Tag: drabble

20min Drabble Challenge: “Salacious”

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Shoutout to @CrystalAHill on twitter for the word prompt! The 20 minutes is from the moment I jot down the first word till I write the last. I’ll sit and consider the theme and the visual imagery for some minutes beforehand, oftentimes googling images of the word. Laurell K. Hamilton herself and her body of work – which I hugely admire – inspired the topic of this drabble.

“Don’t call it salacious, mom.”
“I’ll call it what it is, my daughter or not.”
Erica rubbed her tired eyes. “You don’t know what it is.”
Her mother fiddled with her own wedding ring. “I obviously can’t tell you what to do, but—”
“Then stop, right there, and don’t do it.”
Her mother’s lips thinned with the effort of staying silent, but she ultimately failed. “Is Andy not enough for you? There’s couple’s therapy.”
“There’s no problem here, so what’re you trying to fix?”
“Your marriage!”
“It’s not broken.”
“You’re dating other men!”
“It’s called polyamory.”
“And women!”
“Po-ly-a-mo-ry.”

20min Drabble Challenge: “Incipient”

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Shoutout to @MEmbergerauthor on twitter for the word prompt! The 20 minutes is from the moment I jot down the first word till I write the last. I’ll sit and consider the theme and the visual imagery for some minutes beforehand, oftentimes googling images of the word.

“Keep looking!” the girl says. “This only happens once a year.”
“What if it smells like rotten eggs?” the boy asks.
“You’re so dumb. Why would—”
“No, hear me out. What if—”
“Look, look!”
The bulbous pod of the cactus pops open, orange and white petals peeking out. The Queen of the Night only blooms once a year at midnight. The boy and the girl have waited for this.
When the flower is full, the girl raises her hands, grinning toothily, and slaps her palms together, crushing the flower. They both laugh, tasting the smell of crushed petals.

Photo credit – Diana Cochran Johnson

20min Drabble Challenge: “Eerie”

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Shoutout to @NC_kay_author on twitter for the word prompt! The 20 minutes is from the moment I jot down the first word till I write the last. I’ll sit and consider the theme and the visual imagery for some minutes beforehand. Also, shoutout to @KristynJMiller from whom I shamelessly stole Kitte.

I don’t like it when mom listens to her music.
It’s an old vinyl. The sound is eerie. Hollow.
I have no idea where she has the record from; the casing is blank.
It has six prominent scrapes from when Kitte, our family cat, pushed it off the coffee table a week before it died at the spry age of four.
I don’t like the record, but I can’t do anything about it; mom locks herself in her room when she listens to it. And now, after dad’s dead, I’m afraid to come home. I am afraid of my mom.