First Light
I found this PDF of 365 writing prompts on-line. This morning, I hit 314 words on the prompt “First Light”. Yesterday, I posted the first part of a short story I’m trying to write. The story started as an eight-minute writing exercise. As I get more done, I’ll update the PDF at the Google Drive link.
Crawl
“Shh.”
My baby mewled again. He was hungry. I was hungry. We had to have food, which meant I had to crawl. All around us, total darkness pressed in. Squatting next to my son, I could feel the rough wall against my back. I knew the ceiling was just inches above head. I had to crawl.
I wrapped my son tighter in his blanket and then slid him into the hole I’d dug in the wall near the floor. He would be safe there. Scared, hungry, alone, but safe. Steeling myself against his cries, I did what I had to do. I crawled.
Through the blackness, feeling my way along with my shoulders. Left at the first intersection. Right at the next. When the floor turned from stone to loose earth, I knew it was time to dig. I couldn’t use the same hole as last time. They’d be watching. Each time I had to go farther, leave my son alone longer.
Dirt and stone rained down on me, sliding across my face, as my fingers dug into the ceiling above me. I felt something hard, the edge of an oblong box. It was heavy, and there was little room to slide it, so I changed the direction of my dig. A few minutes later, I squeezed around it, having hollowed out a large enough space, and so I continued to worm my upward. My tongue was coated with dirt, but I didn’t spit. I was making enough noise as it was.
Then, abruptly, a clump of earth and grass fell past me, and I could see first light. I could smell the watchers. One of them coughed. Another said something. I didn’t understand their language, but what he said made the other laugh. Their guard was down.
Fools. My nails could claw through their guts easier than they clawed through the ground.
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