All posts tagged: writing prompt

September Speculative Fiction Prompt

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Earlier this year a new speculative fiction prompt was kicked of by D Wallace Peach on her sight Myths Of The Mirror. Unfortunately she had to set this fantastic prompt aside due to personal matters after only a few months, despite the fantastic success and take up that it was met with. After asking for her blessing, I decided that I would pick up where she left off and host the prompt here on Writing and Works. It will follow much the same format, publishing on the 1st of each month, using imagery from Pixabay, and focusing on the speculative fiction genre. Speculative Fiction: a genre of fiction that encompasses works in which the setting is other than the real world, involving supernatural, futuristic, or other imagined elements Oxford Dictionary Our September image is the one directly below. For any visually impaired writers, it is a black and white image showing a young woman with a septum piercing, wearing a scarf or hood which casts her face into shadow. Post your response to your site …

Standing The Test #WeekendWritingPrompt

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Cup the whole of me in one hand. Hold my belly up to a light, judge my origins, if I might be the real deal.   Examine my spine carefully through this sheen of skin while I burn like paper, edges curling in as I smoke.   Test the me between teeth, bite down, heads up, crack your enamel on my silver forked tail.   Spit me free with blood and tooth and every question asked to test the mettle in me.   Wonder why I leave with a word like love so sour in my mouth I choke.

An Ever-Changing Beast

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‘We should really address the elephant in the room.’ Those were the words you tossed out over coffee, like spare change or old candy wrappers, bits of pieces you were bored with carrying around and deposited on my living room table between the books and the plant pots. There didn’t seem to be much point explaining, your elephant wasn’t in this room, or hadn’t been until you kicked up dust clouds into a grey silhouettes. I kept my silence on the matter, much like you had kept yours until now, too cautious about the fall out, about how you might have to hold me together when all the pieces broke apart and ran for the corners in the skirting, white mice abandoning ship at the first sign of storms. I let you think you were the only one holding out a hand, while you explained why I was sad and how it could all be fixed if I tired hard enough and put in the work. You can learn how to listen to the some …

Fallen From The Beaten Track #FlashFiction

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No matter how he wrapped the blankets around himself, the wind found a way through the fabric. When he’d been here before it was summer. Bright and green, the pass lined cherry blossom and blackberry brambles. The other men on the pilgrimage had ignored the fruit, chosen instead to set up camp on a rocky outcrop and dine on the tough heels of bread they’d brought with them. James had spent an afternoon with purple juice staining his hands and mouth. When he was done, he’d cleaned himself in the stream than ran close by, marvelling at how cool and crisp the water felt across his tongue. Now the stream was little more than a strip of ice, the brambles only thorns. Perhaps, James thought, he was seeing the truth of it at last. The beauty of before was only a trick designed to lure him in, distract him from the death that was waiting for him, now he could see it all he could see what this place truly meant. The wind screamed through …

Back To Ground Level

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They put the footings in to retain the planning permissions. Susan booked the day off to watch. Invited him as well, suggested they take sandwiches and tea, to watch the first part of their house take shape. Afterall, they’d spent eight years fighting the council for the go-ahead. They might not have the funds to build the entire thing yet, but they could celebrate starting. Then there were doctors, hospitals, a man in a grey suit with a sombre face. Susan’s brother giving a reading. All that was left were foundations.

The Curse Of The Ex-Wife

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‘You know something, I think life was better on the other side,’ said the mummy currently unwinding the bandaged around her torso. ‘So there is one?’ Dr Williams asked, cheeks colouring as the creature plucked a bullet from between flesh her ribs. She examined it for a moment and then tossed it aside into the sand beside the yellow placard marking one of the entrances to the burial tomb. ‘I’m dead, a revolver is not going to make me any deader,’ she sighed. ‘No, of course not, I do apologise,’ said Dr Williams. ‘You just, well you know, caught me a little off guard.’ ‘You were preforming an ancient revival ritual in the middle of the desert over a corpse. What did you think was likely happen?’ ‘Well honestly, I thought nothing would happen,’ Dr Williams admitted. ‘Then why bother?’ ‘It seemed harmless enough,’ he shrugged. ‘The rest of the team have taken the day off and I was the only one about so I thought why not give it a crack. The least the …

The Clave’s Envoys

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When the sun rose the world was empty and quiet. Some mornings there seemed to be no one left on the planet Emil decided. Watching from the bell tower of the ruined village’s church, he slipped his phone from his pocket and checked the messages for the third time in the last fifteen minutes. The text he’d fired off to the Clave showed as delivered but unread. He tapped the lock button and tucked it away. ‘Come on, time to leave.’ He turned from to the corner behind him, not missing the way Leif flinched at the sunlight pouring in now Emil’s body wasn’t shielding the window. ‘Grab the shield. The Clave want that thing stashed away and out of sight before dusk.’ ‘You think someone else will come after it?’ Leif asked. He was younger than Emil, and not just in the sense that Emil had nine hundred years on him. Leif was barely twenty, still steeped in hormones and raw nerves. Emil had been closer to thirty-five when he was turned, battle hardened …