togetherness, family, and other concepts pushed by commercials and overpriced airline tickets. Me? I got a new city, a new job, a new apartment, and not a single damn soul to split a drink with. A festive little cocktail of isolation, garnished with cold floors and ramen noodles.

Warm beer wasn’t a preference. It was apathy in a can. Every dollar was rationed like I was living in a bunker, waiting for a war that already came and went. All in service of building a “normal” life. Whatever that meant. Probably something people posted about with filters and hashtags while wondering how far they could lean out their windows without falling.

I stared out the window, coffee in hand—black, burnt, and bitter, just like me. Outside, the early morning parade of wage slaves stumbled toward their cars, moving like background actors in a post-apocalyptic sitcom. Another day of selling hours they’ll never get back. I lit a cigarette with my Zippo, watching the flame catch like it was lighting a fuse. It usually was.

Then she appeared. A brunette with an athlete’s build and a power suit tailored like a threat. She walked like the world owed her rent—somewhere between courtroom and catwalk. I didn’t know if it was lust, curiosity, or cabin fever talking, but after nine months of social starvation, she might as well have been a hallucination in heels.

I told myself I was meant to be a writer. The kind who bled truth onto paper and didn’t flinch. But instead, I was half-awake, smoking, and objectifying strangers. Not exactly Pulitzer material. So I turned back to my notebook. It was the only thing that didn’t feel fake. Just ink, paper, and whatever was left of my sanity—a loop I couldn’t seem to break.

Every morning, I wrote until 6:30. Then I’d drag myself into the shower and make the fifteen-minute commute that somehow always took an hour. Sixty minutes of bumper-to-bumper hostility. Everyone late, everyone pissed, everyone pretending their playlist made it okay. It was the same ritual every day—wake, write, shower, drive, repeat. Resist the urge to scream, loop through it again tomorrow.

My job? IT guy. The one people called after breaking things they didn’t understand, then blamed me for fixing too slowly. You could tell within thirty seconds I hated it. I didn’t try to hide it. Misery loves company. I hosted parties.

The paycheck kept the lights on, but not much else. I worked for a mid-tier company with big egos and small ideas. But lately, the rumor mill has been grinding overtime. Word was, we were getting bought out by some corporate giant with a thirst for blood and profit margins.

That meant an audit. Cue the chaos. People who spent the last six months tweeting through staff meetings were now sprinting to cover their asses. Watching them panic was the most fun I’d had in weeks. The hammer was coming, and I had the best seat in the house—coffee in hand, notebook open, waiting to see who’d get crushed first.

The Face Beneath

2025/05/04Posted in ProseTagged creative writing, daily exercise, fantasy, Fiction, FOWC, Poems from Another Time, poetry, Prose, RDP, writing4 Comments

PROSE – FOWC & RDP

The dawn light was pale and useless—just a smear across the treetops, barely making it through the humidity. Everything was wet—the porch boards, the air, your skin, even your breath. It felt like you were breathing through cloth—heavy, damp cloth wrapped around your head.

You stood barefoot on the steps, a slice of watermelon dripping in your hand. It tasted like water and rot now, its sweetness gone. You spat into the grass and stared out at the treeline.

The forest didn’t move. Not even the leaves. It just watched.

You didn’t sleep. Not last night. Not really the night before. The dreams had stopped pretending to be dreams. They didn’t fade in the morning. They lingered in the corners of your vision and behind your ears, where the sound of whispering almost made sense.

You went out early. Needed to check the perimeter cameras. Needed to move. To feel the ground under your boots. That was the plan.

Instead, you wandered. The trail curved in a way it hadn’t before. You followed it. Past the markers. Past the thinning grass. And then it was just you and the dirt.

You nearly tripped over it. At first, just a glint of white in the soil. Bone, maybe. A rock. You crouched, brushed it off with the edge of your shirt. The shape took form fast.

A face.

Stone. Weathered. Cracked. Like it had been buried for years, forgotten. But the eye, just one, was too clean. Too precise. Like it had waited.

You stared at it for a long time. Tried to laugh. Couldn’t. You ran your fingers along the nose, the lips. Your hand trembled, but you didn’t stop.

It looked like you. Not exactly, but enough. The same line between the eyes. The same curve of the jaw. It had no expression, but somehow, it felt like it was judging you.

You left it there. Swore you would forget it.

But that night, you dreamed of breathing through stone. Heavy. Silent. Dreamed of dirt filling your mouth, your ears, your chest. Dreamed of a voice saying your name—not out loud, but from inside.

You woke up with soil under your fingernails.

You told yourself: it’s a statue. Left behind. Forgotten.

You told yourself: it’s just heat sickness, a little sleep deprivation.

You told yourself: don’t go back.

But the forest doesn’t let you decide things like that. Not anymore.

Perforated Silence

2025/04/29Posted in PoetryTagged creative writing, daily exercise, FOWC, poem, poems, Poems from Another Time, poetry, RDP, writing10 Comments

POETRY – FOWC & RDP

Why do I bother to write?

Each word drifts into the void—unanswered, unheard.
They vanish like smoke—transparent. Gone.
Not because they’re sacred or encrypted in G-14 code—
but because no one’s looking. No one’s listening.

There was a time when that silenced me.

“Why speak?”
“No one listens.”
“Does it even matter?”

Do you matter?

Some days, that voice won.
It slid into my bones, curled behind my ribs, and whispered me into silence.
Told me I was just scribbling into darkness.
That my pain was recycled. That I was nothing new. Nothing needed.

But even then, something fought back.

A flicker. A breath that refused to die.

I had forgotten why I came here.
Lost the thread. Lost myself in fog.

But I remember now.

I write because I must.
To survive the war within.
Not the loud, cinematic kind—
but a silent, grinding, bloody war.
Fought in mirrors. In 3 a.m. thoughts.
In doubts that circle like vultures.
In guilt that clings like wet ash.

We don’t talk about it. Not really.
But we all feel it.
That private battlefield behind the eyes.
The endless rummage through our own wreckage,
hoping to find something still whole. Something still true.

I’m not here to prove I exist.
I’m here to understand why I keep breathing through the wreckage.
Not seeking praise—seeking peace.

To sift through ruins.
To bleed on the page.
To let the shards of memory cut me clean,
and the embers of regret burn what no longer serves me.

There is hope in the fire.

And I have not walked alone.
Some of you were there—watching, listening,
fighting your own quiet wars beside me.
We faced Lunacy like pilgrims, eyes wide, daring her to do her worst.

You stayed.

For that, I owe everything.

So I write.
Not because I’m whole—
but because I’m becoming.

Page after page.
Sentence after sentence.
Word after word.

Until the silence breaks.

And something holy rises
from the blood.

Things Found in the Fire

2025/04/27Posted in ProseTagged creative writing, daily exercise, FOWC, Poems from Another Time, Prose, Ragtag Daily Prompt, RDP, writingLeave a comment

PROSE – FOWC & RDP

The alley wasn’t picturesque, but it was honest. Cracked brick walls caught the last tired light of the day, holding it like a secret. She leaned against them, letting the roughness bite through the fabric of her shirt — a small reminder she was still here, still standing.

People always skipped places like this. Skipped the alleys, skipped the worn faces that carried too many losses. She used to believe that if she fought hard enough, worked long enough, she could save something — a home, a love, herself. She thought effort could outmatch entropy.

But slowly, we turn the page and walk away from everything. We worked so hard to save. Must we start all over and find another shoulder to lean on?

The question pressed into her like ash on skin. Maybe survival wasn’t about saving what was burning. Maybe it was about knowing when to let it burn. About sifting through the ashes for the pieces that could still hold weight.

The sun folded into the horizon, leaving behind the thick hum of a city settling into itself. She didn’t move quickly. She didn’t look back. Some fires you didn’t put out. Some things you simply let burn and walked away from — lighter, fiercer, more your own.

She stepped out of the alley and into the dusk, steady and unafraid, carrying only what survived the fire.

The Ridge Where Silence Waits

2025/04/24Posted in ProseTagged creative writing, daily exercise, fantasy, Fiction, FOWC, Poems from Another Time, poetry, Prose, Ragtag Daily Prompt, RDP, short-story, writing2 Comments

PROSE – FOWC & RDP

Dawn unfolds like a hesitant prayer, its soft light unspooling over the bones of the hills. The stars, one by one, retreat into the folds of daylight, as though ashamed of what they bore witness to through the long, silent hours. Still, I remain at the crest of the ridge, a lone silhouette etched against the slow bloom of morning. I have not slept. I could not—not with the weight of forgotten omens pressing down on me like ancient armor.

The saddle beneath me creaks as I shift, leather complaining in a language only the wind can answer. My limbs ache, not just from the vigil, but from something deeper—an unraveling. I am more wreck than man, hollowed by longing and the quiet violence of loss. My voice, once sure, now drifts somewhere in the ether, unreachable. Even if I could summon the will to speak, I no longer trust the shape of my own words.

Below, the keepers stir. I hear the sharp clash of their voices, rising in petty squabble over rituals they no longer question. Their movements are brisk, their concerns tethered to earth and duty. I do not begrudge them this. But I cannot descend, not yet. I am no longer bound to the cadence of the living. Not while something in me still listens for a call that may never come again.

For I have lost the vision.

Once, it came to me like thunder through a cathedral—blinding, holy, terrible in its beauty. It lit my mind with purpose, set my hands aflame with creation. But that light has dimmed, flickered, vanished. Last night it sang, soft and clear through the bones of the wind. Now it is gone, and in its place: silence, vast and unrelenting.

I reach inward, desperate for a glimmer, a fragment of that divine echo, but find only echoes of my own fear. My compass is shattered. My quill is waiting in some distant place I no longer know how to reach. The path to it—if it still exists—has been swallowed by mist and regret.

And yet, there is no peace in surrender. Only the chill of a fate whispered by unseen mouths, breath like ice on the back of my neck. They murmur not of endings, but of reckonings. Of a soul unmoored of a promise made long ago beneath stranger skies.

Perhaps this is what becoming untethered feels like—not a fall, but a float. Not a silence, but a waiting breath.

The ridge hums beneath me, and I close my eyes.

If the light returns, I will know it by the way the wind shifts. I will feel it in the marrow. I will rise, not with certainty, but with faith scorched into my bones like forgotten scripture.

But until then, I remain.
A shadow made flesh.
A watcher at the edge of memory.
A ghost, listening for the sound of his own return.

Swallowed, then Speak

2025/04/21Posted in PoetryTagged creative writing, daily exercise, FOWC, life, love, poem, Poems from Another Time, poetry, Ragtag Daily Prompt, RDP, writing6 Comments

POETRY – DEFIANCE

What is the moment when I scream into silence?

But I’m silent, really—
no sound, no voice,
just a mouth stretched wide around something too big to name.
My eyes glaze—not with calm, but with shock.
A thin film of disbelief over everything.
My heart races.
I’m wrecked like a tsunami with no quarter,
flung breathless against the shore.

It’s not quiet.
Not truly.
It’s a silence that throbs,
that undresses me,
strips me down to the rawest nerve.

Why?
Am I afraid to speak what I feel?
I push it down until I crack.
Swallow the pain, the misery, the grief—
like that’s what strength is.
As if silence means control.

But inside, it never stops screaming.

I’ve built a prison with no walls.
I’m both prisoner and warden.
Every emotion I swallow—another brick.
My tears, the mortar.
The longer I hold on,
the harder the mortar sets.

Letting go should be simple.
But I can’t.
I won’t.
I have to be strong.
Another brick.

The chains tear into me.
I pull and pull,
begging for clemency I know isn’t coming.
Skin breaks.
Something deeper frays.
Still I pull.
Still I scream.
Another brick.
How did I get here?

I slump into the abyss of agony.
Its waves strangely soft,
almost soothing.
The ghosts of my past wrap around me,
pulling me under.

Is this peace?
Is this what I deserve?

No.

I scream NOOOOO!!!
A final act of defiance.
A rupture in the silence.
A crack in the wall.

I scream again—louder.
Louder than the pain.
Louder than the ghosts.
Louder than everything that told me to stay quiet.

The final word is no longer a whisper.
The silence and I become one.
And we finally—

SPEAK.

The Weight of Stillness

2025/04/17Posted in ProseTagged creative writing, daily exercise, FOWC, Poems from Another Time, Prose, Ragtag Daily Prompt, writing5 Comments

PROSE – FOWC & RDP

I drift through the mist of life’s abyss, not falling, not flying—just suspended. Time doesn’t move here; it folds in on itself, leaving me trapped in a silence that isn’t peace, but ritual. Dutiful. Respectful. A silence learned over years of swallowing words and measuring breaths. It’s the kind of silence that makes you forget the sound of your own voice.

The air around me stirs, barely. Still, I hear the whispers—low, deliberate, cold. They speak not in sentences, but in suggestions, in warnings that curl around my ears and settle in my chest. They speak of fate, of choices already made, of a path too worn to change.

In my hand, the quill waits, poised like it knows the weight of what it might say. But it’s grown unwieldy—too much meaning, too much memory packed into such a fragile thing. I grip it, unsure whether to write or release. Each word feels like it could be the last. Maybe this sentence is where I stop. Maybe this is where I finally let go.

But still I hover, caught in that space between thought and surrender, listening to the hush of everything I’ve never said.

Where the Sky Remembers Her

2025/04/16Posted in ProseTagged creative writing, daily exercise, FOWC, Poems from Another Time, Prose, Ragtag Daily Prompt, RDP, writingLeave a comment

She stood still, her profile etched in the quiet glow of imagined worlds. Galaxies spun behind her eyes, each one holding a memory she hadn’t spoken aloud in years. Moons drifted close, brushing her skin with light that wasn’t light, warmth that didn’t burn. The clouds moved through her like thoughts, slow and tangled, as if the sky itself had cracked open to whisper her name.

Her expression didn’t shift. It didn’t need to. She wasn’t here to perform. She was caught in that weightless place between who she’d been and who she might become. And in that stillness, even the planets seemed to orbit slower, listening.

Someone once told her she looked too serious, too distant. But they only gave her a bland kind of attention—the kind that never reached deeper than skin. The type that skimmed her surface and missed the storm beneath.

Now, she let her thoughts roam in this quiet collision of sky and soul. Not forward. Not back. Just… outward. And for a fleeting second, she caught a flicker of something—possibility, maybe—out of the corner of her eye.

A glance, nothing more.

But it was enough to remind her that she was more than what the world saw, more than the shadows cast by fading light. She was part of the cosmos now, and maybe, just maybe, the cosmos was part of her, too.

The Gauntlet of Fog and Stone

2025/04/08Posted in ProseTagged creative writing, fantasy, Fiction, FOWC, Poems from Another Time, Prose, Ragtag Daily Prompt, RDP, short-story, writing2 Comments

PROSE – FOWC & RDP

The mist clung to the earth like old sorrow, curling around boots and stones, swallowing sound. Two figures stood before the monolith, cloaked in black, their outlines blurred by fog and fate. The stone towered above them, carved from the mountain’s spine. Its surface was worn by centuries but still bore the mark—an eye within a jagged star—that pulsed faintly, like something alive and watching.

They had come a long way to find it. Through dead forests that whispered their names. Across plains littered with the bones of better men. Not for glory. Not even for vengeance. Just the promise of an answer, or maybe an end.

Behind them, the others waited. Hooded. Silent. A dozen warriors who had followed them without question, bound by old oaths and older regrets. No one asked what lay on the other side of the fog. The question had been buried with the first man who hesitated.

The taller of the two stepped forward, boots crunching on frost-hardened gravel. His hand hovered near the hilt of his sword, fingers twitching like they remembered every fight that hadn’t gone his way. “We stand at the edge,” he said, low and certain.

His companion didn’t look at him, just stared at the monolith. “And what waits beyond?”

“Only those who boldly engage the old magic will know.”

The other figure stepped closer to the stone, his silhouette ragged with wear but upright and determined. He placed a gloved hand on the carving. The stone felt warm—too warm—as if it hadn’t forgotten.

The ground answered—not with light but with a deep, resonant hum that rolled through the valley like a warning. The fog began to move, twisting into strange shapes, pulling backward to reveal what waited deeper in the pass—a path, a gate, shadows shifting on the other side.

The second man drew his blade slowly, the sound of steel slicing the stillness. “Then we put on the gauntlet,” he said, quiet but resolved. “And we walk into whatever comes next.”

Not for glory. Not for vengeance. But for truth. And for the ones they couldn’t bring back.

Together, they stepped forward as the stone split open, the mountain groaning with ancient memory. Finally, the fog began to part.

Oracle of Hollow Peak

2025/04/07Posted in ProseTagged AI Generated Images, creative writing, daily exercise, Fiction, FOWC, Poems from Another Time, Prose, Ragtag Daily Prompt, romance, short-story, writing3 Comments

PROSE – CONCEPT ART – DOUBLE EXPOSURE

In the heart of the Hollow Mountains, where the air hummed with silence and time forgot to tick, a being older than wind sat. Encased in a sphere of shimmering energy—neither glass nor light, but something between—the Oracle meditated above a chasm that pulsed with ancient fire.

He had not spoken in centuries. He didn’t need to.

The mountains around him were carved not by water but by will. Their jagged silhouettes, emerald-tipped and layered like echoes, were born from his breath. Each ridge was a memory. Each peak was a vow. He had once been flesh, bone, and fire. Now, he was purpose wrapped in the illusion of form.

To the outside world, he appeared as a man—if a man could be sculpted from starlight and storms. His robes flowed like liquid fog, and his long, tangled beard bore streaks of silver like splotches of moonlight left behind by the gods.

Pilgrims had tried to reach him, climbing in silence, their mouths dry from reverence or fear. None returned unchanged. Most didn’t return at all.

Inside the sphere, reality bent. Time curled inward like smoke. The Oracle sat cross-legged on a throne of molten stone that neither burned nor aged. Beneath him, streams of liquid light cascaded into the void—knowledge pouring endlessly into the earth’s soul, never wasted, never full.

He was more than a seer. He was a medium between worlds—the silent conduit through which forgotten truths passed. Not a messenger, not a prophet, but something more elemental, something that watched as stories ended and began again.

He waited—not out of impatience but design. Somewhere, someone would be ready to ask the right question. Not about destiny or death. Those were too easy. But the one that mattered. The one that cracked the world open.

Until then, he breathed. And in that breath, universes whispered.

Top 5 Ways to Ask a Girl Out: Rule #5

2025/04/062025/06/29Posted in Fiction, Top 5 WaysTagged creative writing, daily exercise, fantasy, Fiction, FOWC, Ragtag Daily Prompt, romance, short-story, writing3 Comments

FICTION – FOWC & RDP

Top 5 Ways to Ask a Girl Out: Rule #5
If you survive the kiss attempt, you’re in.

We walked back from the taco truck under the kind of sky that made everything look slightly more romantic than it deserved to. Streetlights flickered on like they were rooting for me. Or mocking me. Hard to tell.

“So,” she said, arms folded, still carrying her drink like it was a trophy. “Do you usually spend your Saturdays pretending to be a mechanic-slash-foodie with girls you’re not dating?”

“Only the ones who invite me to test-drive their haunted vehicles and emotionally unstable lawn statues.”

She laughed. “So I’m special.”

“You are,” I said, before my filter could save me.

She looked over, eyes holding for a beat too long. I panicked and did what any emotionally underdeveloped guy would do: I kicked a pebble and immediately regretted everything I’ve ever said.

We got to her door. The gnome was back. Sitting on the railing again like nothing had happened.

“You brought him back out?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Didn’t move him.”

We both stared at the gnome.
The gnome stared back.
Relentless.

I cleared my throat. “So. Tonight was… really good. Even if I almost stripped the threads off your lug nuts and spilled soda on my own knee.”

She smiled. “Definitely one of my better fake-date disasters.”

And then it happened.
That silence.
The kind that invites a kiss if you’re bold, or complete social collapse if you’re not.

I stepped a little closer. Not a full leap—just a half-step of doomed courage. She didn’t move. Just watched me with that same small smile and terrifying confidence.

This was it. This was the moment.
I leaned in.
And completely misjudged the height difference.

My nose bumped hers. Her forehead bumped mine. My glasses fogged instantly. Her drink sloshed. One of us made a weird surprised sound—pretty sure it was me.

We pulled back, both blinking.

I wanted the sidewalk to swallow me. Instead, she started laughing.
Like, full-on, can’t-stop, leaning-on-the-doorframe laughing.

I winced. “Cool. Yep. Nailed it.”

She grabbed the front of my shirt, pulled me in, and kissed me properly.
Soft. Sure. Just long enough to shut my brain off.

When she pulled away, she whispered, “You passed that test, too.”

The gnome was still watching.
Probably smirking.
Waiting for whatever moment would arrive next.

Author’s Note
And that’s a wrap on this blog series. Thanks for sticking with it. This story (and its awkward kiss energy) will be part of my upcoming short story collection. Same premise, just expanded—with more chaos, more heart, and yes, probably more gnome appearances.

War, Wisdom, and Other Lies I Tell Myself at Dawn

2025/04/05Posted in ProseTagged books, creative writing, Fiction, FOWC, life, mental health, Prose, Ragtag Daily Prompt, SocS, writingLeave a comment

PROSE – FOWC, RDP, SoCS

“Damn, you’re ancient! What was it like to be one of Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders?”

One of the kids on my team tossed that gem at me this morning. Smirking like he just reinvented comedy. I wanted to fire back—something about his hairline already surrendering—but I let it ride. Not because I’m mature. I’m just tired. And honestly? The way the squad erupted in laughter… it was worth the hit. They needed the laugh more than I needed the win.

I’ve never really understood the logic of soldiers. Still don’t. We sign up to follow orders we don’t write, from people we’ll never meet, for goals we’re not allowed to fully understand. And we’re supposed to be fine with that.

Back when I was their age, I like to think I was different. Noble. Thoughtful. Maybe even angelic. (Okay, maybe not angelic. More like… less of a jackass?) But that could just be the rose-colored fog of memory, or the result of years spent rewriting my own origin story like a drunk screenwriter.

There’s something ritualistic about the way the morning unfolds out here. The dawn eats the night. First sip of bitter coffee. First cigarette. The world still quiet enough to pretend it’s not completely unhinged. I watch them wake up—slow, clumsy, half-zombies with bedhead and bad attitudes. Too young to have rituals, too new to know those rituals might one day keep them sane.

I remember one morning, I hit them with Sweet Leaf by Black Sabbath. Volume up, sun barely over the ridge. Half of them looked like they’d been shot in their sleep. The other half just looked confused. I let it rip while running them through live-fire scenarios. Brains not even warmed up, bodies still clunky from the cold.

It wasn’t for fun. Okay—it was a little fun. But mostly it was about pressure. Teaching them to operate before they’re ready, because the world doesn’t care if you’re ready. Expect the unexpected, I told them. It’s a cliché until you’re bleeding because you didn’t.

Eventually, they’ll get it. Or they won’t. Some learn the rhythm. Others burn out trying.

Each day, we stand there like portraits—young faces with old eyes—propping up a cause that shapeshifts depending on who’s holding the microphone. Marching to the beat of some distant desk jockey who calls themselves a leader because they can attach a PDF to an email. And no one questions it.

That’s the part I can’t let go of. No one questions it.

“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”
— George Orwell, 1984

I’ve never fully understood that quote. I’ve got pages of half-drunk, sleep-deprived ramblings trying to unpack it. You’d think, with age, I’d get closer. Clarity, wisdom, all that crap they promise you comes with gray hair. But no. The notes get weirder. The handwriting worse. The questions louder.

Maybe that’s the point. Maybe wisdom isn’t about finding answers. Maybe it’s just about asking better questions—and knowing when to shut up and pass the coffee.

Sun’s up. Time to pretend we’ve got it all figured out again.

This post was written for Ragtag Daily Prompt, Fandango, and Stream of Conscious Saturday.

Top 5 Ways to Ask a Girl Out: Rule #4

2025/04/032025/06/29Posted in Fiction, Top 5 WaysTagged books, creative writing, family, Fiction, FOWC, Ragtag Daily Prompt, RDP, short-story, writing3 Comments

FICTION – SHORT STORY SERIES

Top 5 Ways to Ask a Girl Out: Rule #4
If she says “this isn’t a date,” it’s 100% a date. Don’t ruin it.

“So,” she said, tossing her greasy rag in the toolbox like a boss, “I owe you dinner.”

I tried to play it cool, even though my brain immediately burst into a confetti cannon. “You don’t owe me anything,” I said, knowing full well that yes, yes she absolutely did and dinner sounded like a dream.

“Okay, but I’m still getting you dinner. Not as a thank-you. Just… you know. Casual. Like friends.”

There it was. The dagger.

“Right. Totally. Friend dinner. My favorite kind of dinner,” I said, with the emotional grace of a man trying to pretend pizza doesn’t taste better when it comes with romantic tension.

She smiled like she could see straight through me. “Cool. There’s this taco truck I like. Cheap. Questionably licensed. But amazing.”

“Perfect,” I said. “Nothing says ‘healthy bonding’ like eating meat from a vehicle.”

An hour later, we were sitting on a curb, elbows bumping, holding greasy foil-wrapped masterpieces. She was already two tacos in. I was still trying to figure out how to bite mine without it completely disintegrating into my lap.

“You always eat this slow?” she asked, watching me with mild concern.

“I’m being strategic,” I said. “Every bite is a structural risk.”

She laughed. “You’re weird.”

I paused. “In a bad way?”

She tilted her head. “In a taco-anxious, coffee-faking, car-fixing kind of way.”

“So… like a charming disaster?”

“Exactly,” she said, raising her bottle of Jarritos. “To charming disasters.”

We clinked bottles. Mine fizzed over and spilled down my hand. Of course.

I wiped it on my jeans. “Classic me. Keeping the bar low, so I’m always exceeding expectations.”

She grinned. “You know this is kind of a date, right?”

My brain blue-screened.

“I mean,” she continued, casually licking hot sauce off her thumb, “you offered free labor, let me serve you questionable coffee, survived my car, and now you’re sitting on a curb eating tacos with me like it’s totally normal. You passed the test.”

“There was a test?”

“Oh yeah. The gnome was part of it.”

I blinked. “The gnome was a test?”

She nodded seriously. “He only approves of guys with good intentions and strong emotional stamina.”

“Well. That explains the pressure I’ve been feeling in my soul.”

She laughed again, and I swear it hit me harder than the tacos. It was like someone had tugged a thread that ran straight through me — tight, impossible to ignore.

I looked at her, trying to decide if this was the moment. The moment to claim some free will, throw caution to the wind, and say it.

But she beat me to it.

“So,” she said, “if we do this again, maybe we pick somewhere that doesn’t cause gastrointestinal roulette?”

“Are you asking me out?” I asked.

She raised an eyebrow. “Would that freak you out?”

“Only in the best way.”

“Well, then.” She stood and offered me her hand. “Let’s call it a soft launch.”

I took it, still sitting. “Wait. Was that a farewell to the taco truck?”

“Oh, definitely not,” she said, pulling me up. “We’re just giving it a rest before we end up in a hospital.”

We walked back toward the cars in a quiet little row of footsteps, hers just ahead of mine. And yeah, maybe it wasn’t official. Maybe it was just tacos and teasing.

But this time, I didn’t pretend. It was a date.

Bent but Breathing

2025/03/262025/03/26Posted in Challenges, FictionTagged #FFFC, creative writing, Fiction, FOWC, writing4 Comments

FICTION – FFFC #313

Bent but Breathing

I’m a vagabond. A minimalist, or so I tell myself on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and every other Wednesday. Which Wednesday is it? On those Wednesdays, Mrs. Johnson from the Second Avenue Church of God in Christ leaves out the Bible study leftovers. She waits until I stumble by and grab the tray. Never smiles. Never waves. Just watches. Lately, she’s started leaving grocery bags so I can carry more. Got Ms. Pearl from the bakery to set aside day-old bread. Otis the butcher leaves scraps. Every other week, I eat like a king.

I’ve been living this way long enough to learn a few things. When you’re practically invisible, you see everything. People will walk right over you if you let them. Some look at you with pity, like helping earns them heaven points. Others can’t stand the sight of you. They try to tear you down, not realizing they’re dragging themselves lower in the process.

Then there are the few who see you. Really see you. They look you dead in the eyes and don’t flinch. Like maybe they’ve been through it too. Like they know what it takes to survive — and maybe, just maybe, what it takes to make it out the other side.

A Jewish woman, not much older than me — if at all — asked me what happened. Not in that judging way that makes you want to either run off or tell someone to kiss your ass. She asked, like she really wanted to know. The ask that says, Pull up a chair. Let’s sit. Not Let me fix you. Not Here’s a sandwich, now tell me your trauma. Just: I don’t want nothing from you. You don’t gotta clean nothing, or do no freaky shit. Just tell your truth. If you want to. Take your time. Say what you can.

I sat down, eyeing her, trying to figure her game. “I’m Ruth,” she said, and stuck out her hand. Left it there. Didn’t flinch. Didn’t speak. Just waited. So I shook it. She leaned in, like she was listening already. No pressure. No rush. It was crazy.

They sat in silence, sizing each other up — not like enemies, more like two people checking if the other is real. No threat. No fear. Just… reading the room, and each other.

Everybody wants something. Nothing’s free. That’s just how it is. Whether you’re on the street or in a boardroom, there’s always a game being played — whether or not you know it. Society teaches us that. You gotta play your role, follow the rules, if you want your piece of the pie. Do the right thing and get rewarded. Slip up, get nothing. Simple math, they say: Good people go to heaven. Bad people go to hell.

We can’t help ourselves. We were bred in an incentive-based society. You know — that carrot and stick shit. We want to do good, be better people. Lord knows we’ve seen enough misery. But somewhere along the way, it all got twisted. Long before we take our first breath, it stays twisted, and it stays that way long after we take our last breath.

I asked Ruth if she had a square. She held up a finger and walked out of the room. A few moments later, she came back and motioned toward the door. We flipped a couple of five-gallon buckets upside down and copped a squat. She handed me a square and lit one for herself. We smoked in silence. I watched her. She had that stare — the one you get when facing your demons, and they don’t blink. The kind of stare that says you’ve got something on your mind, and no one else can carry it but you.

I exhaled, and something eased up — for the first time in a long time. I looked at her, still locked in that staring match with her demons. “You are just another sister in the struggle,” I said. “Trying to stay above the churn.” She exhaled deeply and looked at me. Her gaze had softened — not by much, but enough. This is usually when you make your play. But I knew this wasn’t that kind of game. Hell, for some reason, I knew it wasn’t a game at all. I struggled to understand what was happening. She leaned back against the wall, arms folded, square resting between her fingers, waiting. So I laid it out. She’d earned it — my respect.

Random Fiction – 03062025

2025/03/06Posted in FictionTagged creative writing, fantasy, Fiction, FOWC, horror, poetry, Ragtag Daily Prompt, RDP, SocS, writing2 Comments

FICTION – CHALLENGE RESPONSES

Welcome to the world of Disbelief and Distrust—

Worlds where conflict eclipses triumph, where chaos consumes order, and where the seeds of doubt and treachery grow into forests of despair. But these realms were not always so. In the earliest days, when existence was still young and malleable, Disbelief and Distrust were mere flickers in the minds of creation’s first inhabitants.

Some say these forces were the unintended consequences of free will—a byproduct of curiosity and skepticism, given form and power through the thoughts of mortals. Others believe they were forged by celestial beings, birthed as cosmic safeguards to ensure that no single truth could dominate reality unchallenged. Whether accident or design, they grew unchecked, feeding on the uncertainties of gods and men alike.

Disbelief first manifested as a whisper—a single voice among the masses who dared question the unquestionable, challenge the sacred, and pull at the strings of fate. Basically, the original troublemaker who looked at the divine rulebook and said, ‘Yeah, but what if we didn’t?’ With each doubter, its presence strengthened, evolving from a mere notion into a force capable of unmaking destiny itself.

Distrust, its counterpart, festered in the spaces between souls, spreading like a silent toxin. It began as a quiet unease between rulers and their subjects, between lovers, and between allies on the battlefield. In time, it became an entity all its own, feeding off betrayal and paranoia, unraveling the very fabric of unity.

Together, these forces did not simply exist—they consumed, reshaped, and twisted the world until belief became fragile and alliances mere illusions. And so, the war began, not with swords or spells, but with doubt and deception, forces far more insidious than any weapon forged by mortal hands. Disbelief, a venomous force that poisons the soul, breeds Havoc and Turmoil, twisting reality into something grotesque and unrecognizable—like a bad haircut you were too confident about until you saw your reflection. It has existed in many forms, but each version of it is darker than the last, evolving with the fears and doubts of mankind. It was not always so—Disbelief was once a mere whisper, a subtle question in the hearts of mortals. But as time passed and the hearts of men grew uncertain, Disbelief found its roots deep within their souls, growing stronger with every doubt, every fear, every betrayal.

The origins of Disbelief can be traced back to the early days of creation, when mortals were still bound to the will of the gods—because, apparently, even celestial beings like to micromanage. In those days, the gods bestowed their gifts upon mankind, guiding them with divine wisdom. But as civilizations flourished, so too did pride and skepticism. Some began to question the gods’ intentions, wondering if their fates were truly dictated by celestial hands or if they had been deceived. This questioning fractured the foundation of faith, and from the cracks, Disbelief was born.

A nameless entity at first, Disbelief took shape in the minds of those who no longer saw the gods as their benefactors but as distant and uncaring overlords. It whispered to kings and scholars, to soldiers and poets, planting the seeds of doubt that would one day bloom into chaos. The first great war between mortals and the divine was not fought with swords but with defiance, as if the gods themselves had crafted the world from brittle tin, waiting for it to collapse under the weight of human uncertainty. As temples were abandoned and prayers went unanswered, Disbelief swelled in power, taking on a consciousness of its own.

As the gods watched their influence wane, some chose to leave, retreating beyond the veil of mortal comprehension, while others attempted to reclaim their dominion through force. But it was too late. Disbelief had become more than an idea—it was a force, a presence that fed on uncertainty, growing stronger with every soul that wavered, spreading like a blight across the minds of those who once held faith. When the gods fled the Earth during the distorted Age of Iron, Disbelief was free to roam unchecked, a shadow in every mind, a voice in every heart.

Now, Disbelief is no longer just a thought—it is an entity, a being that drifts unseen, whispering into the ears of rulers, warriors, and scholars alike—kind of like an overenthusiastic life coach, except instead of motivation, it peddles existential dread. It’s the mental equivalent of a mouse loose in your house—small, sneaky, and impossible to get rid of, no matter how many traps you set. It is a realm unto itself, a vast expanse where reality bends and truth is an illusion. Those who enter it rarely return, for within its depths, all certainty dissolves.

When combined with Distrust, the effect is catastrophic. The tension becomes unbearable, the mind a battlefield where shadows whisper lies, and truth is a fleeting ghost. Together, these forces break the spirit of Ian more thoroughly than the might of the ancient gods—gods who once claimed dominion over the will of mankind but who fled Earth during the distorted Age of Iron. An age when the world was stained with sin, riddled with betrayal, and reeking of dishonor.

When these two realms collide, a force unlike any other emerges—an all-encompassing dominance that suffocates even the strongest of beings. No matter how resilient and how indomitable one believes themselves to be, they are bound to fall, shackled by the unseen chains of paranoia and despair. This force, if harnessed, can become a weapon—a blade forged in suffering, wielded by those who thrive in chaos. In the hands of a master of mayhem, the devastation is boundless. The earth itself weeps beneath the carnage, rivers turning crimson with the blood of the fallen. The bodies of men and women, once vibrant, now lifeless, litter the ground, silent witnesses to the horror. A wrath unchallenged, its echoes rippling through time, distorting the lives of its many victims, unweaving their very essence until nothing remains but fragmented ghosts of who they once were.

Altered logic usurps rational thought, warping perception until truth and illusion intertwine. The world becomes an ever-shifting labyrinth where deception reigns supreme. The veil of reality is lifted, revealing visions conjured by unseen forces, images that flicker and shift like a mirage on a sun-scorched wasteland. What wicked hand has beckoned forth such a power? What dark scheme has set this storm of deception into motion? Could it be the cunning of Lucifer himself, resurrecting an age-old dominion?

If there is to be salvation, it lies in opposition. The forces of belief and trust, the antithesis of destruction, must rise to meet this encroaching void. These forces stand as mirror images to the realms of disorder, the counterbalance in an eternal war. The battle between these realms rages on, an endless clash of light and dark. Legends tell of past wars where champions of both forces rose and fell. The Celestial Reckoning, a war that shook the heavens and earth alike, saw the rise of the Radiant King, a true crackajack of battle and wisdom, whose unwavering belief in truth and order nearly sealed the fate of chaos forever. But from the abyss emerged the Harbinger of Doubt, a being forged from the very essence of Disbelief, who shattered the golden citadel and plunged the realms into turmoil once more.

The Forgotten War, fought in the silence between ages, saw the rise of the Forsaken Legion—warriors who once served the gods but fell victim to Distrust, which, honestly, is what happens when divine beings start playing favorites and forget that mortals have an attention span shorter than a goldfish on caffeine. It’s the celestial equivalent of giving a starving cat a single bite of food and then wondering why it won’t leave you alone. Their betrayal unleashed a darkness so profound that even the gods themselves hesitated to intervene, leaving mortals to fend for themselves in a world consumed by uncertainty.

Each battle carves deeper wounds into existence, proving time and again that neither side will ever truly claim victory. The war is eternal, and those who dare enter its fray find themselves lost to history, their names spoken only in whispers, their fates written in the blood-soaked annals of time. Some claim that good will always triumphs and that righteousness will endure. But to underestimate the power of chaos is to invite ruin.

For within the darkness lies a weapon beyond mortal comprehension. It remains dormant, a thing of insignificance, until one dares master it. Only those with unwavering conviction, boundless skill, and a deep-seated belief in its power can unlock its full potential. This belief is paramount, for without it, the very fabric of existence unravels. Reality would fragment, leaving us stranded in isolated worlds of our own making—prisons of the mind, where despair festers and hope withers.

The journey does not end here, for all paths eventually lead to the inevitable—

The Land of the Dead.

Or as some like to call it, ‘the afterlife’s waiting room,’ complete with an unsettling lack of background music and a never-ending queue.

Or as some like to call it, ‘the afterlife’s waiting room,’ where even the dead can’t escape bureaucracy.

The air grows heavy, thick with the scent of decay and the whispers of forgotten souls. The light dims, not into darkness but into an eerie, shifting twilight where shadows move with minds of their own. Each step forward feels like sinking into an unseen abyss, the very ground beneath shifting and unstable, as though reality itself is reluctant to let go. A deep chill seeps into the marrow of your bones, and an unsettling pressure coils around your chest as if unseen hands are testing your resolve.

A wind, carrying the echoes of wailing voices, howls through the void, neither warm nor cold but filled with an otherworldly weight. The transition is not abrupt but agonizingly slow, stretching time until past and present blur. The veil between worlds is thin here, and every sensation—every breath, every heartbeat—feels distant, detached, as though you are already half a ghost. And then, with a final step, you arrive. The land before you is neither fully alive nor fully dead, a liminal space where the lost linger, awaiting judgment or oblivion.

The Land of the Dead.

But before we reach its chilling gates, we pass through a place suspended in uncertainty, a world known to some as the Realm of Indecision, to others as the Land of Neutrality. Here, all must wander at some point in their existence. For indecision is a plague of the soul, a force that binds even the strongest hearts in shackles of hesitation. It thrives on the turmoil of man, growing stronger with each faltering step.

Your only true ally in this place is the resilience of your mind. If one’s thoughts twist and turn, they will be twisted in return. For the body is but a shell, its sole purpose to house the immortal soul. When its task is complete, the soul departs, moving toward a final reckoning. Only in completion does it find peace, shielded from the reach of mortals. For each soul has a mission, a destiny known only to itself.

As we tread further, the Land of the Dead reveals itself in all its haunting splendor. The inhabitants of this forsaken world drift like wraiths, their faces twisted in expressions of bewilderment and dread. Each soul lingers, uncertain of where their journey will take them next. Have they fulfilled their purpose? Or are they doomed to walk the path leading to eternal suffering?

There is yet another fate—one feared above all others. Some try to defy the inevitable, to twist fate itself, but they cannot escape the weight of their own existence. The judgment of the soul is final. If Lucifer is outwitted, freedom is granted. But if one falters, if darkness prevails, then the fate is clear—the soul is cast into the fiery abyss of Chaotic Evil, which is essentially Hell’s VIP section, but with worse music and a strict no-refunds policy.

Hell.

And so, the cycle continues.

The world you once knew fades into obscurity, replaced by something else entirely—a new realm, where the inhabitants bear a different curse. This world is inhabited by those who have chosen their fate. They followed the Path of Suicide, forsaking life, fleeing pain in the only way they knew. But their suffering did not end—it merely changed form.

The story does not end here. It never truly ends.

For the war between belief and disbelief, trust and betrayal, light and chaos is eternal. But there is a prophecy whispered among the remnants of faith, etched in the forgotten tongues of those who saw beyond the veil of chaos. It speaks of a final reckoning, a moment when the balance will be tipped for the last time.

Legends tell of a wanderer, neither fully bound to the realm of trust nor entirely lost to the abyss of doubt. This wanderer, marked by both worlds, holds the key to the war’s conclusion. Some say they will be the one to weave belief and disbelief into something new, something beyond the cycle of destruction. Others fear they will be the catalyst that plunges existence into an inescapable darkness.

And as the battle rages on, the forces of both sides seek this figure, eager to shape the prophecy to their will—before the prophecy shapes them.

And you are now a part of it.

Ah, the best-laid plans of mice, men, and procrastinating creatives. There I was, determined to take a “break” from my earth-shattering projects—you know, the ones that will undoubtedly revolutionize the art world and literature as we know it. I dramatically set aside my drawing pencils (because apparently, I’m too good for a simple #2) and closed my idea notebook with a satisfying thud. Today was going to be different. Today, I would be a normal human being and mindlessly scroll through WordPress like everyone else.

But the universe, in its infinite wisdom, had other plans. Not even a full morning had passed before I glanced down to find my notebook splayed open like an attention-seeking drama queen. Lo and behold, it was littered with hastily scribbled notes that had apparently manifested themselves through sheer force of creative genius. Or, you know, my subconscious refusing to take a day off. Thanks, brain.

“Well,” I sighed dramatically to my empty room (because talking to yourself is the first sign of genius or insanity—I’m banking on the former), “let’s make something up.” And that’s when it happened. Guppy, my feline overlord, executed a move so graceful it would make Simone Biles weep with envy. In one fluid motion, she raised her paw skyward, a look of utter bewilderment gracing her furry visage as her eyes darted to her treat bowl. It was as if she was auditioning for the floor exercise in some bizarre alternate universe where cats compete in gymnastics.

Naturally, this led me to ponder: Do domestic pets have their own Olympics? Picture it: Labradoodles doing synchronized swimming, hamsters on the balance beam, and goldfish competing in the 100-meter butterfly (pun absolutely intended). The opening ceremony alone would be worth the price of admission—assuming you could get all the animals to march in an orderly fashion without starting an inter-species war.

As I contemplated this groundbreaking concept, Guppy maintained her pose, no doubt wondering why her human was lost in thought instead of filling her bowl with the gourmet delicacies she so richly deserves. And there I was, once again, with pen in hand, jotting down ideas for yet another project that would surely change the world—or at least provide a solid 15 minutes of entertainment on social media.

So much for taking a break; at this rate, I’ll need a vacation from my vacation. Oh, wait, I’m retired. Maybe next time I’ll try locking my notebook in a safe and throwing away the key. Though knowing my luck, I’d probably end up writing the next great American novel on Post-it notes stuck to my forehead.

Whew! Where did that rant come from?

Thanks to the following challenges:

Ragtag Daily Prompt

Fandango’s FOWC

Linda Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday

Random Fiction – 02212025

2025/02/212025/02/21Posted in Fiction, ProseTagged books, creative writing, Fiction, flash fiction, FOWC, love, RDP, short-story, writing8 Comments

FICTION

When you’re young, you wander through life with a carefree attitude, convinced that nothing tragic will ever befall you. It’s not that you think you’re made of steel; it’s just that misfortune always seems to strike elsewhere, affecting other people. You know these people—your classmates who sit a few rows ahead in math, friends who share secrets during recess, rivals who challenge you in sports, and those vaguely familiar faces passing in the school hallway whose names always escape you. “Who is that?” You recognize them; they might live across the street or next door, but their names never stick. You catch wind of their troubles in hushed conversations over cafeteria trays or notice the signs—a bruise blooming under an eye or a sudden empty desk where someone used to sit. But you? You’re shielded by an invisible armor. Untouchable. Until one day, that armor cracks, and the reality that you’re just as vulnerable as everyone else comes crashing down.

As a guy growing up, you were conditioned to believe the worst thing you could be called was a wimp or a pussy. Those words stung like a slap to the face. But the worst of all was “pansy.” It technically meant the same thing, yet it carried a unique venom, like an elite-tier insult that could ignite a brawl. They were fighting words, as the old-timers would say. I often imagined a secret list of such words that, when uttered, left you with no choice but to unleash the rage pent up inside the beast within us all, a primal code of manhood handed down through the ages by our Neanderthal ancestors. The rationale behind it was nonexistent—nonsensical, absurd, or downright foolish didn’t even begin to cover it. I even went so far as to ask friends and acquaintances, hoping to uncover this mythical list’s existence, but they just gave me strange looks as if I was the odd one out. “Weirdo.” There’s another term I’m certain once ranked high on that clandestine list.

If there was one thing certain to amplify male foolishness, it was the presence of a girl. You might assume it would be the confident ones with a smooth stride and an easy grin. But you’d be mistaken. It was simply the presence of any female. Something about her steady, evaluating gaze seemed to flick a switch in our lizard brains. Suddenly, we were all posturing like peacocks, vying for attention as if auditioning for the role of “Alpha Male #2” in a poorly scripted high school drama.

“Cut…cut, cut, cut…” the director’s voice echoed through the set, slicing through our bravado. He rose from his worn director’s chair with an exasperated sigh, his footsteps heavy as he approached. He muttered incoherently, his brows furrowing in frustration. Turning abruptly, he addressed a bewildered production assistant who appeared as if they had stumbled onto the wrong set altogether. “It’s missing… I don’t know,” he said, rubbing his temple as if the motion might conjure clarity from the chaos in his mind. The PA shrugged, their confusion mirroring his own.

“More, you know? More,” he declared, fixing his gaze on you with an intensity that suggested the simple word held the universe’s mysteries. It might, who knows? Because at that moment, you felt the weight of impending humiliation hanging over you like a storm cloud, threatening to unleash if you failed to decipher this cryptic instruction. So you reset, ready to reenact the scene with exaggerated bravado and clumsy confidence. A muscular guy, his shirt straining against bulging biceps, lunged forward to take a swing at a smaller guy. The smaller one stood his ground, fists clenched and eyes steely—not because he had faith in his victory, but because maintaining dignity in defeat was preferable to being labeled a pansy. Who needs self-preservation when fragile masculinity whispers its deceitful promises of status and respect in your ear?

The worst beating I ever took wasn’t even for something I did. And that, frankly, was offensive. I was the kind of kid who had done plenty to earn a few ass-kickings, but this one? This was charity work.

Susan Randle—radiant in a way that made heads turn in every hallway—sat beside me in the darkened movie theater. During what she half-jokingly called our “date” (really just two people sharing a row while an action film played), she eyed me with a mischievous smirk and accused me of being gay simply because I hesitated when she leaned over, voice low and daring, to ask if I wanted to “do it.” The dim light flickering over her face caught the earnest sparkle in her eyes before she suddenly closed the distance and pressed her lips against mine. In that charged moment, the unwritten, yet unanimously understood rule against “unsanctioned sugar”—the secret code dictating who could kiss whom—reared its head. No one ever seemed to grant an exception, whether you were a girl or a guy. And here I was, trapped between the dreaded labels: on one end lay the desperate horndog willing to prove his manhood at every twist, and on the other, the discredited possibility of being gay. I wasn’t interested in becoming just another name on her ever-growing list or dealing with the fallout of shattering her carefully constructed illusion of desirability. When a boy disrupted that illusion, the consequences were swift and ruthless.

That catalog wasn’t a myth—it was as real as the whispered rankings that circulated among us. It wasn’t enough to simply admire the “right” girl; if you dared to look away or, heaven forbid, question the unspoken challenges, your name was scrawled in the ledger of sins. Failed to laugh at the jokes delivered with just the right touch of irony, dress in conforming denim and sneakers, or walk with that practiced swagger? Sure enough, it was marked on the list.

My reluctance to follow these unwritten rules quickly made me a target. Over the following weeks, a series of meticulously scheduled beatings forced me to confront the cruel reality of teenage hierarchies. After school, I would find myself cornered in the deserted back lot behind the gym, where a group of boys awaited with grim determination. They’d shout derogatory names—“fairy boy” and a particular favorite, “pirate,” a crude truncation of “butt pirate”—words spat out with the casual cruelty of a rehearsed routine. Each blow landed with precision, and amid the sting and shock, I discovered a perverse sort of order; they made sure I wasn’t crippled for good. I clutched my prized 96 mph fastball as if it were a lifeline and leaned into my natural left-handed stance, determined to keep my place on the team even if I was labeled a “fairy boy” behind closed doors.

By the time the school year drew to a close, the beatings ceased as if a final judgment had been passed in some bizarre, secret rite of passage. One by one, the bullies patted me on the back with a mixture of grudging admiration and hollow platitudes, congratulating me on having “taken it like a man.” It was as if surviving their collective assault were the final exam in a twisted curriculum of manhood. They’d shrug and say, “It wasn’t personal. It was just something that needed doing.” To them, such senseless violence was nothing short of an honorable tradition—a sacred duty executed without a shred of genuine empathy.

That summer, I found brief refuge away from the tyranny of high school corridors with my father in Northern California. He was a truck driver, his bronzed, weathered hands as familiar with the hum of diesel engines as he was with the hard lines of a life lived outdoors, where emotions were as heavy as the cargo he hauled. My parents’ origins were a collage of chance encounters: they’d originally met at a sultry George Benson concert in the Midwest, where the guitar licks sultry under a neon haze had paved the way for something unexpected. Within nine months of that chance meeting, I came into the picture—a living reminder of their brief yet potent infatuation. They had the wisdom to avoid the charade of forced domesticity; soon after, my mom returned east while my dad continued chasing horizons out west. Mysterious fragments of half-truths and secrets that always belong to a larger narrative are as American as elitism and Chevrolets and need no full explanation.

I used the prompts listed below in this bit of flash fiction

RDP – beast

Fandango – FWOC – Date

Random Fiction – 02112025

2025/02/11Posted in FictionTagged Art, books, creative writing, FOWC, Ragtag Daily Prompt, random fiction, RDP, writing3 Comments

FICTION – START OF SOMETHING

“You can never trust the things you hear. Blowhards running around spreading rumors like it’s the national pastime – right up there with baseball and avoiding jury duty,” grunted Detective Maclan as he wrestled with an ancient copper kettle that had seen better days, probably during the Roosevelt administration. The first one.

Mac had the droopy eyes of a basset hound that had just been told Christmas was canceled, minus any of the charm that might make you want to pat his head and give him a biscuit. His face was a topographical map of poor life choices, sour mash, and too many late nights chasing leads that went nowhere.

He was from one of those big cities that think they’re God’s gift to civilization – Detroit, New York, Chicago, take your pick, I could never remember which one. You know the type: concrete jungles where dreams are made of, according to the tourism boards, and people who’ve never had to parallel park there in winter. The kind of places that plaster themselves across postcards nobody sends anymore, where the locals wear their area code like a badge of honor and treat their pizza preferences like a religion.

I’d been wondering, if these metropolitan wonderlands were such paradise on Earth, why Mac had spent the last two decades in our little corner of nowhere, where the most exciting thing to happen was that time someone stole the mayor’s garden gnome. Turned out it was the mayor’s wife, but that’s another story.

At least Mac had decent taste in music – Glenn Miller and Count Basie crooned from a dusty record player in the corner. The big band tunes almost made up for his personality, which had all the warmth of a February morning in Minnesota. Almost.

Prompts Used:

Fandango’s FOWC – Kettle

Ragtag Daily Prompt – Rumor

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Chapter 3

Author’s Note

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Episode 2: Coffee, Cigarettes, and Catastrophes

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Chapter 3

Finch

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Chapter 2

The One Who Stayed

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Chapter 1

The Corner Knows

Author’s Note:

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FLASH FICTION – FOWC & RDP

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PROSE – FOWC & RDP

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FLASH FICTION – FOWC & RDP

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ART – AI GENERATED IMAGE – CONCEPT ART – FOWC/RDP/3TC

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FICTION SERIES – FOWC & RDP

Chapter 3:

1776 Problems

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FLASH FICTION SERIES – FOWC/RDP/SoCS/FSS #203

Episode 1:

The Mayor, the Kimono, and Capote’s Forbidden Love

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POETRY – MOONWASHED WEEKLY PROMPT – FOWC & RDP

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FLASH FICTION – FOWC/RDP/FSS #204

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FLASH FICTION – FOWC & RDP

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PROSE – FOWC & RDP

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FLASH FICTION – FOWC & RDP

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PROSE – FOWC & RDP

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FLASH FICTION – FOWC & RDP

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PROSE – FOWC & RDP

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ONE LINER WEDNESDAY & FOWC

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PROSE – FOWC & RDP

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PROSE – FOWC & RDP

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PROSE – FOWC, RDP, 3TC #MM57, SOCS

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FICTION – FOWC & RDP

The Morning After

Harper, the Roommate of Judgement

The Pub (Where It All Went Wrong)

The Club (A.K.A. The Meat Palace)

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FICTION – FOWC, RDP, 3TC

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FICTION – FOWC & RDP

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PROSE – FOWC & RDP

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POETRY – FOWC & RDP

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