Our writing group has prompts for each meeting to use if you wish. This time we all chose a few words and were to use them in a poem, story, bit of writing … basically however we liked. I created this tiny story. Here are the words. If you use them for a story, please share it with me on my author page on Facebook!
Gargle
Spiders
Wind
Native grasses
Mauve
Ornament
A log cabin quilt
Dandelions
Smell of Lilacs
Cloud
The door is locked but she checks it again with fingers stained mauve from alien blood. Wind rattles the windows and puffs out the log cabin quilt that stands in for a curtain and blocks any light from escaping the room she hides in. They don’t go out at night, but she doesn’t want to take any chances.
Flames the color of dandelions dance in the fireplace as she readies her meal. Smoke is a risk but again, they only move during the day. She’ll eat and be long gone before the sun sets the world on fire with its morning light.
She’s hungry, desperately so, and can only wait until the canned chicken is warm before she crams it into her mouth, chewing fast, swallowing, cramming again until its gone. Too soon. Too little.
Her stomach gargles helplessly, hopelessly. Food is scarce. Growing things is too dangerous when they can swoop in from above and lay waste to crops in seconds. Lasers. Phasers. Ray guns. Little green men that aren’t so little or green at all.
They bleed though and when they do, it smells of lilacs.
She used to love the smell.
She loves it now, but it means something different than before.
Before: spring. Hope. Promises of warm days and cold soda and white, fluffy clouds and bare feet in tall, native grass.
After: victory. Hope. Promises of peace and renewal and standing in the sun without fear.
They arrived December 12, two years ago. This room is still decorated for the holiday, though the ornaments are dusty and the unopened presents under the tree make her want to cry.
Where there’s life, there’s hope, she reminds herself as she watches a spider string its own kind of garland between two branches on the long dead tree. Glitter glistens in the strands, a tinkle of light in the darkness that surrounds them all.
She isn’t the only one who has survived and she won’t be the last.
They won’t win, these strange creatures from another land.
She won’t let them.
She curls up on the couch under a moth-eaten blanket and closes her eyes.
Sleep for now.
Fighting tomorrow.
Victory soon.
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