Hi. My birthday was the 14th, and my boyfriend got my a new notebook. I’m already in the middle of several long form writing projects and didn’t want to use this notebook for that, so I was struggling to find a reason not to put this notebook with all the rest of my empty notebooks. Enter Empty Notebooks.
The idea of this project is that each day, I take a new prompt and write a short little diddie, 1,000 words or less. Prompts are going to be from all over the internet, and feel free to request! This is also in collaboration with @darkacademiansworld, who is helping me find prompts!
Prompt: A crew of astronauts spends their entire lives embarking on an interstellar journey that will take 100s of years to arrive. En route, however, technology advances. When they arrive, they find others had already arrived decades ago thanks to new tech…
Prompt By: @writing-prompt-s
Date Written: 03.30.22 & 03.31.22
Word Count: 1,282
It was a day few would forget. The day the Athena I would reach its destination at long last. Beth remembered reading about it for the first time when she was a second year. Mrs. Clyves lingered on the short chapter for only a moment before carrying on with the lesson, but Beth had become entranced by the impossibilities of the mission: a crew of astronauts spending hundreds of years traveling to the planet Earth had colonized decades before they were set to arrive. When school for the day, Beth and her mom went to the library and checked out every book relating to the Athena I mission. She remembered staying up all night reading those books, even though they were far above her reading comprehension level.
That was twenty years ago, and now Beth found herself staring out of the window, watching the sky for an early glimpse of the shuttle that was meant to land within the day. Her mother had told her not to worry, for the Athena I had already been sighted on satellites around their planet and its moons. Yet, she couldn’t help but feverishly check her watch every few seconds, ignoring the strange looks she received from her coworkers. They simply weren’t aware of the importance of the day for her.
Hours passed, and still no news of the impending arrival, except for the fact that it was impending. Beth was starting to lose hope, maybe they predicted the arrival date wrong? The reporters and scientists did stress that while it seemed like a very likely prediction, it was still only a prediction. Maybe it's tomorrow, Beth wondered, or next week. Tomorrow or next week could still mean that the scientists were close to their prediction. What if it still has a decade left on its journey? A nagging voice echoed in her head. A decade was too long. Beth needed this shuttle to arrive today, She needed it to be today. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Not a decade from now. It had to be today. Beth checked her watch again, 8:25 p.m. There was still plenty of time until midnight. She turned on her TV, flicking almost immediately to the news channel. One of the reporters was talking about how some of the crew still hasn’t even woken up from cryosleep yet. “Let’s give some slack to the equipment at work, though,” the reporter joked, her eyes a little too bright and her hair a little too blonde for the wrinkles on her hands, “these cryosleep pods that we all use so often now was first put in place for the Athena I mission, nearly five hundred years ago. Five hundred! Can you believe it, Fred?” The other reporter laughed, shaking his head in agreement. Five hundred years. Beth’s grandmother made the trip when she was eight in only a year. She wanted to be there when her great-great-great-great-grandfather landed. Beth’s grandmother died two years ago today, and still no Athena I. It was nearing 9, and Beth was losing hope.
Then the ground began to shake, and her kitchen lights grew brighter and brighter until they went out one by one with loud pops and the sound of glass shattering. As Beth ran outside, unbothered by the shards of glass in her feet, she watched as Athena I slowly made its descent onto the highway outside her neighborhood. Beth couldn’t help but be enamored by the beauty of the massive ship as it towered over the buildings surrounding it. Inside her house, the excited cheers of the two reporters erupted from her TV. Seconds later, Beth found herself running. She wasn’t even remotely athletic as her asthmatic lungs furiously reminded her. It's here, she reminded herself, finally, it's here. That seemed to keep the burning tightness in her chest at bay.
By the time she reached the mountain of bright orange steel, an ocean of people and cars had already formed around the door, anxiously waiting for them to open and reveal the crew of forty astronauts. They would be the oldest humans to ever live, thanks to the cryosleep chambers they all spent five hundred years in. The questions that came to form in her head drowned out all of her surroundings, almost to the point where she missed the hiss of steam as the doors slowly slid open.
They emerged from the darkness with furrowed brows, whispering to one another in a strange language. As she pushed her way to the front, Beth craned her neck to try and catch even the smallest of glimpses of the strangers. Those around her whispered to one another, gossiping like it was an Olympic sport, and they were favored to win gold. Few protested as she broke through the front lines and took in the sight that she was witnessing.
All of them looked so human. As if any one of them could be a random bank teller or her manager at work. That was what they wanted though, regular people who were willing to leave behind their entire lives, everything they had ever learned, and travel to a distant planet millions of light-years away and begin a colony for the rest of us. We just beat them to it, thanks to advances in technology. Yet, still, it was hard for Beth not to fall back on the magazines she had read about the Athena I mission, and the wild theories the celebrities and interviewers would exchange. Would the astronauts have green skin? Black eyes and bulbous heads? Would they even understand us? Would they speak a different language entirely? Beth would always scoff at how stupid it all sounded, she couldn’t help herself.
“Excuse me, Miss,” one astronaut said, yanking Beth back to the events currently happening, “Excuse me, but can you tell me if this is the planet Delta 781? My crew and I think we somehow missed our destination.”
He looked at Beth with anticipation, all she could do was stutter out her answer, “Uh, yeah, it is,” she glanced down at his name patch, and nearly fainted, “My name is Beth, I’m your great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter. My grandmother, your–”
“Great-great-great-great granddaughter. God, how long have we been traveling?” Her grandfather sighed, collapsing to his knees.
“Five hundred years, sir. But the Athena II mission arrived two hundred years ago, in under a decade,” Beth spoke quietly, patting the now sobbing man on his shoulder.
“Oh God,” he cried, “I promised her I would see her again. I promised Maggie that we would see each other again! And now I’m–and now she’s–” he broke down into violent sobs as more and more people began to appear from the ship. Beth looked around at the crowd of onlookers that had surrounded her and her inconsolable grandfather. As she glanced back at him, she noticed that he couldn’t have been any older than thirty, a sobering realization for Beth.
“So what do we do now?” someone in the crowd shouted. This began an eruption of questions that all seemed to be aimed at Beth and her grandfather. She wished that she had just stayed home because then none of this would be happening. She could have gone to bed peacefully and woken up to the news of the landing of Athena I, and this wouldn’t be happening.
“I’m sorry,” was all she could say. It wasn’t aimed at the frantic crowd or her grandfather or the confused astronauts behind her, in fact, Beth didn’t know who she was apologizing to, or even why she was apologizing. The words just felt right with all that was happening.
Prompt: “But in the end,” he sighed, “I love you too much to stop you from doing this.”
Prompt By: @evewritingprompts
Word Count: 588
Date Written: 03.29.22
I stared at him, silently pleading that he would be the one to break the agonizing stalemate. Instead, he shouldered his bag and turned to leave, forcing me to become the brave one. “Wait!” I clambered out of my chair after him, “Please don’t leave me.”
He stopped, and through a clenched jaw, he said, “I can’t be here while you torture yourself like this. This wasn’t a part of the plan, Avery.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I laughed nervously, “This was the entire purpose of the plan! Zach, you can’t be serious.”
Zach turned to face me, his eyes were stormy and every muscle in his body was visibly taut. “If this was a part of the plan, then why did you leave me, your best friend, completely fucking clueless?” I couldn’t stop the tears as they welled up in my eyes, flooding my lashes as I tried to blink them away, “I thought I knew you, Avery.”
“You do, Zach. You know me better than anyone that has ever existed. Please,” I sobbed, “please don’t go.”
Slowly, mournfully, he approached me, cupping my face in his hands, wiping my tears away, “I trusted you, Avery, with my entire being. I loved you, Ave. You could have told me. If you had just trusted me enough to tell me what you were going to do, I could have helped you. We could have come up with a different plan.”
Violent sobs racked my body, “Please, Zach. It doesn’t have to end like this. We don’t have to end like this.”I reached out to grab him, to stop him from reaching the door he was mere feet from.
“No, it doesn’t. It never should have ended like this. We were supposed to survive everything. We were supposed to escape this life and grow old together. Fuck, I should be fucking stopping you, Avery, before you kill us all,” his voice cracked as he choked back tears on the last word.
“Then stop me, Zach,” I said, my tears dry and my face as solemn as stone. “Stop me. Because you and I both know that that as soon as that door closes behind you, it will be too late.” My gaze drifted away from him, chuckling darkly, “Perhaps it is already too late. Perhaps this is just the beginning of the end.”
With that, his face sobered and he turned, his eyes keeping straight ahead as he walked away. I flinched as the metal doors slammed shut in my face. My eyes screwed shut as I forced myself not to cry. What have I done? I cursed myself, this is all my fault. As I sunk to the ground, a memory from our past wiggled its way into my mind. Zach and I ran around the playground, we were mere children, still unaware of the horrors of the world. I had volunteered to scale the side of the brick school building to retrieve a soccer ball one of the other kids kicked up there. Zach fought to keep me on the ground, relinquishing only when a crowd of students began to form around us, “But in the end,” he sighed, “I love you too much to stop you from doing this.”
At the time I was clueless about the hidden meaning of his words. Not anymore. Now, it was as if he had highlighted it in neon marker and covered it in stickers and arrows. Now, I knew.
Honestly if I was Chris Rock, I'd just retire. I'm not sure how you, as a comedian, come back from the humiliation of telling a joke so unfunny that the target's husband very calmly slaps the shit out of your face open-handed and then just as calmly returns to his seat, and then like 20 minutes later they call him back onstage and give him a trophy and he apologizes to everyone but you.
Hi! My name is Dawn (or at least, that is the name I am choosing to give to you all), and I’m a writer. I’ve been writing since I was 12, and recently got published by several online magazines. I won’t be releasing where though, since I use my real name, and I am a minor (Sophomore in High School). I write mostly poetry and short stories, but I’m working on quite a few longer works than I hope to publish in the upcoming years. As for now, I’m focusing on my short story series ‘Empty Notebooks’, where you can learn more about here!
Prompt: They say in you write down your wish on a piece of paper, put it in a glass bottle, and give it to the sea, your wish might come true.
You have made it your mission to sail the seas finding these bottles and making the wishes on them come true
Prompt By: @darkacademiansworld
Word Count: 862
Date Written: 03.19.22 & 03.28.22
03.31.22 - Avery and Zach
Prompt: “But in the end,” he sighed, “I love you too much to stop you from doing this.”
Prompt By: @evewritingprompts
Word Count: 588
Date Written: 03.29.22
April
04.01.22 - Athena I
Prompt: A crew of astronauts spends their entire lives embarking on an interstellar journey that will take 100s of years to arrive. En route, however, technology advances. When they arrive, they find others had already arrived decades ago thanks to new tech…
• "In The End We All Will Become Stories." Posted by @/darkacademiansworld
• When Hero confesses their love for Villain, Villain agrees to the relationship with plans to betray them. However as time goes on, Villain starts to enjoy the soft touches and general acts of romance.” Posted by @/a-dead-lake
• Story prompt: a human in a world of robots, where humans are (supposedly) extinct. That's it. Like imagine the human just sneezing or doing normal human shit like drinking water and everyone starts freaking out like OH FUCK WE BROKE THE CHILD WHAT DO WE DO“ Posted by @/mindlessruth
• They say if you write down your wish on a piece of paper, put it in a glass bottle, and give it to the sea, your wish might come true. You have made it your mission to sail the seas finding these bottles and making the wishes written on them come true. | Posted by @/darkacademiansworld
• You are fond of Greek mythology since your birth. Today, when you turned 17c the Greek goddess Athena gave you a boon "You could transform yourself into any Greek god you wish, but you must never fall in love with any Greek." After years of enjoying your life your life you get stuck into a monsters war and also unfortunate get hit by Cupid’s Arrow. | Posted by @/darkacademiansworld
• A young boy loses his father one day in a cold winter. After the father's death the winter snow never stops, causing an everlasting winter. Then, a few years later his mother steps out of the house one day and also disappears.
- What will the boy do now?
- What is causing his parents disappearance?
- How will the boy cope?
- Will the boy be able to survive on his own?
- Will the boy travel out into the cold winter to search for his parents? | Posted by @/beethebugsblog
• A writer has slipped into a coma, All the characters in their head are fighting to keep them alive. | Posted by @/darkacademiansworld
• You sold your soul to the devil some years ago. Today he gives it back and says “I need a favour" |Posted by @/darkacademiansworld
• Villain can tell that the heroes are saying something, however, with this group's theme of having their masks completely cover their faces, Villain can't read anyone's lips. | Posted by @/a-dead-lake
• But in the end,’ he sighed, "I love you too much to stop you from doing this:” | Posted by @/evewritingprompts
• Your life is anything but ordinary. You are a dream walker and one of the last of your kind. Gifted with the ability to enter into the dream realm, you are hunted by those who believe you are an unholy aberration. Your only hope to survive is to join a dark and dangerous wanderer who shows no allegiance. | Posted by @/worthywolfwrites
• There were the monster hunters, but my friends and I instead organized the Monster Huggers: a group of a whole lot of pacifists who went out to protect and save creatures being targeted as "dangerous" and marked for eradication. | Posted by @/promptsforthestrugglingauthor
• After a plane crash leaves you stranded on an island, you struggle to find a way to survive. A few days in, you come across the remains of a tent. Inside is an old notebook that reads: Hello there. If you're reading this, you got stuck here too. Enclosed is everything you need to know about surviving here. Good luck, and may your luck be better than mine. | Posted by @/the-writing-fandom
• A crew of astronauts spend their entire lives to embark on an interstellar journey that will take 100's of years to arrive. En route, however, technology advances. When they arrive, they find others have already arrived decades ago thanks to new tech… | Posted by @/writing-prompt-s
• You thought your superpower, always hitting your intended target while throwing something, was lame at first. Then, you began to realize your power was not bound by the limitations of space and time, nor was it a superpower to always be taken literally. | Posted by @/writing-prompt-s
• Aphrodite gets a lot of prayers, all of them either frivolous or petty. One day, she receives a prayer she has never gotten. "Can you please be my friend?" She instantly appears in front of her believer to asks why. | Posted by @/writing-prompt-s
• When it was discovered that all alien civilizations were destroyed by eldritch gods we wondered why they hadn't done the same to us. Then we learned that the human mind can drive an eldritch god insane. | Posted by @/writing-prompt-s
• They say you're unstable, and they tread on eggshells around you but nobody will tell you why.
After waking up with complete amnesia, you have no memory of who you are and so that makes you even more curious as to why everyone is terrified of you. | Posted by @/writing-prompt-s
• When people die, their strength and skills are passed to the last person they hold in their thoughts. Kingdoms have risen and fallen, except for yours, where the King is beloved by all and receives everyone's Parting Gift. One day, you, a total commoner, awaken with the powers of your king... | Posted by @/writing-prompt-s
• You were a billionaire pretending to be an average Joe in order to find someone who loves you for who you are and not what you have, now in your honeymoon you confess the truth to your spouse who was apparently doing the same thing. | Posted by @/writing-prompt-s
• “If we survive this, we'll be heroes!" "And if we don't survive?" "Then we'll be legends.". | Posted by @/writing-prompt-s
• Humanity imagined most other life in the galaxy would be relatively similar to each other. What humanity never prepared for was to be the weird ones: We're the only intelligent life that isn't aquatic. | Posted by @/writing-prompt-s
• The Chosen One has successfully defeated the Demon King and liberated the realm. Instead of relinquishing his power, the Chosen One has made himself emperor, becoming worse than the Demon King. With no other choice, you summon a dark god to destroy the Chosen One and save the realm. | Posted by @/writing-prompt-s
• You're hired by a delivery service that uses a time- machine to deliver parcels before they're ordered. You spend most of your day arguing with the recipients. | Posted by @/writing-prompt-s
• A horror story where it is slowly revealed that the true horror of the story, is the author's deteriorating mental state as he succumbs to psychosis. | Posted by @/writing-prompt-s
• Ten years into the zombie apocalypse, you find a computer with a connection to the internet. You are surprised to find that all of the global news stations are reporting as though nothing is wrong, and there is no mention at all of zombies, or your country. | Posted by @/writing-prompt-s
• You have the ability to see into the past. You can only observe past events, not change them.
You're helping the police solve a murder. As you're describing what happened, the killer suddenly turns around and seems to look you straight in the eye. "I know you're watching". | Posted by @/writing-prompt-s
• You've been to thousands, maybe even millions of universes. You can hardly remember you've been to so many. Every single one is different. Except one random constant, and it is driving you insane. | Posted by @/writing-prompt-s
You are a "coward". It's a respected military role when your team's mission fails, you must survive and escape at all cost to inform the Headquarters of what happened. | Posted by @/writing-prompt-s
• Making the body immortal does not mean the mind becomes immortal as well. Today, the mindless bodies of the wealthy from centuries ago haunt civilization. | Posted by @/writing-prompt-s
• What's more horrifying than a biblically accurate angel shouting "FEAR NOT®? A modernized angel whispering to you "Be very afraid.." | Posted by @/writing-prompt-s
• Mr. Reyes died a few years ago. Something is keeping his body alive. We still call it Mr. Reyes. His name is too hard to say. Whatever it is isn't doing anything evil except playing human. It does taxes and works. It's nice. My momma said it ate the bad guys harassing her. I don't see how. | Posted by @/writing-prompt-s
• Upon entering the Magic School every student is chosen by a Grimoire. You were chosen by a dirty and ancient looking Grimoire. The title of the Book is the Necronomicon. | Posted by @/writing-prompt-s
• "Any book worth banning, is a book worth reading.' "I understand that, Mr. Asimov, but we can't introduce the Necronomicon to our curriculum" | Posted by @/writing-prompt-s
• To Elizabeth Brown, the mechanical workings of space craft seemed to just speak to her. Watching her tinker, fix, and upgrade everything from the small barges to the hulking capital class ships was akin to watching a virtuoso violinist or a master painter. Her masterpiece came in one day. | Posted by @/writing-prompt-s
• There are 6,492 living descendants in the line of succession to the throne of Queen Elizabeth Il, and you're 6,492nd. Being dead last in line to rule the commonwealth is something you occasionally joke about, until some bizarre events bump you right into 1st. | Posted by @/writing-prompt-s
• Hell is real. The many sinners of the world did what humans always do when faced with hostile terrain: they built a civilization. | Posted by @/writing-prompt-s
• You were cursed to "die the next time the sun sets on you". That was 10 years ago. You've been racing the sun ever since. | Posted by @/writing-prompt-s
• “Do you want to know the worst part about walking away?” she asked.
“It’s hoping that they’ll run after you. That they stop you and tell you not to leave, that they’ll beg you to stay. That they’ll tell you they need you.” She says, “But they never do, you never did.” | Posted by @/darkacademiansworld
Prompt: They say if you write down your wish on a piece of paper, put it in a glass bottle, and give it to the sea, your wish might come true.
You have made it your mission to sail the seas finding these bottles and making the wishes written on them come true.
Prompt By: @darkacademiansworld
Word Count: 862
Date Written: 03.19.22 & 03.28.22
Notes: I know I said I would be doing this everyday and it’s been like two weeks since I posted the first one, but I was out of town and didn’t have a lot of time to write.
“We found another one,” James handed me a small glass bottle, sealed by green wax, “the wreck down there is from some really wealthy family. Like, really wealthy.”
I nodded, “Thank you, James. Tell the crew to begin preparing for nightfall. We’ve done enough for today.” He saluted lazily and left. In front of me, spread out across my desk, were dozens upon dozens of sheafs of paper. I popped open the bottle James gave me with an old letter opener, unrolling the aged paper. In emerald green ink, were the words: I wish I could afford more clothes. From, Lily
My heart aches for Lily, as it did for Emelaine, and June, and Caleb, and Henry, and all of the others who wished for more food, more freedom, more family. I wrote down Lily’s name and wish in the log and began to gather the small pages into a pile and into a box, the box went under my desk, thus dictating the end of my very long day.
As I emerged from my quarters, cheers erupted, led by James, who was holding a small cake. “Happy birthday, Alex,” he smiled. I laughed, blowing out the small circle of candles that bordered the cake. The rest of the crew cheered louder, jubilantly singing ‘Happy Birthday’. James enveloped me into a big, feathering tiny kisses on the crown of my head. I missed nights like these, parties and cake and terrible, terrible singing. Nights like these reminded me why I became who I was, forever sailing the seas, my sole purpose being to grant wishes made by the small children of the world.
The night went on for hours, until it was no longer night and the only ones awake were the fuel laborers and me, keeping our beloved ship afloat and on path for our next stop. “Good morning,” I greeted the sun as it rose from the horizon, just as exhausted as the rest of us.
I expected no answer, but received one anyways, “Good morning, Capt’n,” Chef Meyers groaned as they emerged from the sleeping quarters, “aren’t you supposed to be resting?”
I shrugged, “We’ll be greeting land soon, I can’t miss that. Plus, I’m the captain, Death will be the only one to slumber me.” Meyers laughed, muttering something under their breath as they retreated back to their kitchen.
As reluctant as I was to announce the sighting of our destination and wake my peacefully sleeping crew, it was impossible for me to bring the ship to an appropriate halt without them. From above, I witnessed dozens of sailors pour from the belly of the ship and run to their stations, ready for my command.
For a second I merely watched, admiring my crew and their evergreen dedication to wish granting. They were more than I could have ever asked for in a crew and it was made apparent when I gave the slightest of nods, and they hastily acted upon my silent orders.
We docked our ship in a grove of mangrove trees, and I snuck inland, my footsteps burdened by a heavy sack of fresh fruit, vegetables, and meats, with enough seeds to cover a mountain in growth. With only the small distant light of my wisher’s home to guide me, I navigated the harsh terrain, finally understanding why Mary wished for fewer nights without dinner. There was o way anyone could cultivate this unforgiving forest into a farm without any help.
I reached the quiet home, it’s inhabitants still sleeping with likely empty stomachs, just as the morning began to call itself afternoon. Carefully, I placed the sack of food on the doorstep, dropping Mary’s wish in the bag attached to a note from the crew:
“Dearest Mary,
It pains us to know that you and your family are suffering like this. We hope that this small donation of food will sufficiently feed your family until you are able to acquire more food.
Wish Granted, The Crew”
With that, I began to retreat back into the woods where I came from,but was stopped when the sound of a door squeaking open brought my movement to a halt. Out came a little girl with blonde braids, rubbing sleep from her brown eyes. She looked out into the woods, searching for the source of the noise she must have been awakened by. It pained me to not show myself and greet the child with a hug and a promise that everything would be alright now, but it was against the rules. So when her eyes met mine, I settled with a short nod, hoping that she would know what to do. Mary smiled, and I turned my back, disappearing into the forest.
After I left, Mary dragged the sack of food into her home, crying for her family to awaken and share her celebration that her oh, so desperate wish had been granted. That night, as she sat in front of her bed, whispering her prayers, the first she thanked was not God, but the person in the woods and their crew: the wish granters of legend that she was so close to giving up on.
Author’s Comments: I was binging The Good Place over the weekend and this sort of popped into my head when I was brainstorming.
Date Written: 03.18.22
Word Count: 550
She was regretting the choice she made last year to become a philosophy major. Sure, it was an easy degree, and she would be out of school by next year, but god, the lectures were boring. Today, her professor was discussing the idea of death, and under any other circumstances, it would be interesting. Except he decided to focus the majority of his lecture on some random scholar she had never heard of, who had written yet another book on his ideas. Just like every other lecture this past week, she was struggling to keep her eyes open, only lazily writing down notes when she saw the professor write something down on the whiteboard. She hadn't even opened the book they were talking about, it just wasn't worth the energy.
Down below, her professor called her name, causing her to force her eyes open and her back straight. “Can you tell me what the main theme of this book is?” the professor asked, the other students stared at her as she panicked in her seat. A beat of silence passed, and the professor sighed, disappointed. She laid her head on the book as he went back to teaching. She wished she was interested in the topic, in the entire concept of philosophical thinking, she really did, she just wasn’t. This entire major was just a stepping stone to the research project she was dying to work on: studying the behavior of humans when they were placed in a life or death situation. As the professor lectured on, she began to daydream about her project, imagining all the things she wanted to do, only returning to real life when the professor mentioned The Trolley Problem, “When we use such experiments as The Trolley Problem, this often times becomes a discussion about the idea of death itself. Is death permanent? Is death equal to the erasure of our very existence? Not just our physical form, but our spiritual form, our emotional one?”
She looked around and saw nearly every student on the edge of their seats, practically begging for the professor to continue. Why were they so invigorated by an idea that cannot be proven? She was a woman of science, not of literature or creativity, and found contemplating the metaphorical pointless. She had better things to do.
“What will happen?” A student next to her asked, “When we all die?”
She watched as the professor contemplated his answer for a long time, staring blankly at the book in front of him. Then, finally, “I assume that we will all be forgotten since there is no way to be remembered if none of us remain. It sounds morbid and bleak, but fortunately for us, that hopefully won’t happen while we are still on this Earth.”
“No,” the student corrected, “I’m not talking about the entirety of humanity, I’m talking about us, this class. What happens when we all die? Will people remember us?”
Once again, the professor became quiet. He picked up the book and stared at the first page. Only then did she finally crack open the text, mimicking the professor and flipping it to the first page: “In the end, we all will become stories. How they are told is up to those who are writing them: the subject themself.”
Welcome to the first installment of a series I am calling Empty Notebooks. The introduction post is here!
i recently put a collection of thirty poems on wattpad (i know, i know, but i hope to be of the better generation of wattpad writers, and this is the only way i know to get published)
if you would like to read it, here: https://www.wattpad.com/story/303605935?utm_source=ios&utm_medium=link&utm_content=share_writing&wp_page=create_story_details&wp_uname=chaoticallychill&wp_originator=uM5rXCJGXIMYmcGoOHHzjDfgjvxiqdAormb1BkgOjRFSeqnvcOBxUXZCCbpr13BxnFkTy0TWFqMR6WQygCchBb5qXYXPFfBoevwV1%2BsHjQb7xReEomElkCHZ%2B8A3E1Tz
my best poems i've written summer of 2021
[beware of sensitive topics]
i was on a plane ride recently and got inspired by the clouds that we were flying through! rb with your interpretations of who i could be talking to, and what i was trying to talk to them about! i’d love to hear your thoughts!
Write about a character who is up against impossible odds. They don’t have to succeed or fail, they just have to know that the odds are against them
TW// death, execution
Genre: YA Fiction, Action & Adventure
There was something chilling in the air. Perhaps it was the army that didn’t stop running. Or the cold winter air that frostbit our arms and cheeks. Or the rows and rows of dead bodies that filled tents and filled the camp with the stench of Death herself. We were on the losing side of the war, and that was how it was going to stay.
I passed rows upon rows of soldiers who used to stand tall, used to flat iron their uniforms and shine their shoes. It all went out the window within the last couple of weeks. Now, they slouched in their wrinkled shirts and muddy boots. I let them. It’s not like it would matter how we looked when we charged to our deaths.
A messenger approached me, folded paper in hand. It was the date of the surrender, and the date of my execution. I sighed and nodded my understanding to the messenger, who took my understanding and wrote out a response to the letter of damnation.
Surrender.
Execution.
One and then the other.
To them it was simply boxes to be checked.
To us it was our salvation from this hell of a war. Our end of days.
We welcomed the relief. Relief from our blistered feet and unhealed wounds. Relief from our dwindling supplies of weapons and food. Relief from fighting in a hopeless war.
We stood across from them. Officials that stood tall and proud in their shiny metals and smooth leather shoes. They were smiling, grateful and tired smiles. They had lost people too, they had fought hard as well. They had won this fight, fair and square. And maybe that was why I bowed to their leader, as low as my tired body would allow me, why I saluted to their general and shook his hand. They deserved this at the very least, for all I had done to them. I stood in front of thousands, their shouts deafening the speaker as he read out the charges set against me. Charges of war crimes and the murder of hundreds. Next to me, the daughters of the general were watching me, eyes of hatred in one, eyes of pity in the other. I could not tell which one I preferred. Next to them was their mother, and next to her was another woman, face cloaked in black. The wife of the head of defense. I had sliced his throat in the second fight, seventeen months ago. It was impossible not to whisper my apologies to everyone I had harmed in my path to victory, the men, women, and children I had slaughtered in my fight to the throne. I knew they would not accept my sympathy, who would?
The speaker finished, and guards led me forward to the front of the stage. I could not bear to look that the stage any longer, could not force myself to watch as grieving onlookers spat in my direction, screaming words I dared not repeat.
A man in a black hood approached me, burlap hood in his hand. I felt the rough material sheath my face and the thick rope draped over my shoulders. The cheers were louder now, I could hear smiles in their faces. I was smiling too, unbeknownst to all. I was happy to allow them to live in their blissful peace. The rope was tight against my neck, then tighter, then tighter. And before I knew it, I was holding the hand of my wife again. Before I knew it, I was home.
There was a calm in the city, unlike anything I was ever used to. The sun had set long ago and I was left in the dark to wander the damp streets. Few others dared do the same, and only the brave ventured out alone.
It’s not like I had a choice, there was no one that I trusted to take these supplies to my workshops other than me. That was the rule around here. Trust no one but yourself and you just might make it through the night with all your extremities. But rules don’t always guarantee the idea of safety.
Bright lights and small conversation deafened the silence gently, but only enough to calm my nerves as I crossed an empty street by an illegal apothecary. That was the way things were around here, no one had the money to afford real medicine, so they went somewhere else. They tried to lower the prices, of food, of medicine, but the state debt was too high, and they couldn’t spare a single penny, even if it separated the unfortunate living from the grateful dead. I couldn’t complain, the higher the prices for the things we need, the more I profited. And I needed to profit.
The scraps of metal wore painfully into my shoulder, digging through the thick leather shoulder pads that were supposed to prevent this very situation. I grunted, and switched the weight over to my other shoulder, noting to myself to reinforce the leather that had surely worn through with time.
My heartbeat slowed as the bright neon of the sign of my shop came into view, the dark form of my door slowing my breathing.
I opened the door to the cheered whirrs of machines booting up, smiling as I greeted each one while they came up to wave hello, or tug on my pant legs. Setting down the metal, I grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and got to work on the leg I was supposed to be making for a family friend. He had lost his leg in the war several years ago and couldn’t afford to get a new one after someone won his government-issued prosthetic in a game of poker. Prosthetics were my specialty, so I had offered to make a new one for him, not knowing just how problematic it would be. At first it had been convincing him that I could do it, trying to calm his fear of it getting stolen again. Then it was getting the materials, not many scrap yards offered the right plastic or metals anymore and trading had turned out to be a nightmare inside of this nightmare. Then, it was figuring out a way to transport it to him, officers weren’t keen on arresting scrapworkers, seeing as they bought from us as well, but it was frowned upon to let us go about our business, doing the less than legal. But still, there had been a calm in the city. No police raids or protesters that smashed windows and cried for equality rights and fair treatment. It was unsettling, it was hair-raising and breathtakingly unnatural.
No one greeted me in the workshop, everyone else was asleep, trying to wish away the nighttime and the horrors that came with it. I was set to do the very same thing. I just needed to put this stuff away.
The locker was small, big enough to put a small project in, but still too small for it to be used as a real supplies locker. I stuffed the metal in, leaning against the door to keep it shut. Sighing in relief, I sat down at the table, scarred with projects gone right and wrong. Outside, rain became to fall. I opened the bottle of water, and opened a window as much as I dared, pressing my forehead against the thick glass and watched people run past me, torn coats and holed umbrellas weakly protecting them from the downpour. Distantly, shouts broke out, no doubt coming from homeless shelters closing their doors and putting up full capacity signs in the faces of desperate families and war-rattled veterans.
So much for a calm in the city, I thought, returning to the table. I finished the water and climbed the stairs to the living quarters, careful not to wake anyone. I fell onto my bed, still clothed in my greasy overalls and soot-stained shirt, and fell asleep, joining my peers in dreaming away this nightmare that we called home.
