Hell, 1 Mile Prompt
Write a 200 words (or less) story in which “Hell” (of some kind) is just a mile away. Bonus points if you can include some of the objects in the photo. Prompt words: pretty, cumulous, dog, cactus, blossom, pointy, sweat. Paid subscribers: please feel free to post your stories here. I look forward to reading them!
Hell Hunter
He’s hunting for another version of hell. Can’t you be satisfied with the one you’ve got? says his wife. The brain needs novelty, he replies. Everyone’s got a pointy-headed brother, a cactus that won’t blossom, or a seven year itch that makes you sweat.
She says Tell me about it, twisting her ring and watching the cumulous-riddled blue move over their car. How much sky can clouds occupy anyway? How many circles are there in hell? She lets him count them while she disappears into the cloud that has somehow squeezed in through the sunroof. She breaks off a pretty piece of sky and arrows it into the fluff, and then arranges the entire confection low on her brow. He does not notice what she’s doing, he’s too busy reciting the circles’ sins as if off a menu: Limbo ... Lust ...Gluttony ...Greed... Anger... Heresy ...Violence... Fraud… Treachery.
She’s the one who first sees the yellow Shell gas station sign that now reads HELL, 1 mile. Stop! she screams. She gets out of the car and looks for the piece of the sign fallen on the ground. She finds it curled up like a fawn in a nest of weeds. She picks it up and poses with the S, laughing, Look, Honey, we’re almost there!
Marla Walks the Last Mile
“You’re pretty cumulus,” he said, and I asked if he meant I was heavenly, like a golden daffodil.
“Puffy,” he said. “Like a cotton ball.”
All day I’d been grafting orange blossoms onto raspberry canes and picking ticks off the dog. Sweat was trickling down my collarbone, forming a tributary somewhere at the bottom of my bra.
I was flashing, hotly. Boiling. Blistering. My drag queen name was Perry Menopausal.
All of which is to say, I was not in a mood to suffer fools gladly. So I hauled off and hit him with the pointy end of a cactus.
Now I wander lonely as a cloud. I’m on the highway to Hell. Getting closer all the time.
I like it that way.