Creative Corner

Love.

Love.

Love. Love. Love. Love. Love.

...Love.


She felt dizzy. Sick, almost. Her surroundings were dark, with most of the surrounding area being black as pitch despite her enhanced night vision. Yet the word kept ringing in her head, over and over.

Love. Love. Love. Love.

This wasn't it. This couldn't be it. More alert, and fighting the nausea, the girl stood and began to head toward where she knew the door must be. Yes, she'd been here before. But not for three years, at least. Why would she be back. Louder, as though perhaps another voice was whispering it now, the word, like a bell, pealed again.

Love. Love. Love. Love.

As soon as her hand contacted the doorknob in the dark, she felt her hand burn. In panic, knowing what that had to mean, she tore her seared hand back and began stumbling away. The bell had turned to a cackle.

Love? Love?! Love love love?!

In a horrible moment of sheer terror, she was paralyzed as the door swung open, letting light into the room. He stood there, the boy who claimed he loved her more than anything, with the black wolf demon standing behind him, too. He didn't love her, she knew. Was love even real?

"Don't you know?" He laughed, stepping toward her. "Love--"

-

Before he finished, she woke with a start, in a cold sweat and breathing heavily. But somehow, almost all of his sentence was finished in the back of here mind. "Love is stored in the [r???????e????????d???a??????c???t??????e?????d?????]."

The girl broke into a soft sob.
Maybe love isn't stored anywhere.
Because maybe it didn't exist.

@SpiderQueen8 That's actually exactly what I'd been thinking when I wrote the prompt! Could easily be a cryptic tweet (or series of tweets? I don't know how they work) on the official WTNV twitter.

@Starwindrider You can never go overboard with writing (you might end up writing yourself a whole new boat... but that's still not technically overboard)! I like the world you developed in such a short piece; always a fan of futuristic humans.

@thePurple I don't really know what's happening, but it does capture the confusion of dreams very nicely. It feels like the hook to a longer story; or maybe the ending, depending on how you like your stories to go.

The winner is Starwindrider, with SpiderQueen8 as the runner up. Thank you for participating!

@Adaris Thank you! Glad you liked my piece!


pinglist snipped~


New prompt!
Prompt: 3 minutes past midnight.
End date: 7th March 2020

Been watching too many horror movies lately, oops lol

Prompt: 3 minutes past midnight. @Starwindrider

3 am, the witching hour, when everything vile and dark crawls up from hell. 3 in the morning is widely accepted, though many don’t know the older stories, before the witching hour was integrated into western society. When the clock flashes 12:03 and the numbers align to perfect sixes, that’s the true time to fear, the true time to hide under the covers and pray for protection, for 12:03 when time adds to perfect sixes, that’s where true fear waits.
~6~
There’s an old story, urging people to fear the witching hour.
“Fear the dark and fear your suffering for it lurks in the shadows when the moon hangs high and the stars begin to fade away. Fear the dark and fear your pain for it looms in corners, waiting to sink its teeth into your flesh. Fear the dark and fear your nightmares, for they bide their time until they’re free. Fear the witching hour for everything vile comes to be.”

My grandmother used to whisper the story to me before bed on the days she babysat long into the night, my mother returning late from work. “Protect yourself, Claire,” she’d say to me, but I was too young to understand or care. I feared the old story at the age of 9, loathed it at the age of 11, laughed at it at the age of 16, and forgot about it by the time I turned 20.
That is, I forgot about it until sleep no longer came to me, when I was awoken nights on end by the dull tick of the clock at my bedside, flipping to the hour of perfect sixes.
It started on a Sunday, continuing through Wednesday and Thursday, then integrated itself into my weekend. At first, I did not notice the time projecting from my bedside table, sloshed some Z-quil down my throat and drifted back into dreamland.
I woke up in the morning covered in a cold sweat.
A few days later, I woke up screaming with no recollection of the terror that had apparently been clouding my mind. I looked at the clock. It had just flipped to 12:03. Terrified and tired, I chugged the whole bottle.
~6~
It’s been over a week now. My CVS bill has been racking up. No amount of sleeping ***** or drugs keep me asleep at 12:03, in fact, they make the experience of waking up even worse. It’s like when a normal person takes too much Melatonin and has bizarre, reality shaking dreams, except this describes my waking hours at 12:03. The shadows crawl over the walls, reaching for me. The house creaks under invisible footsteps. I can’t go back to sleep anymore.
~6~
It’s week 3, I haven’t slept in days. No longer can I slip back to sleep upon waking at 12:03, no longer can I even sleep before then. It’s been days. I’m so damn tired. I lay in my bed at night, my eyes darting around the room frantically. They whisper to me, the shadows I mean. The nightmares, and the pain, and the suffering. The witching hour. The witching hour. The witching hour. God please damn the witching hour.
~6~
I am ******* done. Caffeine ***** are my new religion, but everyone needs to sleep eventually. Sleeping during the day is unheard of for me. I try and try to no avail. Am I losing it? It must be all in my head? I’m going to try and sleep tonight, I’m sure 2 bottles of Z-quil and a couple glasses of wine can fight the dark.
~6~
My eyes snapped open, I turned to the clock, but it wasn’t there. The room was pitch black, my eyes straining to see in the darkness, my mind clouded from my persistent insomnia and my new penchant for over the counter medication. They are grabbing at me, the hands, I mean. They can’t possibly be real. The mouths whisper with their hot breath, fear the witching hour fear the witching hour fear--
~6~
I realized what I had done wrong, too little too late. Back in my childhood, “fear the witching hour,” my grandmother said, “protect yourself,” she said. I forgot what it was like to fear, fear protects you, fear keeps you safe. God I should have known, I should have remembered to fear 12:03, to fear the perfect sixes, but my own naivety kept me from caring to see the truth. The invisible footsteps march towards my door, the creaking of the house trailing behind. The voices whisper, the shadows reach out their hands for me. At least now I can finally get some sleep.

bumping this up!

@Aphelium Looks like since no one else as entered, you'll be giving the next prompt! Thanks for your story, it really gave me the chills!

EDIT: I reused this prompt on Write Away.

---

Prompt: "So, how did you meet?"

Deadline: March 31, 23:59 FR time

--pinglist snipped--

@nuttysaladtree since nobody responded to this prompt, is it okay if I take this over real quick?

@CrystalPeacock, yeah, go ahead. Happy Greenskeeper!

Prompt: Circles

Deadline: June 15

Pinglist snipped!