Why Would I Write

  • Paths

    “Are you ready?” she asked me.

    Turning back now would have been near impossible. I nodded wordlessly.

    She handed me a coin. “It’s all up to you now.”

    I removed my backpack and set it on the ground. The woods were surprisingly well lit at this hour. The moon must be working hard tonight. We were back at same forked path we had backed out of before – but we didn’t have the luxury tonight. I had to make a decision.

    There were two routes in front of us. I had to choose one of them, but I wasn’t sure which one. There were no signs or any clear indication. She suggested I flip a coin to decide when the time came, and that time was now.

    “Isn’t it the stupidest idea?” I said.

    “Do you have a better suggestion?”

    “No. But, we’re leaving it all up to chance!”

    “You know that’s not true. Once the coin is in the air, you’ll wish for it to land on one of its sides. You can’t explain it, but you’ll know what I’m talking about. There’s already a path you want to take. We can choose to go with your gut – or with whatever side the coin lands on. It’s up to you to decide, either way it’s all the same to me.”

    I pondered for a moment. “Why can’t you make the choice for me? That way it would be so much easier!”

    “This isn’t my journey. I’m but a mere companion. I go where you go.”

    “What about them?”

    “What about them?”

    “Won’t we run into them if we go down the wrong path?”

    “Sure, but we could also avoid them entirely. There’s a chance.”

    “We could turn back-“

    “And let them come after us? That’s fine with me too. We’ll burn that bridge when we get to it.”

    “You’re not very helpful.”

    “I know. I’m also imaginary,” she said with a smile.

    “Very funny.”

    I flipped the coin. It landed heads. Right where I wanted to go.

    I picked up my backpack and headed down the path. She disappeared as quickly as I had made up my mind. I hoped I was right.

    Writing Prompt from Reddit: [DP] “We’ll burn that bridge when we get to it.”

  • Connect

    It was a long and arduous trek to the edge of the world. Jimmy had trained his whole life for this moment, and today he was going to accomplish what nobody else before him had done. He was going over the edge. To be fair, he was going to be the first because nobody else cared enough. He didn’t even know what got into him. Nobody in his village believed that there was anything beyond the horizon, and the idea to visit it never crossed their minds. He wanted to prove them wrong. Lazy fucks! After two years of getting in shape and living in the wild to train himself to the harshness of the environment, was prepared for the journey.

    It had been months since he bid farewell to his village, nobody shed a tear when he did. They expected him to give up and return, and since he didn’t, they probably thought he was dead. By his calculations, he’d be reaching the edge of the world soon. He had read in books about his ancestors living on a sphered world, where it would have been impossible to reach its edge (since it didn’t have one) but there were a significant amount of people who believed otherwise. Idiots. He knew that his world was flat because he had seen pictures of it taken from the air (at a very high altitude). There was an end point – and today he was going to find it.

    She was on the run. There was no turning back now. Her family massacred, lover murdered right before her eyes. It had been by chance she had managed to slip by the marauders. She took it, and never looked back. Instead of heading westward, where other villagers could have sheltered her and offered protection, she decided to head east, towards the barren wasteland of the world. She preferred to take her chances on the unknown, instead of leaving her life in the hands of strangers. How would she know that they wouldn’t sell her out to those creatures? The monsters had caught up to her village because someone spilled the beans in the first place.

    One thing she knew for sure – the marauders would never follow her east. It was much too dry and barren for them to travel through. They thrived in wet and slimy places – just like her own kind. She decided that she would rather die to the hands of nature than the claws of those beasts.

    As she continued her journey east, she realized that the horizon was appearing closer to her – it wasn’t some intangible line that she thought it was when she first spotted it as a child. It seemed very real – like something within reach. She set her sights on it, and made it her goal. A literal endpoint to her escape. She wondered what laid ahead.

    Writing Prompt from Reddit: [WP] A shattered Dyson sphere is fragmented across a dim star. It’s creators have long ascended. New life emerges on the sphere’s inner shell, where civilizations use the fragments as islands. Fungal life grows on the outer shell, surviving in the cold dark. The two sides meet for the first time.

  • Pizza

    It was just another evening in Negra Arroyo Lane, Albuquerque. I had just completed my exhausting journey through rush hour traffic and parked in my driveway when I saw that my neighbors, the Whites had done the same thing as well. Mr White, head of the family, got out of his car, walked around to the back to get stuff from the trunk – a red sports bag and a pizza box. From the back of his car, emerged their son, who hobbled with his crutches towards the entrance of their house.

    I called out “good evening” and waved, but they didn’t seem to have noticed me. It’s okay, they must have had a long day, I told myself. The Whites were usually cheery enough to reciprocate, just not today. I walked out to the sidewalk and lit up a cigarette, watching the kid entering the house, while his parents stood at the doorway talking.

    I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but it looked like Mrs White didn’t want Mr White to enter their home. She took the sports bag from him but refused him entry. She didn’t seem to want the pizza either. Mr White’s face turned from one of elation into one of defeat. Ouch.

    I stamped out my cigarette and walked to my front door. As I unlocked it, I turned to look at the Whites again. This time I saw Mr White stomp angrily towards his car, pause, and threw the box of pizza onto his roof! What happened next was magical – and I kid you not – the pizza flew out of the box and landed on the roof, while the box fell onto the ground. The pizza, uneaten and a perfect circle, lay there, as though it was meant to be there all along. I quickly went into my house, not wanting to appear nosy and peeked out through my windows. Mr White had started up his car and sped off. Something must be going on between the Whites!

    Writing Prompt from Reddit: [WP] When you die, you end up in the universe of your favorite TV show as a background character. You see the events of your show unfold from your point of view.