"There Was Nowhere to Go But..."
Write a 200 words (or less) story that begins with: “There was nowhere to go but…”. Don’t plan your story out ahead of time. Enjoy where the narrative takes you. Paid subscribers, feel free to post your stories below. I look forward to reading them!
Prompt words: squirrel, rush, pot hole, tail, smoke, dotted, flowers, mother
Fuck You
There was nowhere to go and nothing to do. Also, nothing in the fridge and all my clothes in the hamper. No sheets on the bed, no toothpaste in the tube, no gas in the car, no lube in the drawer. The wine, we’d drunk the last drop. The plant, the last one, well, it died, because no more water. No jokes. No talking. No looks—don’t give me that face. No energy to argue, you win, take your prize and get out of town. No leaves on the tree, no grass on the lawn, no lawn at all. No ideas. Just none at all. Wiped clean. Wipe my butt, wash my face, there’s no soap, no soup, no sustenance. What a day I’m having! Yesterday, on a walk, I found a rock and it looked like Mother Teresa down to that wrinkled face. She said do small things with great love and I said Mother Teresa what the fuck are you talking about. But then I realized she meant, throw the rock. So I threw it through my neighbor’s window, they weren’t home, no animals were harmed. I hate everybody, but could you bring me some soup. Thank you.
Portrait of the Usual Suspects
There was nowhere to go but to the vanishing point, smoky at day’s end, the cloud-cover running out of fluff and optimism. There’s something about a dotted perspective, as in this drawing of a man who, remembering their anniversary, tells his wife her flowers have been delayed. He watches her face fall. The wife knows when he’s lying, and when he thinks he’s getting away with it. She lets him, but he thinks it’s all his own doing and that she will never see through him. The man lies to her, the wife lies to herself, until the drawing lies crumpled in a pothole. The paper may fade but the truth stains it before it disintegrates, even as the facts of the couple's lives become smudged. The man rushes in with more of what he wants her to believe, a cascade of too many details. It’s the mark of a bad liar, and it takes all night. And then, in the filmy dawn, he pulls her hand over his heart, as if she’s the only one who can keep it going.