Two Possible Prompts

[Westerly_2]

Okay, I snagged these from Writers' Digest online:

* Fortune Cookie - You find an unusual suggestion in your fortune cookie. What is it, and how do you react?

* Receding footsteps - You look outside and see footsteps ("in the snow," but to hell with that) leading from your doorway and away.

 

(I have some ideas, nothing finished. I may use both prompts in one).

[Westerly_2]

Alec was having the wonton soup and Catalina the sushi roll at their favorite place for Chinese food. It was a chockfull tub of soup, and Alec was having trouble finding room for it. There would be the sweet Mandarin orange sections to come, and the snappy fortune cookies with their silly sayings. They always made him think, no matter how vapid they were. Catalina opened hers and read: “Take the time to look around you. You will like what you see.” She smiled with lowered eyelids at him.

 

            “What’s yours, Alec?”

 

            In addition to his lucky color being black and his lucky number 11, his fortune was beyond puzzling. It was flat-out disturbing. The message was: “You cannot visit the dead, but they will visit you. Soon.” Alec frowned.

 

            “Crap! Who do they hire to make these things up? People off the street?”

 

            “Tell me,” she said.

 

            “Not to worry,” he said, slipping the paper into his pocket. “Let’s go.”

 

            God, that was so strange. He and Cat had gone to visit his dad’s grave just yesterday, first time, and watched the wind blow over the newly dug earth, the spongy new growth grass, so empty and lifeless, like it was the end of the earth.

 

            Catalina picked up her car and drove home. No staying over tonight. Going together 2 years and still kept their own rents, not ready yet…back and forth…his place or hers….

 

            When Alec woke, he woke without heavy dreams of a visiting dad, missing him…none of that. He fried up some bacon, cracked some eggs into the hot fat, dropped some raisin bread into the toaster. Good thing Cat wasn’t here to nag about the bad fat. Then he glanced out the kitchen window into the front yard. What the heck!

 

            There were tarry tracks leading down the ramp at the front door, and away. Tarry prints  from and not to? And tarry. Dad was a roofer until he died, and those treads looked like the boots he used to wear on the roof when he was hot mopping. Alec ran outside, looked up the street. The footprints walked halfway up the sidewalk, and then quit cold, right beside a little patch of green.

 

 

[Carol T]

Nice, W.

[Bmichael]

Cut that out!

The day after my mother’s body was removed, I received a phone call. The caller ID displayed that it came from her house.

I didn’t answer it.

[Westerly_2]

Man! The dead hand reaches out. (Insert Boris Korloff back ground music here).

[Marilyn]

Spoooooky! Nice job, Wes .... as always!