Prompt #112
Get Out
Good morning!
Special Notes
I’m at a wedding this weekend and will not be able to respond for a few days. (The invite said “no black or gray—think festive spring colors, floral prints, light fabrics...” Not one thing in my closet matches those specifications. I finally bought a dress that would look perfect on a six-year-old. Wish me luck!)
Also, a sincere thank you to those of you who requested I re-open a payment option for this Substack. I have done so—though everything here remains free. The payment option represents a gratuity and nothing more, no special posts, etc. Also, no guarantee that I will post here weekly, although it seems I’m doing so (for now)! Again, thank you for the push to open up to payments once again. So very kind of you! No one should feel the least amount of pressure. I do not keep track of who pays and who does not. xoxox
Back to regular programming—
This won’t come as much of a surprise to anyone who knows me in real life, but I’m what you might call an anxious person. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve managed to get less anxious, thank God. But there was a time when jumping out of my skin was the status quo around here. I tried many, many ways to calm down, and some of them helped a bit, but nothing really did the trick. Anxiety just loved me too much to go away for long. We were best buddies; nothing could tear us apart. Not even klonopin.
One time, I was nervous about flying somewhere. Flying used to be my greatest nemesis and in order to beat it into submission (which never happened) and keep the airplane safely afloat, I was required to say multiple mantras and read all kinds of prayers and touch one shoulder this way and then another way, and close my eyes and count to 1,000—well, you get the point. If you were ever on the same flight as me, you can thank me for not letting that plane fall from the sky. It was an exhausting job, but I pulled through for all of you.
Anyway, as I was saying, one day I was nervous about flying and my friend Richard rolled his eyes at me in his adorable Richard fashion. Then he gave me one of his famous Richard sighs and said, “Mary, the day you stay home because you’re afraid of what’s out there, is the day a meteor falls on your house.”
People, believe it or not, this has been one of the most helpful bits of advice anyone has ever given me. Did it make me less nervous? No, of course not. If anything, it made me more nervous. Up until then, I’d given little to no thought about the possibility of a meteorite falling through the roof and squashing the living daylights out of me. But now, thanks to Richard, I saw that no where is safe, may as well get on the stupid airplane, shit happens everywhere and mostly when you’re not ready for it.
Is this leading to a prompt? Yes, it is. Patience, grasshopper.
Recently, a meteorite fell through the roof of a house near Houston. According to the New York Times: Meteorite Crashes Through Roof of House Near Houston
“No one was injured, but a woman was startled on Saturday when a meteorite pierced the roof of her home, ricocheted off the floor and struck a bedroom ceiling.”
Oh, and here's another one: Meteorite Crashes Through Roof in Germany After Fiery Light Show
The fireball from space was spotted by a network of sky-watching cameras in Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Germany.
What is going on, people???
Well, you can probably come up with your own prompt about a meteor, but here’s one I wrote for you:
TODAY’S PROMPT
Write a story about something drastic happening. Go ahead, let it be a meteor falling through the roof!
Start your story with the drastic thing. Just launch right in! Then let us know the upshot, the aftermath.
This prompt asks you to write something thrilling. So give it a shot. Thrill me.
That’s it. That’s the whole prompt.
See you next time!
Note: Posted stories of more than 400 words have little chance of being read by yours truly.
It’s a bird!
No.
It’s a plane!
No, it isn’t.
It’s, ah Superman!
Don’t be an ass, Wilbur. It’s a meteor.
A meteor, you mean..?
Burning a hole in the sky, headed in our direction.
Can’t be.
I’m afraid we are the dinosaurs now, Wilbur.
There was a moment of silence.
But our plans. The party tomorrow. The children.
I’m sorry. These things happen.
Well, what is going to happen, exactly?
You see the meteor don’t you. The burning ball, getting larger all the time.
Of course I see it.
Well it’s going to hit the earth just about here, Wilbur, right where we’re standing, and keep on going, deep, deep down.
That sounds like a death sentence.
It’s nothing new, is it?
Well. I don’t know. How much time do we have?
Does that matter?
It matters to me all right.
Counting the seconds, are we? Cutting it that close, after all this time?
Well, yes, of course. Everything second counts.
There was another moment of silence. Then . . .
Blood was everywhere. The continuing carnage was an unexpected counterpoint to the pale florals the invitation had sweetly, strongly suggested. How had the lions escaped their bounds? Mary expected to read lengthy analyses in the papers, on the news, flooding the socials. She was surprised to be thinking all this amid the terrifying sounds of massacre below. But she wasn’t on the lawn anymore. That tree had saved her. There was no hope for the ones in summery party dresses, who were the first targets. Same for the men in pale linen, with their slippery new loafers never meant for athletics. But Mary, clad in dusky tones because she just wasn’t going to buy a new wardrobe for one occasion, who’d finally, recklessly, decided to wear what she wanted, had jumped onto a table under a sheltering tree as the slaughter began. She’d leaped for a low branch and clung to the tree trunk, found a handhold and started climbing. Now, nestled among the leaves, safe in the crook of sturdy branches, she heard far-off sirens as a backdrop to the screams. Mary looked away. Too late for most. Still, she’d probably need help getting down.