forum Posting my stories from my creative writing club prompts

Started August 31, 2023 by @ElderGod-yellowqueen

tune

I just joined a creative writing club and I wanna give my writing pieces a little love based off of the prompts I was given in my session. Feel free to critique it or give your opinions :D

Life was pretty normal. I got up in the morning, went to school, went to swim practice, and then went home for the day. Weekends were reserved for meets and resting. Everything was laid out and exactly where it needed to be. It was a fairly normal town, where everyone focused a little too much on football games and not enough for, well, everything else.
Today was the same as any other. It was a Saturday and there were no swim meets today, and I decided I didn’t want to stay at home and sit on my couch all day and do nothing. So long as I didn’t exert myself, I should be just fine. So I called up two of my close friends and asked if they wanted to go exploring in the woods behind the park. Now, the park was where all the children tended to play, but the woods behind, that’s where all the teenagers would go to hang out and party and do things they didn’t want their parents to find out about. Even if it was common knowledge.
So here we are, walking around the woods and avoiding the more…soiled parts by the party last night. My friend, Kevin, wondered a bit further off the trail than anyone normally went. Out of view but not so far away that he wouldn’t be able to call out to us. He was gone for longer than Ava or I had been expecting, but we didn’t think anything of it. Until the time kept ticking and he still didn’t show.
“Kevin!” I called out down the path he had taken.
No reply. So I tried again. Still no answer. Ava and I began to get worried then. So we both headed down the not-so-path, following the indents of his footprints. We kept calling out and looking for him, but there was no sign. Until a mop of curly black hair popped out from behind a giant boulder and scared the shit out of both of us.
“Kevin, where the hell have you been?” Ava all but demands of him.
“It’s easier if I show you.”
Ava and I looked at each other. We had no idea what that meant. We weren’t even sure we should trust him. He was a teenage boy and he did like to scare us or otherwise be a creep. But he was pretty insistent so despite the warning bells, we followed him.
The boulder, it turns out, was not just a boulder. There had been a door that had been covered with moss and vines and had all but hidden the door. We were already in shock as it was. Using our phone’s flashlights, we lit the corridor now open to us. It was a set of stairs.
“I swear to god if someone is waiting down there to kill us Kevin, I’m going to kill you,” I muttered under my breath.
“Trust me, no one has been down here for years,” Kevin assured.
I was not assured.
Despite the rising anxiety, we descended down the stairs. Kevin going first, of course. If anyone was going to pop out and kill us, Kevin should go first for convincing us to come down here with him.
The stairs seemed to go on forever. Down and down and down we went. I thought there was no end in sight, which was why Kevin must have been gone for so long. Until finally, finally, we could see the end. What the end was, I had no idea. Ava was clutching my free hand at this point. She looked as anxious as I felt.
“Don’t be such a scaredy cat,” Kevin said in a sing-song voice as he looked back at the both of us. His feet touched the bottom first, and when no one tried to kill him, Ava and I stepped down with him.
“Listen, I don’t like the dark. Or tight spaces.” Ava was looking pointedly at Kevin. “You do know this.”
He waved her off. “It won’t be tight for much longer. Come on.”
I wasn’t sure if that was reassuring or not.
Maybe Kevin was the killer and we were his unknowing prey.
I hadn’t known what to expect when I walked through that boulder door but it certainly hadn’t been this. The hallway opened up into a large room. It was more of a cavern really, the walls and ceiling had been carved out of stone. And what lay in the center was known other than a medieval dungeon. Or at least what looked like it based upon the instruments still laid out, rusted beyond relief.
The rust was likely due to the moist smell in the air. There was water somewhere, but I couldn’t pinpoint exactly where. I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out.
“Holy shit,” I drew out, walking into the entrance of the room and turning around. I took in everything. “What the hell is this doing here? I didn’t know we had a dungeon under us.”
“I don’t think anyone does. Or, if the authorities know, they’re keeping it hush. But I didn’t find any signs that anyone’s been down here in a long time.” Kevin sounded a little too enthusiastic about finding this place.
This was a dungeon. People had been murdered and tortured here.
“Um, guys.” Ava’s voice pulled my attention. I moved over to where she was standing in front of an open cell. How it got open, I wasn’t so sure, because the skeleton inside certainly hadn’t opened. “Do you think that’s a real skeleton?”
“I don’t think I want to find out,” I almost whimpered. I did not do dead things. I refused to dissect the frog in biology. What made anyone think I could handle a possible skeleton?
There was a loud crash and we all turned around, Kevin included.
“What was that?”
“I don’t know. And let’s not find out.”
And just like that, all three of us were racing toward the door. I had never run faster in my life. Up the stairs and out of the boulder. I didn’t stop running until we got all the way home.
We made a vow to never speak of it again. I was so spooked I couldn’t sleep for a week.

Two weeks later, it was announced there was a fake medieval dungeon set up by the mayor for Halloween.

I like it. The only thing I noticed was the beginning went too fast, there was not a lot of description when it came to actions and what was happening at that time. Maybe you wanted it like that, which is fine. Otherwise, I definitely make that mistake a lot too. Anyways, it’s pretty good overall!

I like it. The only thing I noticed was the beginning went too fast, there was not a lot of description when it came to actions and what was happening at that time. Maybe you wanted it like that, which is fine. Otherwise, I definitely make that mistake a lot too. Anyways, it’s pretty good overall!

I was only given 20 minutes to write the story otherwise it would have definitely been written better 😂

Prompt: While cleaning up, you find an item that you haven’t seen in years. Safe to say, it is bringing back all the emotions and feelings that were left with it.

I was cleaning out my old house. Mother had passed away and it was about time to clean out the house and put it on the market. Unfortunately, not only did that mean spending hours upon hours cleaning a two-story house, with four bedrooms and three baths, but it also meant opening up a bottle of emotions. My sisters and I have cried our fair share since opening the doors to the house and just smelling the scent of our childhood. We hadn’t even touched Mother’s rooms yet. We weren’t ready to touch that.
Today we were focusing on our respective rooms. I hadn’t realized just how much stuff I had and how much I had left behind. I had already gone through several trash bags or keep and throw-away items. It was going to be hell taking them back.
I was just about finished with the closet with something caught my eye. A stone. The light hit it just right and shone, calling me to it like a beacon. I climbed over the mess I had made on the floor, going to it and grabbing the item. Upon closer inspection, it was no stone from earth.
Flashes of memories from another time, another life, filled me. It had been so long ago I had brushed it off as a fevered dream. But seeing this now, feeling the magic as I held it, I knew that it was not a dream but reality. I was flooded with emotions at the sight of this stone. Disbelief, horror, and relief. I wasn’t crazy. The dreams I had were memories, not a figment of imagination. It was why they felt so real, so vivid. Everyone I had gone to about these dreams had just brushed me off and I had eventually stopped talking about them entirely. But here this was, and there was the magic thrumming.
When I was a child, I had been playing in the woods behind our house and wandered too far off the trail one day. I was by the stream when a shiny rock caught my eye. I picked it up and heard a whisper in my ear, “Think of another world. Dream of a far off place and it shall become real.”
I had of course listened. What child wouldn’t want an imaginative world to become real? So I had held that stone close and closed my eyes, thinking hard. And when I had opened them, I was no longer home. I was somewhere else. In another world, another life. And I had lived that life, full of faeries and gnomes and kings and queens, only one day to be thrust back here, back as a child and back in my world.
Seeing this now, I didn’t know what to think. My vision clouded as tears slipped down my cheeks. It was real. It was real.
I wondered if I could go back for a moment. To see the world that I had left and see how it fared. I knew that life here would stand still while I was gone. Only a blink of an eye would pass while I was not here. But, I had responsibilities. I was an adult now. I had bills to pay, a dead mother to deal with, I couldn’t be running off to a far away place, doing gods knows what. But what if I could?
I could hear my sisters in their rooms as they were cleaning, complaining about the work or their remembering of their childhood items. They didn’t suspect a thing. They didn’t realize that I was in my room contemplating leaving them.
What if I did go? What if I stayed there until the end of my days? What if I died there? What would happen here? What would my family do? There would be no body for them to find would there?
When I had left the first time, I had grown into a woman by the time I had come back, and thrust again into the body of a child. What if my body remained here while my soul was transported elsewhere? And yet I looked just like myself when I had traveled to my far away world. So many questions and so few answers.
I was conflicted now. So conflicted. Did I stay or did I go? What would be waiting for me if I returned? Would the people and friends I had made still be there? Or would they be long gone? Time certainly did travel differently.
I was afraid. I was afraid of leaving what I knew. I wasn’t that child anymore, desperate to explore and desperate to get away from the life I knew. I had a good thing going now. I was out of college, I had an apartment, I had a nice job. I was seeing someone. Did I really want to give it all up for some far away life that had existed for me long ago?
And if no one was there waiting for me, what then? If the life that I had known was long gone, what would be the point of my return? There would be none. I would not start my left all over again, as I had already done it once. I was content with my life, but perhaps one day, this little stone might come in use.
So I slipped it into my pocket and I continued cleaning as i should have been doing, my sisters already moving onto the living room to deal with the mess it that was down there.
As I stood to join them, there was a whisper in the air, “Think of another world. Dream of a far off place and it shall become real.”