As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve got a handful of old stories in the pipeline that I’m planning to share soon, and my intention was shake one of them out for you today.
But then, this morning, I found myself in a Zoom call with five other people who had gathered to practice writing prompted flash fiction. I hadn’t done anything like that since college, so I was equal parts nervous and excited. I’m a slow, careful writer. Sometimes, deep into a project, I’ll hit a flow state and churn out a whole lot more than usual, but whenever I’ve tried to just blast out a short story, it always takes me five times as long as I think it will, and then turns into a novella. As you’ve seen.
So I knew it was good for me to do this. Get me out of my comfort zone.
After the organizer generated a random writing prompt…
Upon winning the lottery, a Shakespearean scholar has a showdown with a sheriff.
…she set a timer for 15 minutes.
Here’s what I wrote.
[3…2…1… Write!]
"You don't understand!" Niles shouted across the windblown expanse of his ruined front yard. "It wasn't supposed to be me..."
But Wendell wouldn't listen.
"Just come on out," he said again from behind the red and blue lights rotating in silence on the hood of his car on the other side of the street. "We can talk it through, but you gotta come out."
Niles knew Wendell would have his county sheriff's standard issue pistol trained on him from behind that car. And he knew they couldn't talk it through.
God, there was so much blood.
Leaned up against the base of his front room window, Niles gazed unseeing at row upon row of old print Shakespearean plays, and endless texts of dead predecessors who had deconstructed and dissected every line of the Bard's work long before Dr. Niles Berrywhistle had sunk his scholar's teeth into the same material.
"I've wasted it all," he whispered to himself. But though his eyes were aimed at bookshelves stuffed with two hundred years of research, it wasn't thoughts of his former profession that drew those words from his mouth.
Rather, it was what had happened after he had accepted that fateful gift from his delinquent brother, that crumbled and bloodied scrap of paper bearing a string of numbers that meant nothing until they were pulled from the PowerBall machine on TV.
Then they meant everything.
Now the ticket was in Niles' hand, and it wasn't just his brother's blood that stained it. Still, the numbers were crisp and clear, an incantation that would summon life-changing wealth.
Life-ending wealth.
"I'm sorry, old friend!" Niles shouted loud enough for Wendell to hear. Old friend turned sheriff, just doing his job.
Niles touched the cold metal of the AR-15 leaned up against the wall next to him and knew that he would never again lose himself in one of Billy's old sonnets.
[Fingers up, no more typing.]
What do you think? Should I try this more often? If I do, should I share it?
Etc.
Have a great weekend!
Yes! …& geez! Finish THIS!