Beginning with Wreckage
Begin a 150 word story with wreckage, ie following a tsunami or hurricane. The wreckage can be literal or metaphorical. Show us what happens next. Thrust us straight into the middle of the action. Paid subscribers: please feel free to post your stories in the comments section.
Prompt words: skirt, dust, rosy, blow, lifted, clouds, tangerine, skimpy, pearly, flap.
PS I’ll be traveling this week so many not respond to your stories right away, but will do so a few days later.
Collision
Fragments of glass glittered in my hair and blood streamed down my face. I lifted the visor and watched the patterns in the mirror. They fascinated me, the way the streams joined together at my chin, dripping off it like a cliff into my cleavage. The colors, too, mesmerized me: the ruby and the rose crisscrossing tangerine flaps of my ripped collar. A mangled fender skirt hovered halfway through the dust-covered windshield inches from my face, and when he saw it, my brother burst into big pearly tears. It was the first time in my life I’d ever seen him blow like that. I didn’t know where to look except at my reflection, bleeding in the mirror, its gleam clouding over to show me a man pinned by the steering wheel. I wasn’t hallucinating. My brother’s tears were for his own pain. We’d better get help, I must have said.
Needs work, but it's always fun to see what comes from your prompts, Meg.
Sarah Doesn't Care Any More
The rosy sweater she wore to Hannah's birthday, the full cotton skirt, a swirl of color that she found in a bin behind the boutique, her mother's bureau, drawers scattered about the brown grass, its surface scratched. She couldn't take it with her. If she was going to cry, that would have done it. Sarah was steely though. Eyeing her neighbors grimly. As soon as she left, they would blow through her belongings, cold winds lifting, dropping, hugging, carting. Leaving tangerine and green bits of old tea towels to swirl over the barren lawn, pearly, glittery jewelry scattered about. She walked to the bus stop and got on the first bus that stopped. She threw her phone out the window, watched a car run over it. When she got off, she stepped up on the bus stop bench and flew into the deep blue sky. Waking from the dream, sore from curling on the short, hard bench, Sarah looked out at the city, starry with lit windows. For the first time in her life, she did not know what was next.