He loved this dark, small room. It helped him write his stories. He was anonymous and the room kept his stories safe from prying eyes.
When he went out, he knew his stories would be protected. The room pulled them away.
He heard a loud clang and woke up. A nurse had dropped a tray. He expected to find his darkened room. He found a hospital ward with bars on the windows.
He realized the room was a dream. He wasn’t there at all. He was in the psychiatric facility. He started to cry.
Alfred sat nervously waiting for a taxi. He had groceries to take home, but his mind was elsewhere. He had called a taxi almost half an hour ago. It should have already arrived.
A horn honked and headlights blazed as the taxi screeched its tires pulling up to him. He didn’t give it a thought as he leaped into the taxi before the driver could get out. He breathed a sigh of relief. Now he wasn’t a sitting duck.
The driver silently sped away. It was quiet in the taxi. The driver didn’t speak and that made Alfred anxious. He was driving too fast. Alfred tried to make small talk with the driver but to no avail.
They reached the edge of the city and Alfred was relieved. Then suddenly, the taxi swerved hard and Alfred was thrown against the window. He was knocked unconscious. Later, he had no idea how long it took him to wake up.
When he awakened, with his head pounding, the driver was nowhere to be found. As Alfred looked around, he realized there was a man in the floorboard of the front seat. He had on a badge and was obviously the real taxi driver. It was quiet and dark. He saw the bushes at the side of the road rustle. He reached for his phone and realized it was gone.
He was being hunted and there was no way to escape.
She went to the park with the rock garden just to escape for a few hours. She sat to eat her lunch, finding peace in looking at the rocks around her.
As she looked at the beautiful rocks, they seemed to move. She thought it was the tears in her eyes. One seemed to have turned into a statue of her mother. Another a statue of her dad. They had passed long ago.
Seeing them again in the rocks gave her some peace. Maybe she wasn’t so alone to deal with her life challenges after all.
In the heart of the city, an old, weathered man had a bright and shiny food truck that catered to the lunch crowd from businesses in the area. He sold fish and chips. Everyone who ate there raved about how delicious the food was. The lunch lines kept getting longer and longer.
Simon was a chef who had gotten his fish and chips recipes from one of his mother’s cookbooks. She loved fish and chips and was striving to find the very best recipe.
After her death, Simon found a small jar in her kitchen that was labeled “Special Ingredient for Fish and Chips.” He had no idea how to find this special ingredient or what it was. It tasted like nothing he had tasted before.
One day, an ancient, wrinkled lady came to the food truck. She was his mother’s friend and told Simon the seed pods he needed only appeared on the night of the third full moon.
Simon gathered the seed pods on the designated night. He began to make the secret ingredient, but it was never quite right. The crowds at the food truck started to dwindle.
As the Legend of Simon, the fish and chips guy, goes, he could be seen at midnight working on the secret ingredient in his food truck.
Alice stepped off the pavement onto the sand, looking around for children at play on the beach. Nothing.. She held a lone children’s sneaker in her hand that she’d just found in the parking lot.
Alice strolled down the beach hoping to find the shoe’s owner.
She turned to walk back to the parking lot. Suddenly, someone ran up behind her and grabbed the shoe from her hand.
The young man walked along the street, head down, hands stuffed in his pockets. He didn’t know if he could continue to do his job as a public defender. New laws were passed every day that gave the government more power over every aspect of life.
He passed the old Greyhound Bus Station. A few buses still came and went from the old station, but taking a Greyhound bus was almost a thing of the past.
He slowed as he passed the station. What were all those people doing there? He didn’t think they appeared to be travelers. It dawned on him. They were homeless and were seeking shelter from the hot sun and the police. It was now against the law to be homeless. The punishment was fines and jail time.
He slowly walked into the bus station and chatted with each homeless person there. Their stories were heart-wrenching. He told each of them he would represent them if they were arrested and how to find him.
The young man left the bus station with a renewed sense of purpose. He had a reason to go to work each day. He would help the homeless. He would become an expert on their issues. As regulations increased, he would not let them come to any harm.
When he got home that night, he was smiling. There was at least something he could do to help in this new normal in which the people found themselves.
She had not expected age to creep up on her so unexpectedly. Now that it had, she found herself at loose ends. Many things she had enjoyed were beyond her now.
Books, learning, teaching. Those things had always saved her. She saw the summer learning signs and the adults gathering.
She needed something to engage her. She wasn’t aging gracefully, but she had to try.
She’d always wanted to study anthropology. Maybe she could find a class and meet some people along the way.
A wave of hope washed over her as she walked toward them.
Enough pain. Enough emotional turmoil. Enough violence. Just enough. This wasn’t the way her life was supposed to go.
She was only 24, but she’d been with the old man for four years. Back then, she was searching for a way out of her family situation. Now, she was searching for a solution to her ill-advised solution back then.
She knew he would eventually kill her if she didn’t escape him. He had seemed so kind and gentle at first. As time passed, there were still moments of that, but most of the moments he saved for abuse.
It started with verbal abuse. He would say terrible things to her about her appearance and temperament. He ramped it up with emotional abuse. He would withhold any affection for weeks at a time. He would do horrible things just to make her cry. As he got older, he couldn’t stand that she was still young and jealousy sprung up.
He insisted on a sparkling clean house no matter how she felt. She hated the sight of that mop in the corner. She wanted to chop it up and throw it away. He had started hitting her in the head with it along with his fists. She swore to herself never again.
When he came home that night, and hit her again, she was ready for him.
The mop had one more use. She had to mop up the blood before the police came.
That was decades ago. I can’t imagine why one has popped up in our neighborhood. Who reads anymore?
People say they are visual learners now. Pictures, videos, multimedia. I wonder if many books are even published anymore. I haven’t seen one until that mobile library in many years.
I know many books, back in the day, were banned and burned. They say it was for our own protection. I do remember they were protecting us from the Others who don’t think like we do.
The elderly lady looked up and the shutters were open. Her heart skipped a beat. She had waited for this moment for 50 years.
She tried to pull open the door of the old, dilapidated building, but it was stuck. She pulled as hard as her old bones would allow and it popped loose.
The memories came flooding back. This corridor used to be light and airy and full of dancing children, including herself. That was so long ago that it left her breathless.
She got to the stairs and began to pull herself up by the railing. With every step, the past flashed before her eyes. Her father and mother waiting for her at the top of the stairs., Her sister racing up the stairs by her side.
The air was musty and the old woman had a hard time breathing. She tiptoed inside the sunny apartment.
Ghosts. She saw them all. Her family. Laughing and talking. She and her sister, so happy, so innocent in those days. She came here because she wanted some of it back, the innocence. Maybe it would bring joy to her life.
She found the boxes in one of the bedrooms. Her dolls. Her puppets. Her childhood books and records. As she looked at each item, she smiled and cried at the same time.
All that was left that was important were the ghosts.
The Write Scribe 