Holidays are wonderful lazy times.... Um - and so, sorry about the delay in putting up this week's prompts.

We are always thankful to Comicfan for giving us two more wonderful prompts - I hope you might write a response to at least one of them, and please be sure to share with the rest of the community in the Writing Prompts forum.

Prompt 196 – Creative
Tag – The Billion Dollar decision.
The future has seen too many children being born with either birth defects or low intelligence. In addition there has been a decline in males and females who function correctly sexually. The world government has taken to sterilizing both males and females found to have any sort of deficiency in their chromosomes. When dragged in for a checkup your dna is found to be coded grade A. No mutations, signs of cancer, heart disease, and other major illness do not appear in your family records. You have been chosen as breeding stock. If you agree you will never have to work again but your sexual reproductive parts no longer belong to you. You will have every luxury ever created, but you basically will live in a gilded cage. Do you become government breeding stock or take sterilization and choose who your partners will be?

Prompt 197 – Creative
Tag – Photographic Proof
You have a bet with your best friend where the winner gets what they have wanted for a long time from the other. The bet hinges on getting photographic proof though. What was the bet and what did you have to take a photo of?

From last week's prompts, we have a great response from Asmita, a relatively new community member. To the prompt #194 of "You were found unconscious on board a boat that can carry about sixty people. The boat is empty but there are clothing and things belonging to many different people. The police question you to find out what happened. Why were you on the boat and where are the rest of the passengers?" she came up with the following:

“Wha…what happened?” I sit up slowly taking in the sight around me. I’m in the middle of the main deck on the ship Santa Maria. There are full sets of clothes,purses, and shattered martini glasses strewn upon the hardwood. It looks like a scene from a cheesy horror-alien abduction movie. It just seems like a full deck of people just vanished, all at once, without a trace. I get up on my feet and wince. My head is throbbing and when I reach my hand around to the back of my head I feel a large bump forming. Groaning audibly at this unwelcome surprise, I start to head back to my room. The thought occurs to me that I have no idea how I got there in the first place. I had been stone cold sober and in bed no less. Not fully dressed on the floor if the main deck. I start muttering to myself as I make my way back to my cabin. “Stupid boat. This was supposed to relaxing; take me away from problems, not create new ones. I wonder if I have any aspirin to-“ Suddenly I spin around catching a fast movement in the corner of my eye. I stare for a moment down the corridor. The hallway is carpeted in red fabric while the doors are a shiny polished oak. One of the doors is open a crack, but there’s no chance I’m going to follow a stranger into a dark room alone. Hell no; I’ve watched way too many horror movies to fall into that easy trap. “Hello?” I shout. “Is anyone there?” When no reply comes I start to get agitated. “You’d better not be playing games with me. I am at the end of my rope and losing patience. Did you do this to me? Get me up on the main deck, and set up that little macabre scene?” After a long minute I turn in a huff and stomp away towards my room. What I don’t see is the door slowly creaking open behind me and a shadowy figure swiftly exiting.

 

Upon arrival to my cabin, I flop down on the bed and stare at the ceiling. It’s time to think this through logically. There’s at least one other person, albeit sketchy person, on the boat, and the rest are probably just still in their cabins. There’s no reason to panic. The more I think about it the harder it is to squish that uneasy feeling in my gut. After a couple more minutes I just decide to go speak with the Captain. Surely he must know what’s going on. I swing my legs over the side of my bed and glance at the door. Hey, didn't I close that? That’s as far as I get before a hand holding a damp cloth covers my mouth and nose. I struggle and take panicked breaths, but that just makes unconsciousness come faster. As I fade away into the darkness, all I can see is a tall figure standing over me with an unreadable look in his eyes.

 

“Hey, wake up”.

 

”Is she conscious yet?”

 

“Not quite”.

 

”Well hurry up, I don’t have all day and I need to find out what the hell happened.”

 

A bright light floods my eyes, and I flinch away from the intensity of it. The room slowly comes into focus and I realize I have no idea where I am. The walls are made of grey cracked cement. There don’t appear to be any windows, and the only light source is a small black desk lamp sitting in the middle of a grey steel table. I look down at myself and gasp. I’m sitting in a chair that my hands and feet are cuffed to. I start to writhe in panic, but that only make them cut into the sensitive flesh of my wrists and ankles.

 

“Aww knock it off. There’s no way to get out so stop struggling so ya don’t hurt yourself”.

 

Needless to say those weren't the most comforting words on the planet, and it didn’t help that they came from behind my head so I couldn’t see who was speaking. I can hear footsteps coming around, and in fear of what’s going to happen next I squeeze my eyes shut. The footsteps stop directly in front of me. I slowly peak out from under my lashes and my jaw drops. Standing in front of me is a stereotypical, overweight small town cop with a cowboy hat no less. I must be dreaming, this can’t actually be happening. He places his hands on the arms of the chair, leans in slowly, and says “Now, why don’t you tell me everything you know”.

 

Sitting in my jail cell hours later, I silently weep to myself. Not only could I not remember anything that happened on that boat, I was also their main suspect. All of the passengers had disappeared without a trace so there were no other witnesses. Apparently when going through my possessions I had several of the other passenger’s valuables, with my fingerprints on them. If I had done it I wouldn’t be stupid to leave fingerprints on everything but they still didn’t believe me. When I tried to tell them it was that man, they said I had experienced a psychotic break, and that menacing man had never even existed. They rationalized it as saving my mind from knowing the truth and the cloth as a way to accept the mental and physical exhaustion of doing something horrific like this. I felt lost and didn’t know what I could do to prove my innocence.

 

After agonizing over it for hours I started to think…maybe they were right. I couldn’t remember anything from the last couple of days, or what the man even looked like. I looked down at my hands and studied them closely. Was I even capable of something like that? Staring a small scar across the lifeline on my palm I had received as a child, I got lost in a train of thought. I heard screaming somewhere, and I snapped out of the semi-trance I had fallen in. Geez I really spaced out for a minute there. I look down, and the tears start to slowly slide down my face. I close my eyes and turn away, silently walking toward the glowing burnt orange sunset. In my wake I leave behind the leveled police station and the countless empty sets of uniforms, handguns, and shattered coffee mugs.

With this great start, I'd love to see where her story goes. And that's the wonderful thing about these prompts, so many people can start with the same initial concept and go in so many different and fascinating directions.