Tag: 2025 writing challenge

Week 8 Post 4: Greyspace

On By MaryIn 2025, WritingLeave a comment

          Mallory stared at the sprawling city below. Her brain tried desperately to place it, to recognize it in some way, wondering if she’d seen pictures of it before. She turned away from the sight, a little intimidated by the height. She stepped over to the door, opening it hesitantly and peeking out into a brightly lit hallway. “Hello?” she called out, even though there was no one she could see nearby. She stood awkwardly in the doorway for a span of several seconds, wondering if she needed to wait for someone to come check on her. As she rubbed her arms, she realized she had no hospital band – she had no clue where she really was. Waiting suddenly seemed unbearable. Her options were screaming until someone came to check on her or going for a walk.

          On a whim, she chose left, and began walking down the hallway. The flooring was smooth, and looked like granite – lightly marbled. It was cool against the pads of her feet. The hallway curved gently out of sight. There was the occasional door to her left, but she felt like it would be too intrusive to open them. If they were rooms like the one she had woken in, she didn’t think they were going to be much help. Eventually the hallway began to open up more on her right with wide floor to ceiling windows. It looked like there was a central garden or courtyard of some sort, with dense and flowering vegetation, though the flowers weren’t any that Mallory recognized. The wall eventually opened completely – Mallory could smell the heady scent of the flowers, almost like vanilla and roses. The air was warm and humid. Columns lined the granite floor of the hallway, but beyond those columns was moss and dirt.

          She realized that somewhere deep within the garden she could hear people chatting. There was the faint sound of laughter. Although she had been looking for people, she found herself stopping short and hesitating again. Would they know who she was, why she was there? She felt like she was intruding again. A part of her wanted to retreat back to the room and wait patiently, but instead she forced herself to step out into the garden. The moss was damp beneath her feet, but not unpleasant.

          Moving towards the sounds she heard, she found herself coming to a clearing just past the dense vegetation. She stopped to study the people there. She didn’t recognize them all, but her eyes were instantly drawn to Eliza, who sat on the outer edge of the group, looking lost in thought. Isaac sat next to her, his arm draped familiarly across her shoulder. He appeared to be doing his best to pay polite attention to the others in the group, but it was apparent that he was concerned with whatever was bothering Eliza.

          A hand shifted to vegetation shielding her, and she found herself face to face with a smirking Samanda. “Well, what have we got here?” she said, her voice loud.

          Eliza looked up. Upon seeing Mallory, her expression instantly brightened, and she hopped to her feet. “Mallory!” she cried out, throwing her arms around the taller girl. “They said you’d be okay! I kept trying to visit but they said you needed rest…”

          Eliza hadn’t used much force in the hug, but Mallory felt herself stumble and sway uneasily. A hand reached out to steady her.

Week 8 Post 2 – Shortcuts

On By MaryIn 2025, Prompts, WritingLeave a comment

Storymatic prompt cards were zombie and person who takes shortcuts, as well as an email that cannot be un-sent and success at last. It’s silly.

          Who breaks up with someone over an email? Dave, that’s who! It was the easiest, most expedient way to handle the situation. And he’d had a good reason. The cute new chick in the finance department seemed like she was hot to trot and he didn’t want to be a cheater. And it’s not cheating if you break up, right? So off the email went and off Dave went, straight to talking a pretty Penny into a closet for some hot, illicit office sex. Only she wasn’t at her desk, and she wasn’t in the break room, and by the time he found her she was already moaning up a storm in the closet with George (really? chucklefuck George?).

          And fuck, where did that leave Dave? He’d just flushed a three year relationship for this whore. He couldn’t unsend that email. Tina would see it and would probably throw his succulent at his head because Tina was crazy. He wondered if she’d even read it yet, if maybe he had time to try to hack her email account and delete it before she could see. He was beelining back to his own desk to try some damage control, checking his phone obsessively. He dreaded every buzz, wondering if it was going to be a text or a phone call, because when Tina read that email she was going to be blowing up his phone, absolutely chewing him out. It took him a moment to pay attention to all the headlines that kept making his phone buzz – it was the news app going bonkers, not his maybe-maybe-not-girlfriend.

          The zombie apocalypse had begun.

          The thing about the zombie apocalypse is that dipshits like Dave always think they’re going to be the ones to survive but they’re the first to get it. After all, Dave was always trying to find the easiest way out and sometimes there are no easy outs. So it wasn’t long at all before Dave was a zombie. The other thing is that being a zombie is a mite more horrific in reality – it turns out you can think. You’re not alive, you’re not able to return to life, you have to be inside your body as it rots and creaks and falls apart. You can’t control a damn thing you do. You’re stuck in that shambling corpse, wandering aimlessly until there’s food, and then you’re ripping it apart. And it’s not good food – it’s raw flesh. And zombies aren’t picky.

          So there you are, a ghost in a mindless eating machine, observing first hand the horrors you inflict on the world.

          And all that random aimless shambling between the murder mayhem? It was boring as fuck. Dave’s mind wandered, and he wondered if it was the same for all the other poor schmucks that were stuck. Or was it just him? Was he somehow the only one that was stuck, left behind in this strange hell?

          He spent so much time barely noting the world around him that he didn’t even realize he was in a familiar space until he was shambling through its doors. There had been no electricity anywhere in the city for months, so the bright lights attracted a lot of attention. Somehow one building had managed to become powered – maybe they had used some alternative source. He wasn’t sure. He could hardly direct his body towards investigating anything. Hordes of zombies before him had shattered the doors and windows and begun moving upstairs and into the rooms, looking for prey. He wasn’t sure if he had somehow managed to eke out some control of the corpse-that-was-formerly-he, or if perhaps the body held some memory of previous times. But somehow he found himself wandering into his old apartment. A computer screen flickered in front of him. He moved closer to it, barely able to make out the screen through his blurry vision, his almost useless dry eyes.

          It was open to an email inbox screen. How had they even managed to get the internet? Was the internet still a thing, somewhere out in the wider world? But there it was. Email. Not just anyone’s email either – Tina’s email. And – marked unread – his email to Tina.

          The rotting corpse hand shifted forward and awkwardly stiff hit something. The email deleted. He didn’t even know how it had managed that with one keystroke, but he felt a strange thrill of elation – success at last!

And that was when his head was bashed in by a potted succulent.

Tina sobbed as she recognized the zombie that had once been Dave, and smashed his head in again and again until there was no thinking matter left. Not that she was aware it was there.

Week 8 Post 1: Soulmate

On By MaryIn 2025, WritingLeave a comment

          Almost everyone eventually found their Calling.

          Agatha Stone still considered herself young at nearly 30, but many thought it strange that she hadn’t had hers yet. It wasn’t impossible to have it until one was quite advanced in age – the oldest known instance had been with a couple well into their 50s. It was also possible to never have one. Some people committed suicide when they realized they were destined to be alone. Or in some cases, when the Calling told them that their partner had died before they could actually meet face to face – those were tragic tales. But it wasn’t something that bothered Agatha. She had never been interested in romance, so to her it seemed perfectly natural. Why would nature grant her visions of a soulmate when she wasn’t really romantically inclined? She had told her best friend as much once. “Oh, Ags. You only think you’re not interested because it hasn’t happened to you yet,” Tammy used to say, laughing and dismissively waving a hand at Agatha’s reasoning. But as many of their friends paired off or began to have the visions and dreams, Tammy’s dismissals became less frequent. Now, years after Tammy had met Alex and had her first child, she seemed to take Agatha’s explanation seriously. When friends asked, and Agatha explained, Tammy would nod, her expression serious. Some few rare individuals never paired off.

          Agatha was comfortable with never finding her Calling.

          And then she began having the nightmares.

          In the first dream, there is a body laid out before her. The skin is peeled back from the neck down. This person has been flayed. The thought is terrifying. She feels her heart flutter at the back of her throat as she leans in close. The eyes in that blood-soaked face are glazed over, and she thinks whoever it is has to be dead, until the mouth hinges open, shuts, opens, shuts – there is only the faintest croak from a throat that has obviously screamed itself hoarse. Agatha jolts at the sudden movement, and wakes. At first she thinks she is hearing the scream from the body on the table before she realizes it’s her – she’s the one screaming.

          She doesn’t know what inspired such a dream, and she feels uncomfortable sharing it with anyone.

          A few weeks later, there is another dream. She recognizes the same table, the same body – this time, truly dead. It must be. The chest is cracked open and all the organs have been carefully removed. The mouth is open and head tilted back in a silent scream to the ceiling, the eyes wide and staring, pale and dry and truly lifeless. A part of her wants to bend over and be violently ill all over the floor but the other part of her is strangely fascinated, staring at the exposed musculature that is starting to dry. She feels something strangely like ecstasy, sees her hands move up the sides of the body and back down, gently tracing the line of a muscle and then running down the skin left at the hips. Although they aren’t really her hands – they’re larger, as though they belong to a man. The hands dip lower, and as she realizes what she is about to witness she wakes suddenly, sitting straight up in bed. She rolls over onto her side and pukes all over the floor.

          The first dream could have been dismissed as some strange figment of her brain, some nightmare inspired by a horror movie. But the second dream made her begin to question. Could she be seeing something that really happened? Was really happening? Was she having her Calling? No, it can’t be, she told herself.

Week 7 Post 4: The End

On By MaryIn 2025, Prompts, WritingLeave a comment

Storymatic cards were person in love and movie director for one of the characters, and end of the relationship and hiding spot is discovered for things that must appear in story.

I like the idea of this one but it’s botched and poorly written. You’re welcome?

It was a well-known fact that Vince Waggoner was in love with Robin Rose. When they met, she immediately became his primary muse. He cast her in five films in a row as the leading lady, claiming that the roles were written with her in mind. They were married quickly. People often spoke of how he worshipped the ground she walked on, gave her everything she could ever want.

They also whispered of her many infidelities.

It was a tabloid feeding frenzy when their marriage inevitably fell apart. He took a short break from directing, and a handful of years passed where people thought his career was over. Far from it – he emerged, revealing he had been painstakingly writing a story for a series of films. Films that he wanted to film back-to-back. He threw himself into his work with reckless abandon. There were a whopping seven films in total, set in the same universe with cameos from each of the other films, but completely unrelated except for their thematic ties.

It became immediately obvious that Robin Rose was still his muse. Each leading actress that he chose bore striking similarities to her. Similar face shapes, the same pale skin tone and wide doe eyes. A few were familiar household names, but many of them were new. It was no secret that he was going for a particular look. The movies were set to be released yearly.

The disappearances started after the third release.

Miss Lane was a tragedy. She had been a fresh face in Waggoner’s first film without Robin Rose, and with the success of that, her star had risen. She was in talks to join a major film franchise when she had disappeared. No one could locate her. She hadn’t mentioned leaving to anyone, did not reach out to any of her family or friends. Her car was found abandoned in a parking garage, her phone still inside. She had made no monetary withdrawals and hadn’t used any of her cards since her disappearance.

It was strange and sad and many people speculated what could have happened.

But it wasn’t until Candy Zacharias disappeared next that people suspected Waggoner. Candy was the lead of the second film, and she disappeared the year after Miss Lane. Still, there wasn’t enough reason to suspect a thing – until the following year, when Francine Queen disappeared.

The cops focused their investigation on Waggoner, but found nothing. He was so harangued by the media and the cops that he finally left the country. After all, he had finished the films, with only the last few remaining in post-production. It was recommended that the remaining actresses beef up their security teams. Still, Michelle Ray managed to escape her bodyguards briefly (supposedly in a discreet attempt to buy some illicit substance) and was never seen again. When warrants were issued allowing the cops to search all of Waggoner’s properties, nothing was found. He proclaimed his innocence in every interview, and eventually tired of the questions so much that he became a recluse.

Time passed. The remaining women didn’t disappear yearly as predicted, but as their security grew lax, they did eventually all disappear. Each time, investigations were made into Waggoner, and each time – nothing.

Eventually, he died of an overdose. It became a strange unsolved Hollywood legend.

Robin Rose died relatively young. A suicide. No one was sure why.

While her estate was being cleared, all seven desiccated corpses were found in her basement.