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Category Archives: Writing Prompt

“In the Closet”

16 Wednesday Dec 2020

Posted by crashdlanding in Fiction, Unfinished Business, Writing Prompt

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crash landing, crashdlanding, fiction, writing

I couldn’t sleep, so I decided to take a trip down memory lane. I found a few things I forgot I’d written. Pretty sure I’ve never posted this. Im not sure if it’s finished but I think I like it the way it is.

Writing Prompt Wednesday (1)

“In The Closet”

As children, some of us are very curious. Some of us, when told not to do something, we say “Okay” and walk away disappointed. Some of us say, “Okay,” but then wonder, “Why?”

When Jane was a child, she was often told to stay out of her mom’s bedroom. She listened, most of the time. But when she got older, her imagination always got the best of her, and she’d sneak her way into her mother’s room, just to peak in drawers or look under the bed. She always got caught though.

Her mother would scold her, “What did I tell you?!” Then she’d point demandingly toward the doorway, and watch as her marched her butt out of the room.

Jane often imagined her mother was hiding piles of stolen money, stolen in a daring bank robbery committed before she had children. Or perhaps the family’s Crown Jewels were hidden somewhere in the closet, and they must be kept secret, lest evil henchmen of the dictator who ran the rightful rulers out of the exotic land discover their whereabouts and kidnap and murder them. Jane was a very imaginative child.

But she soon grew older. School and friends and life became more important than discovering her mother’s “secrets”, and the fun little game she played with her mother—against her mother’s will—was forgotten.

One day, when Jane was not quite an adult but no longer a child, her mom got sick. The  toughest woman she’d ever known got sick, and never really got better. Jane watched in distress and fear as her mother slowly deteriorated, the vibrant light she once carried ebbing away.

The day her mother died, Jane had spent the day by her side. They’d been told there wasn’t much time left, and Jane wanted to spend the last moments they had together not worrying about trivial things. She just wanted to be there for her mother, to let her know she wasn’t alone.

While her mother was in and out of lucidity—she spent more time in that heartbreaking haze of “here but not”—Jane still wanted her mom to know she was there. She’d talk about her day, her friends, sing a song, read aloud. She did not expect her mom to respond, she just knew that if the tables were turned, her mother wouldn’t leave her side.

They’d spent the day this way, keeping each other company, though it was a one sided task. During a quite moment, Jane had just finished a passage from her book, when she glanced up at her mother who hadn’t moved much on her own in days. Jane was shocked to see her mother reaching out to her.

She stood up quickly, grasped her mother’s hand, and leaned in close. “I’m here, mom. I’m here.” For the first time in a very long time, she turned to Jane, looked her in the eyes, and smiled. Tears very suddenly burst from Jane’s eyes. With great heaving sobs, all the stress and pain and loss burst forth and she couldn’t hold back anymore.

But though Jane sobbed, her mother smiled. She reached up to her daughter’s face, and rested a cool hand on her cheek. Jane pressed her hand against her mother’s wanting to remember that feeling. She began to calm as her mother smiled up at her, and soon both were smiling.

When Jane had calmed, she began telling her mother how much she loved her, and her mother just nodded in response as if saying, “I know, Jane.”

Very soon, though, the light began to fade, and her mother felt it too. She lifted her hand once more, this time in a familiar way. She raised her hand and pointed her finger, and Jane flashed back to her childhood of sneaking into that very room to “investigate”. Now, instead of pointing to the bedroom door, she pointed to the closet. “Not now mom,” Jane whispered, taking hold of the hand that pointed and squeezed gently. Then her mother seemed to muster her last bit of strength and whispered, “In the closet…”

A few days later, her mother was laid to rest precisely where she’d have wanted, next to her husband, and the flowers had already begun to wilt in the summer heat. Jane was resting at home, her mother’s home. Though she tried not to think of that day, her thoughts kept wandering back to her mother’s very last living moments on the earth. The brightest smile, the touch of her hand on her cheek. And that barely audible whisper, “In the closet.”

She stood up, and despite being a grown woman whose mother had recently passed, she still felt like a naughty sneaky little girl, whose mother was about to catch her tiptoeing into her bedroom. But now, instead of pulling on drawers and looking under the bed, she made a bee line for the closet door. She half expected it to be locked, but the knob turned and opened with no resistance.

For a moment she stood there, just looking at her mother’s clothes. There were items in there she’d had for years, here the dress she’d worn to her daughter’s graduation, there the slacks she’d worn when they visited college campuses. In the floor were shoes she’d not seen her mother wear in years. “I might still need them one day,” she could hear her mother say.

She looked up at the shelf above the hanging clothes. Folded neatly there were old bedspreads and quilts, tucked away until cooler nights made them necessary. But in the corner, pushed against the wall, and tucked under a stack of sheets was an old fashioned hat box Jane had never seen before.

Careful not to pull the sheets down on top of her, she slid the box out slowly, surprised at the weight of it. She carried it over to the bed and plopped it onto the foot. For a moment she just stood there, wondering what was in it, and allowing her childhood imagination to wonder.

Finally she took a deep breath and opened the lid.

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Myth Writing Prompt

19 Tuesday Jan 2016

Posted by crashdlanding in Fiction, Myths, Writing Prompt

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Tags

changing colors, crash landing, leaves, Writing Prompt

On my Facebook page I posted this image  

 
And asked my followers to pick one for me to write!  My goal is to write  all of them.

Here is the first one: 

#2 Write a myth to explain why leaves change color 

Moths, of which there were three, fluttered in from somewhere on the wind and light. Green, red, and yellow were they. Dancing between trees and leaves they began to argue. 

“Why should the leaves be green?” Yellow asked. 

“Don’t you like green,” green moth asked. 

“Why, of course, but I like yellow, too.” Yellow said. 

“And I like red, as well!” Said Red moth. 

Red fluttered to the tippy top of a tree and sat on its topmost leaf. “Red is such a lovely shade.”

The leaf, and soon every leaf on the tree, began to turn. 

Red fluttered off to watch the change, but yellow decided to interrupt. She sat on the very same leaf, and they all three watched as green turned red and red turned yellow!

Red and Yellow loved the change so much they made their way across the land to each tree. 

Green, disappointed, flew ahead of them, to the furthest trees, prickly ones with needles instead of leaves, and blocked their path when they came upon him. 

“Leave some green for me!” He called out.

Before Yellow and Red could protest, they turned back the way they came toward a wind that blew their way.

“Look what you’ve done!” Whispered the wind. 

They looked at the trees they’d left in their wake, and watched in horror as the yellow changed to a dull gray brown, and the leaves fell away from the branches. “The trees are dying!” Whispering Wind said. “Someone long before you had already painted this picture, before you decided to change the colors. And now the picture is ruined!”

“Oh no!” The moths said, “what have we done!”

“Alas I can fix it, but it will take time!” Whispering Wind said. “I’ll cool the trees into a slumber, so they can heal from the blight. Only one tree will be exempt, the Evergreen,” the wind whispered, and the needles of the tree still green shook. “But you three must be punished. For it wasn’t up to you to decide what colors were painted.”

“How will you punish us,” they asked. 

“You must earn your colors, moths. You must sleep yourselves into them.” 

And so the Whispering Wind chilled all the forest and it’s trees, save for the Evergreen, and he chilled the moths into cocoons where they’d sleep to earn their colors. When the Whispering Wind blew warm air and the sun shined, the trees slowly woke, regrowing leaves of green, once again. 

Thanks for reading. 

-c

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