This writing prompt was originally posted in 2008, but this picture continues to hang in my living room and uncover stories, so I present it once again for your own telling.
(Painting by Rebecca, and drawn from a dream.)
This PROMPTuesday, make up a story inspired by the picture above. Include the link to your story/post in the comments or feel free to leave your submission here, also in the comments section.
Meanwhile…to bone up on PROMPTuesdays, read a bit about it here.
Or, catch up on the PROMPTuesdays archive here.
Happy dreaming.
P.S. I put my cheesy zombie-creature-apocalypse submission in the comments.
We’d been told to look for the tree. A dark, gnarled thing, poking the sky like bony fingers. Just when we’d thought to give up, the black branches loomed large before the crest of a hill, marking the way to the church. It’d been a long journey, one we undertook with little food and some resistance. But now that we’d almost reached our destination, we dragged our feet, eventually stopping to stare at the first building we’d seen for weeks.
“Do you think it’ll be OK now?” I asked.
Pa squinted into the distance. “I hope so.”
He said it carefully, honestly. Since the invasion, he hadn’t minced words.
“Have they followed us?” I knew he didn’t know. But I wanted him to answer just the same.
“I can’t say.”
We’d begun to walk again, and slowly approached the black iron gate encircling the safe house. It didn’t look like much.
“Safe house? That’s what they call it?” Pa snorted.
Fear gripped my stomach, turning it over onto itself. “Pa?”
He turned to look where I was pointing, hesitated for a long minute, then called, “Merrie?” He used the pet name he had for ma.
I’d seen this before. The person I looked at was no way my mother, with her gray skin, loose jaw and bowed legs, but Pa was gone in the memory of her.
“Pa? We need to go.” I said it quietly, not hinting at the urgency I felt. They responded to emotion.
“Merrie, Merrie,” my dad sang. “My Merrie. You’ve come back.”
It looked at me as I backed away, but let me go as it held its arms out to Pa.
“Come here my sweet,” It grunted like a pig.
I ran, not stopping until I reached the tree, giving myself one last chance to look back.
Pa stood behind the iron gate, waving at me with a gray smile stretching his once beautiful face.