Real-World Monsters
Today’s post is based on a writing prompt I shared in a previous Daily Drafts & Dialogues post. Keep reading to see what I wrote, and to access more writing prompts.
What I wrote below is based on the following writing prompt: Write a scene that has a monster in it.
Real-World Monsters
Oscar kneels on a tiny grass patch across the street from the cinderblock building, eyes closed, head bowed. His neighbor of ten years, seventy-two-year-old Ana, is kneeling beside him, holding his right hand. Rakim, his friend of fifteen minutes, also kneeling, is holding his left.
Together, all three petition their versions of god for freedom and peace as a small crowd assembles around them beginning to chant for their own desires and demands.
Unwieldy winds compel the flag to clang against the hollow pole that it’s attached to above their heads, a stark and solemn reminder of all the unrealized promises and dreams they’ve made and haven’t yet told.
Oscar absorbs the hum of the crowd with the warmth of the sun, recycling their energy with his own, endeavoring to keep emitting light and hope. Hope that one day their beloveds, both strangers and known, will be released from every arbitrary imprisonment of their bodies and minds.
Abruptly, their prayers are interrupted by stomping boots, rubber bullets, smoke grenades, all mixed with unintelligible hate. Chaos ensues.
Oscar instinctively prostrates his torso over the ground, over his bent knees, the universal body language of spirituality, surrender, for beseeching mercy. But today, there will be none of that for anyone.
A wild hand grabs Oscar’s hair by the roots and tugs his head back, forcing him to face the eyes of a chubby masked man whose breath smells like rotten cheese. Oscar can only make out the man’s coal-black beady eyes as they twinkle for a beat, before they mutate to a fiery red.
The masked man punches Oscar in the gut once he has him up on his feet. Oscar keels over, desperately trying to breathe.
“No god of mine will be listening to your pleas today, vermin.” The masked assaulter sneers, then knees Oscar in the groin seconds before he’s able to catch his breath again.
The potbellied masked man with inflamed eyes, smelly breath, and fading wrinkled fatigues, knocks Oscar down forcefully, and his right cheek makes a cracking sound when it meets the cement median encasing the grass he had been kneeling on seconds prior.
Next, the masked man zip-ties Oscar’s wrists and pushes him into the back of an unmarked white van. Other bodies follow Oscar’s, and they tumble over one another as they fall sideways onto the rubber flooring.
“Welcome to your worst nightmare,” says a thinner masked man with similar fiery eyes as he cackles and moves to close the rear van door.
Oscar is able to make out Ana’s prone body on the cement a few feet away. Blood is already pooling around her head as the last sliver of sunlight outside fades into blackness.
[Write what happens next, then share what you come up with in the comments or start a chat thread.]
I might revise, edit, or add to this draft in the future. Stay tuned.
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© All Rights Reserved by K.E. Creighton; Creighton’s Compositions LLC. The above work is a piece of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the literary perceptions and insights are based on experience, all names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
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Today’s Writing Prompt
Writing Prompt: Dear Stranger
Write a letter to the last person you remember seeing in a public space who is still a stranger to you. Or write a fictional letter to a stranger from your imagination, or someone who made an impression on you at some point in the past.
Be sure to share what you write for any of the daily writing prompts in a subscriber chat thread so we can read and discuss what you wrote.
