2020-2021 School Year--Week 6: Tia

10/7/2020

Prompt:
Write a scene that happens in pure darkness. It could literally be anywhere, and it could be anything. The only condition is that it should be in the dark.

Word Count: 160-260 words

Expectations:
-Remember that you are writing for the King's Academy community. Please be respectful of that community.
-Respect the word count
-Your work should have a title--this is not part of your word count.
-Include your full name and word count at the end of your submission.
-Have fun with this challenge.

Deadline:
22:00 Tuesday, October 13th

Photo Source:
https://wallpaperaccess.com/dark-street

4 Comments

Mr. Whiting

10/10/2020 11:59:48 am

Siblings

Cam slipped inside and leaned back against the gymnasium doors. “Shay?” she breathed. Her eyes searched for a purchase but found none. Cool darkness vaulted away endlessly. Trusting to other senses, she stepped forward, desperate to find her brother. Grease-stained newspapers scurried around her ankles as she moved. Rotting rafters wrinkled her nose. The air tasted sickly – an evaporated brine of sewage, sweat, and neglect. From somewhere in the cavernous space she heard an empty syringe roll tinnily and then stop, met by an old wrestling mat or drowned in a puddle. Or, perhaps, arrested by a hand in the dark. “Street rats,” her mother had warned.

She decided to make for the far wall – anything to reify her environment. Moving gently through unseen detritus, her toe caused a soft clatter. She stooped to lift something familiar. It was Shay’s promise box: a small, battered Tupperware he carried with him always, filled mostly with pennies and faded receipts. Cam pawed through the surrounding nest of trash but found nothing. Something stirred. She froze, making out angry murmurs growing in intensity, the sound of a person conspiring with themselves. Then, a pained cough from another corner. Street rats. Cam imagined them rather as fallen angels, huddled, pock-marked creatures she had witnessed care too tenderly for one another to adopt her mother’s bitterness. And she loved Shay. He came here, she knew, to be coddled and chastened by the dark, to repent. Cam stood as the room awakened around her. She clenched her brother’s box and left to find him.

Whiting Tennis
258 words

Yasmine Najjar

10/13/2020 11:53:45 am

Used to The Darkness

Katherine blinked, her long lashes tickling her cheeks slightly, glancing briefly around her general area. The sun was a golden color, sinking down below the horizon, littered with charcoal-colored trees against the light of the sun. The sky was at least six different shades, reds, oranges, yellows, and baby blues working together to form something inexplicably beautiful. Cotton-candy textured clouds pasted in the sky of cascading colors. Her hand slowly reached up, as if to grab the sky itself, blocking the sun and fading into that familiar charcoal-black of the trees, light shining from between her fingers and onto her face. Filling her with a warmth, a warmth she hasn't felt in a long time. She took a step forward, losing her footing and falling downwards from the high ground she stood on before, rolling downhill at high speeds. The further she fell, her vision got cloudier, a vignetting until all she saw was black.
She felt her eyes water, the bandages wrapped so tightly around her head she could barely think soaking up with her tears. Hot against her skin, so hot it burned, quieted sobs escaping her throat involuntarily. Everything poured, only registering now, after the initial shock. After the painkillers. After the harsh words that rung in her head like sirens:
"I'm afraid you'll never see again."
How cruel was it? Her dreams were the only way she could truly see. The sunset- all sunsets, ripped from her violently. Was she supposed to be used to the dark now? She'll never be used to the darkness.

Yasmine Najjar
259 Words

Oscar Depp

10/14/2020 01:03:17 am

A Ticking Appassionato

Eva had enough of the dark. The clocktower shuddered, and the rumbling floor seemed to open below her every time the second dial creaked. Grating sounds of the clocktower hinted at a vast and elaborate room filled with gyrating wheels and pinions.

The cranking wheels stopped, and a distant piano started playing. The gentle melody travelled like sound wrapped in a blanket, inflating like hot air when it reached the chamber. She eventually forgot about the tower’s grating gears and started to follow the fluttering sounds.

“Hello?” Eva declaimed. The piano kept playing. “Anyone there?” she voiced softly. The train platform chatter she once heard dispersed into the silent corners of the cavernous hall.

Each step filled her with confidence. Eva shuffled her feet tidily and stretched her hands out broadly. Her am suddenly froze. Sharp teeth of moving gears grazed into her shoulder, leaving grease and blood on her skin. She quickly smudged it off and pattered towards the music.

The piano climbed into a faster tempo, and sweat seemed to clench tighter to her arm. She stopped when a cooler hallway breeze flooded into her face. Noticing a glimmer, she bent down and held what felt like a corroded pipe coated in sandpaper. Slice. She held her hand to her nose and smelt metallic blood drizzling down her cold palm like an unstoppered valve. Minute, razor-like cuts emerged in all features of her hand, stinging. Wiping away sweat with the edges of her greasy and cutup hand, she retreated into the darkness, looking for the piano once more.

260 words.
O.D.

Tia Hammad

10/14/2020 02:51:16 am

Thank you all for submitting those pieces. It was really hard to choose. The winner is Mr. Whiting. I loved the way everything was described. The small details such as the greasy newspapers scurrying around her ankles really helped create the atmosphere. I felt suffocated just by reading it. I also enjoyed Cam’s train of thought as she navigated the darkness.
Oscar, I love how you described the sound of the piano, when you wrote that the sound was wrapped in a blanket. I also like the description of sweat clinging to her arm, which helped me feel with what the character was feeling.
Yasmine, I love the mood shift in your piece. The way you went from the bright colors to the darkness and pain was jarring in a good way.

Try Out Your Words