Who wouldn't?
July Prompt Challenge Day 3: Book
It’s just a story. Just a story.
How many times could I repeat that phrase and keep believing that stories were just that: stories. not real. Not coming to life before my eyes, vines crawling along the spice, searching for purchase. Not the tip of a claw finding a foothold and slowly, so slowly, dragging whatever followed out of the pages.
This cannot be real, I thought, screaming internally. i felt like I was about to crawl out of my skin.
“This isn’t real!” I scream as the claw becomes a foot, stretching out to better grab on the desk. I stumbled back, slamming into the bookcase and making other books fall to the floor. I’m fixated on the one book, still flat on my desk.
a few moments ago, I was reading, snacking, and trying to dissociate into a fictional world because the real world is, well . . . I don’t think I have to explain that.
What I didn’t want is a fantasy horror find its way out of my book.
Which was happening now. A entire arm, covered in black bark and lichen and moss, was flailing around my desk, looking for something to haul the rest of it out of the story. vines whipped in the air, feeding off the frantic motions.
until it stopped. the clawed hand froze, and I swear I heard a low grumble coming from between the pages. It suddenly closed over my snack and whipped back into the book so quickly, that the hardcover flipped shut, leaving a few crumbs of moss and leaves in its wake.
I guess even literary horrors like blueberry scones.
I know this story is riddled with grammatical errors and repetitive phrases. It’s absolutely a first draft. I’m so uncomfortable sharing this because I haven’t edited it. And that’s the point. I’m posting it without edits so I practice being okay with things not being perfect. I often use “edits” to procrastinate and avoid sharing my writing. This stops that.
If you’d like to join the challenge, we’d love to have you! There’s a new prompt every day. The challenge is to just show up and write—any genre, any length, any format. Poems, fantasy epics, brain dumps, one sentence . . . doesn’t matter. Just show up.
It was hangry!
Im partial to cinnamon myself 😋