Prompt progress, week 2

Okay, so continuing the catch up of pieces written during Prompt, I have two pieces from the second week’s workshop to share. Remember that the prompt I chose for each round is bolded.

This was from the second round of prompts in the session. I can’t remember how long we had to write this round of prompts, but I think it was about eight minutes.

Prompts:  the wind picked up                           at the back of the garage

At the back of the garage, in a box with corners weakened by years of mildew, there are damp and moldy stacks of magazines. They are old enough to earn the moniker “vintage”, though their condition renders them merely trash.

It is not the box, nor the stack of magazines, that gives Billy nightmares, although they feature in his dreams every night. It is what he discovered beneath the pile of magazines, searching for hidden treasure when his stepfather was out long enough for Billy to go exploring without fear of being caught. It was treasure, of a sort, although certainly not the kind of treasure he’d ever envisioned. Not gold, not rubies. Not a stash of candy bars, nor even the girlie magazines his best friend’s older brothers kept hidden in their closet.

He’d dug halfway down when he discovered the hand, cold and crawling with bugs. He yanked his own away, fearing contamination, but then the fascination with abomination that is the particular ailment of young boys compelled him to keep digging. More parts…a foot…a thumb. Bones.

He found the head when the garage door opened.

After the second round, we were given index cards and had a couple of minutes to write down the contents of our bag or purse. Then we passed the card to the person on the left and the card we were given was used as inspiration in conjunction with the next prompts. The card I was given listed: bulging grapefruit, chocolate-stained deposit slip, pink umbrella, an unwrapped rectangle of Dentyne, pen, 3 cashews, folded workshop agenda, cell phone, keys, wallet. I ended up utilizing the pink umbrella in my piece.

I think we had about ten minutes for this prompt. I ended up passing on reading this one to the group, but now I wish I had.

Prompts:  he never left home without                    in her hand

He never left home without the pink umbrella. Not “a”. “The”. As in, “definite”. As in, “definitive”. As in, “the definitive pink umbrella”.

But not his. Hers.

She’d carried it the day she died. Held it in her hand, actually. Crossing the street in a ground-soaking rain, the kind they called toad stranglers back home, but here, such rains were as common as daisies.

He always loved that she chose pink for such a mundane accessory. Not the usual black, nor the brown of the more sophisticated set. But pink. And not dainty, feminine pink, either. Wild, affirming magenta, a live-out-loud sort of color, just like she was.

It came to him with the rest of her effects, what little ther was of them. Her clothes, her few items of jewelry, the silly candy necklace from one of her students that morning, nearly melted away from lying in the rain so long. But not melted away completely, shielded, as it was, by the pink umbrella.

His own umbrella was practical black. Everyday, mundane black. Just like him. Efficient and plain, it did its job without flash or flair. But today, he thought maybe it was time for pink.