Prompt Me, Prompt Me - 2. Week 2: Aug 8 to Aug 25, 2019

Day 8

8/18/2019

Prompt: screeching

The wailing was getting to near ear-bleeding levels, making Michael press his hands over his ears, curling up tighter into a ball. He could remember a time when the wails weren’t ringing in his ears, when they weren’t there at all. He could remember the quiet that had surrounded him before the other rooms were filled with guests.

But now they were all wailing, crying. Filling his head with sound as he rocked and whimpered. Someone stared at him from the doors window, the brown eyes impassively watching him as he twitched and whimpered in a corner. They disappeared behind a cover, leaving him to the sounds that were driving into his mind and his sanity.

“Why can’t they just shut up?” he whispered into the air, rocking harder as he pressed his hands to his ears. The move helped to muffle the sounds a bit more, but still the wailing slipped through his hands and into his senses. “Why do they torment me so?”

The doctor sighed as he shook his head as he looked to Alex, the tattooed male slumping and shaking his own head. “He had to be moved back into the padded rooms?” he asked the doctor.

The woman flipped through the pages of the personal report on her patient. “Yes. He started to complain about wailing again,” she said. “We know from previous times until this goes by, it’s best to put him in a padded room with a comfortable bed. He will drink his juice, milk and water as normal, but food right now is strictly things that he can put together himself. Sandwiches, pasta salads before they’re constructed. And he has to watch the person cooking for him if it is a pasta salad.”

Alex groaned. “He had issues with our mother at the end there. She was starting to lose her mind, I think. Screaming a lot,” he said. “I was gone for a good chunk of that time, working and going to college. It means that I missed a lot of the issues.”

The doctor hummed and made notes on the charts, nodding. “He said that the wailing started after they buried her. You did an exhumation correct? Do we know why she would be attached to him?” she asked.

Alex rubbed at his head as they walked down the hall towards the main area. “I’m not sure. And yes, we did. We found her body like you’d expect after three weeks in the heat under the ground,” he stated. “But from what Michael has told me, she talked about being stalked by a creature and that it was Michael who called it to haunt her.”

“Was that disproven?” she asked, still taking notes.

“Several times. By me. By Michael himself. He’s a null-void magically. He can feel it, can’t cast it. Not a drop. It works on him if someone else does the magic, but it wears off in a few days depending on what the magic is. Magical charms last longer. But back on subject: three priests, two witches, and even a chaos mage have all said that he didn’t bring anything to haunt her. And that she wasn’t being attacked by anything but her own mind,” he said. He rubbed at his head. “We’re working on doing a full exorcism, but there is a queue. We need to get the Catholic one done first before a blessing from our grandmother’s family.”

“Native American’s and Italian correct?” she asked, Alex nodding. “The blessing will do what?”

“Hopefully convince or push her to go to the other side,” Alex said, shrugging a shoulder. “I’m hoping that it’ll help her rest without trying to rest. But he needs to come out of this state.”

“It’ll be a week. Minimum,” she warned, Alex pulling out his phone and texting his Catholic connection. “But he should be good for it in a couple of weeks. I’ll call you the moment that it looks as if he’s coming out of it.”

“Thank you for your help and your care for my brother,” Alex said, the doctor nodding and leaving to let him walk out of the care facility. She had no doubt that the young man would take care of his brother in the best way possible.

Day 9

8/19/2019

Prompt: Pasta

He was absolutely fascinated with the way the cook was twisting and laying out the dough. The man, who looked to be well into his early fifties but moved spryly for an old man, had taken a large mound of dough and started to knead it. He then started to careful twist and pull it, folding it over and over, coating it in a special flour that didn’t dry the dough out but kept the strands from sticking.

The whole process went on for a good ten minutes as the strands became thinner and longer with each jerk and pull. The maker then cut them into the proper length, placing half of the noodles into one of the large pots, the other half into another. A slightly younger woman came to help him, the two lifting the metal baskets in and out of the water, shaking it and watching the cooking process.

Once the noodles were done just right, they took them and placed them into the various bowls that were going to head out to the customers in just minutes.

Shifting on his bar stool, he smiled as the woman took over the process, pouring broth into each bowl quickly, not wasting a drop before adding the individual toppings, making sure each one was heated in the pot of broth if it needed it. He was absolutely fascinated by the way the two made the bowls of soup and noodles so quickly, remembering how each dish was customized. He noticed that they rarely used the screens that held each order with any customization.

She placed the bowls down in front of those who were sitting at the bar and then placed the rest of the bowls onto two trays to be carried out to the restaurant proper.

Snapping his chopsticks, and saying “Itadakimasu”, he swirled the handmade noodles around in the broth before pulling a bite to his mouth to slurp it up. When he had gotten to Japan, it had gone against everything he had been taught to slurp his noodles, but he was now happy to do so.

Eating every bit of his food, he wiped his mouth, paid the price asked for the bowl and promised to be back the next day. The man was back at making fresh noodles for the soups, a new batch of customers wandering in during their late lunch breaks.

Day 10

8/20/2019

Prompt: forgiveness, stool, football

He slid onto the bar stool and played with the bottle of beer, idly noting that a football game was playing on one of the TV’s. The sound was just enough to fill the area around him without distracting him too much from his thoughts. He had found his girlfriend in bed with her best friend nearly a week ago. They hadn’t noticed him since he had gone home to get some paperwork for his work which had worked for him.

But in that moment, he was trying to think about what he wanted. If his girlfriend wanted a woman, he wouldn’t have minded if she had said that she wanted a poly-relationship. He had been in one before with his ex-boyfriend and ex-girlfriend back in senior year of high school. That relationship had lasted up until he was a year from graduating college, and they had parted ways.

He would have let her find a girlfriend and found himself a boyfriend without an issue.

But she hadn’t done that. She had gone behind his back with her “best friend”, leaving him to wonder just what else she had done. Staring at his phone, he opened his contacts list and sent a text to her brother, who knew her well enough to know if she had fucked around on him before.

Drinking some of his beer, he watched as her brother started to respond to him, the text popping up that what he was about to say was a long response. Sighing, he waited for the text to appear. He was done with his beer by the time that the full message came through, a new one placed before him along with his steak fries with a side of bacon-cheese sauce.

Opening the return, he dipped a fry in the sauce and chewed as he read. Some of it he already knew, that she was fucking her best friend, but some of it was new. The amount of time she had been fucking the other woman, how many other female lovers she had had in the time that they had been dating.

The fact that she really liked sex and would get as much of it as she could whenever she was free from her responsibilities for the day. And if that meant getting fucked during her lunch hour by her best friend, she would do it. Or with whoever was free at the time. She didn’t care as long as it was a woman.

He read that she had done with her other boyfriends. She had done the opposite with her girlfriends and had done so since high school where she learned what sex was.

Sighing, he settled in too drink and think about what he wanted to do. Looking up, he let himself get lost in the football game, enjoying the action. As the game wrapped up, he had decided that he would forgive his girlfriend.

But he was still going to leave her.

Pushing up and off the stool, he paid the last of his tab and wandered off to find a cab. He would crash at a hotel, leaving his car in the parking garage of his work, take a shower in the employee showers. He had a change of clothes in his car so it wouldn’t hurt him any.

After work, he would pack up his soon to be ex’s stuff and send her off.

Day 11

8/21/2019

Prompt: Dare

Clenching her flashlight, Karla grumbled under her breath as she carefully walked through the old museum. She knew that it was kept up, but it didn’t have any kind of security on it or around it. Thus, it made it easy to sneak into the building.

And her friends had dared her to go into the museum while it was closed and the guards were in their shack before their rounds. She shuddered as she passed a manikin, ignoring the fact that it was painted to look human. Karla stopped and stared at the manikin, using her small pen light to really take in the looks.

“You look a lot like that one teacher that fucked off during my fourth grade field trip to this joint,” she hissed at it. The brown hair was tinted red and carefully curled up into the proper hairstyle of the late nineteen-twenties. Shaking her head, she continued through the museum, seeing all of the work that was being put in to update everything.

She dodged around the work for the electricity lines that were being replaced in the furniture area and headed into the area for the founding of the town. “Small towns, lots of history,” she muttered, shining her light onto the signs that pointed to the various spots. “Looking for the families. Ah, down Hall B,” she breathed, turning towards the proper hall and walking around the flooring that was being laid.

Finding the room that she wanted, she brushed off the feeling of being watched by the manikin’s that stood in the room. She knew that they had finished with the branching ‘halls’ which were just very large rooms that had been set up with moveable walls to separate out sections of the display.

Walking around the starting wall that was covered in information about the way the inside was set up and the display itself, she paused long enough to look at the map. She was looking for the wax figure of the wife of one of the founders of their town. She had been a beautiful woman who was said to have been the bastard child of an Italian man who had an affair with her married mother.

Considering they had pictures of her the man who had been called her father, and she didn’t look a lick like him didn’t put those thoughts to rest.

Her friends had not only dared Karla to come into the museum, but they had dared her to take a picture of the wax figure of the woman. The figure had been created by the woman’s own descendant nearly fifty years before and fixed twice. The first time when a fire had gotten to close to her wax body, melting part of her body into a deformed lump. The second had been after a particularly nasty earthquake had shaken a piece of the roof loose and it had landed on her.

That earthquake was also the reason why the museum had been closed for close to a year while the family who owned it got it updated finally.

But it was said that inside of the wax body was her actual skeleton. That the descendant that had created the wax figurine had stolen her skeleton from her grave and used it as the base instead of the normal wooden base they were known to use. There were even those who said if you took a picture of her, or went to see her body, that you would end up a wax figure yourself, her soul reaching out to take revenge on those who dared to disturb her.

Karla snorted and walked to where her display was. She took her time, reading the history of the woman, the theories of who her father had truly been and the fact that her crypt was very empty. How the family wondered what happened to her body since the crypt had still been sealed when they had opened it. She took in the jewelry, the few journals that they could find, and some of her personal cookbooks.

Finished with the display, Karla walked up to the wax figure, shining her light on the face. The woman had large black eyes with equally black hair that was a fall of silk. Her hair had been carefully pulled back into a half uptwist, leaving most of it to fall. The wax that had been used to make her had been carefully colored to a lovely olive color, and a layer of specialized oil laid on the wax to keep it supple and colored right every year keeping it to the right shade.

She was wearing a reproduction of her favorite dress. It was a deep red color that fell in careful layers with a simple corset that accented the fact that she had a naturally tiny waist. There was just the slightest hint of of a pointed boot peeking out from under the full skirt, the color a matching red.

“How she got her leather to dye right, I will never know,” Karla said, holding up her phone and opening the camera. She carefully centered the picture and took a pic. Lowering her phone down to look at the picture, she missed the step of a foot behind her.

An hour later, a guard walked into the room with his partner, none of them allowed to step into Hall B without a partner and headed to the back of the room. They checked to make sure that the manikins were all there before finding Karla’s phone.

Wondering what was going on, they checked the last that that had been done on the phone and found the picture of the wax figure. They shared a look and missed the fact that there was a new wax figure in the next section over that looked a lot like the now missing Karla.

After all, it was well known that the family often came in and changed things around late at night. Including adding new manikin’s or displays.

Day 12

8/22/2019

Prompt: Exuberant

The plants were in full bloom. They had taken to the soil mixture that Rose had used for them like an exuberant child who had been given free reign in a toy story. Splashes of gold and purples mixed in with the normal reds and pale oranges of the roses that were planted last spring.

Smiling, Lex sat back and stared at the vegetable patch that he had been taking the squash that was ripe from. Rose walked around another vegetable patch, pushing a wheelbarrow that had three full grown watermelons in it along with several melons that he wasn’t sure about the name of.

“Are we stocking our freezer full of fruit and veggies?” Lex asked, eyeing the wheelbarrow before eyeing his own basket full of squash.

Rose chuckled. “Yep. There’s a reason why I like vegetable patches. Outside of the ones that we don’t have the room to grow ourselves.” He put the wheelbarrow close to the back porch so that he could heft the fruit into the kitchen. “I know that you’re already planning on making preserves from most of the fruit and only letting me have enough of it to hold for holiday cooking.”

Lex smiled and shrugged. “Got to put that pressure cooker that we got for our engagement gift,” he drawled. “It helps to do the preserves. And I know that you like using them in your smoothies. As it is, we have so much fruit that I think we’ll have more than enough fruit for both preserves and frozen,” he said.

Rose hummed as he eyed the various hanging baskets, the bushes that lined the brick walls around their properties, and the single tree that wouldn’t grow much bigger than what it was. Sighing, he nodded. “This is true. I might look into getting one of those specially bred orange trees. The lemon tree is going to give us a lot of juice.”

“Just means we’ll have a lot of lemonade year-round,” Lex said, turning back to checking the vegetable patches. “This new soil works well.”

“They feast upon the decomposed bodies of their own friends and family,” Rose drawled, heading in with the two melons in his hands. Lex cackled and shook his head.

Day 13

8/23/2019

Prompt: Anger

It wasn’t all heat and need to hurt.

Not for him.

It was a cold ball in his chest that grew, numbing him from the inside out. He could do nothing but watch as the ice rolled through him.

She was smiling sweetly up at a man, knowing that he would do nothing. Or at least in her head, that was how it always went. She flirted, fucked and tossed men away before going back home to the man that she was engaged to. He would sit there while she did whatever she wanted and dealt with the fact that she liked to do it.

He growled and stood up. The anger was still there, ice cold and buried deep in his chest, but he knew that if he didn’t leave, something would happen. And someone would end up in jail or in the hospital.

He didn’t want either of those things to happen so he packed up and left, glad that he had ignored his need to drink so that he could drive home. He knew that his girl would find her way home after she was done. Usually he would take her home, but sometimes he got drunk enough to take a cab home and she would drive the car home.

Climbing into the car, he found that as he drove, the cold ice of anger thawed and became a deep thoughtfulness. He found a story that was open all night and pulled into the parking lot, heading inside. He walked out with a new doorknob, top lock, and a chain lock, enough boxes to pack up his entire apartment if he needed to, a giant roll of bubble wrap, and several rolls of packing tape. He also had various easy foods to fuel him, some of the best coffee he could afford, a brand-new coffee pot, and creamer.

He drove home, hauled everything up with the help of the night maintenance man. The guy was nice enough to put the new top lock, knob and chain lock on while he arranged the things in the living room. With a new lock on the door, he closed it after the guy left, locked the door and turned to packing up his girlfriend’s things.

He paused long enough to send her a text to find a couch to crash on for the night and that he would text her about when to come get her stuff. He was done being her doormat.

He was going to break free and be happy with his life for once.

Smirking, he started with her clothes, folding and placing them into bags to place into a box. The cold ball of anger was unraveling in his chest, leaving him feel warm and calm for the first time in many years.

Day 14

8/24/2019

Prompt: Would you come to my funeral?

The question caught him off guard. Looking up from the dishes that he was doing, Alex eyeballed Kran with a frown, the other man carefully drying a grill spatula. “What?” he asked.

“I asked if you would come to my funeral,” Kran replied.

Alex sighed and dunked his hands into the hot water, making sure that he had gathered all the silverware in the water. “I would hope that I wouldn’t have to come to your funeral for a long time,” he replied. Kran just gave him a look. “But yes, I would go.” He dunked the two-pronged fork into the water, scrubbing it. “Why are you asking me this?” He dropped the fork onto the silverware pile on the other side of the sink.

Kran hummed. “Got some odd results. I’m heading to see a cancer doc,” he told him. “Brandly is going to be there since they want to take quite a bit of blood,” he continued.

“Want some food for after?” Alex asked, tilting his head. Kran smiled at his friend and nodded. “You gonna be off for a couple of days?”

“Both of us are. The docs want me to rest and not have to worry about losing blood on the job after they get it,” he said.

Alex hummed and nodded. “Yeah, I can see that,” he said. He finished washing the rest of the dishes and rinsed them off. Kran hummed and took most of the silverware, drying it off. He looked to his friend, drying his hands off with the dish towel. “You won’t die any time soon. It’s not your time. If you are, something is messing with you and needs to be put down,” he said, pushing away from the sink.

Kran smiled at his friend as he left the kitchen. He trusted the other man enough that if he said that it wasn’t time for him, it wasn’t time for him. Shaking his head, he put away the last of the silverware and followed after Alex, finding him putting together a small blessing bag at his working alter. He took with an amused smile, sliding it over his head and heading home.