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GGD Writing Challenge – Take A Break From The Busy?

Holiday craziness is here, however, you guys are all done with NaNoWriMo, so no excuses ;-)

As this is a semi-regular thing, I’ll just link you to the writing tag and let you get aquainted if you’re not familiar. And check back to read the responses. I’m always blown away.

Ready?

Starting points are provided below. (Thanks to @TheGeek616, @UatuTheVoyeur, and @katiedoyle for supplying them today)

You can use one or any combination of the three if you like. Whatever works.

Word: Implication
Phrase:”Only in dreams”
Image: Precipitation under a streetlight

You write whatever you like using that starting point and see what comes. (Note, no rules on length, content, whatever. Just see what happens) And please feel free to invite others. ;*

8 Comments

  1. The shape showed no response.
    “Right. Gonna be a fun trip. Mind if I put on some music?” Ron waggled his iPod at the shape. Still nothing. “Take that as a no, then.”
    He slid his finger along the dial and brought up Ray Parker Jr.’s “Ghostbusters.” A few seconds into the track, the shape finally moved. Just a little. His iPod shattered.
    “Now that’s a little bit more like it,” he said. “See, here’s the deal. Things like you and me, we don’t belong here. Not in the real world. We show up here, bad things start happening. Like the bad thing you keep doing to that little girl in the house behind me. And the more we let the bad things happen, the more we invite things like you and me out here. Not our place. We, my shifty little friend, belong only in dreams. Or nightmares, if you like. So what’s going to happen here is that I’m going to get into your carriage, and we’re gonna go for a ride. And, if we’re really lucky, neither one of us is gonna come back from it. Try and make anything else happen, and it’s gonna go poorly for at least one of us. Probably both, because you’ll be deader than you already are, and I’ll still be stuck here. So have a heart, will ya, and give a guy a break. Make it easy.”
    The shape seemed to tense.
    “Yeah, didn’t think you would,” Ron said as he opened his coat. The streetlights went dark.

  2. Ron scratched at the stubble on his chin as he watched the rain dribble from the brim of his hat. Leaning against the streetlight in the rain wasn’t exactly comfortable; hell, it was almost cold enough to be sleet. If it bothered him, though, it didn’t show. He simply stood there, immobile save for the hand scratching his chin. Not that anyone was there to notice. The street was devoid of life, or at least it appeared that way. Barring far too few pools of ineffectual light cast by streetlamps like the one Ron was resting against, the night swallowed everything. No moon, no stars, no lighted windows, no cars. Nothing but wind driving rain through weak yellow light.
    And Ron.
    Had anyone been there, though, and not inclined to just get the hell out of the rain, they might, just might, have noticed something odd about the guy standing under the streetlight. Well, odder than the fact that he was just standing there in the rain, which was odd enough. If they took the time to look, they’d have noticed that he didn’t blink very often. Or at all.
    Finally breaking his (mostly) stillness, Ron slid his hand into his coat and brought forth a crinkled pack of Camels. Careful to keep it under the brim of his hat (and dodging the drip from the front of the brim), Ron shook a cigarette free and caught it between his lips. He put the pack back into his inside pocket before fishing a small box of matches from pocket on the other side. A scrape, a small flash, and a few inhalations and exhalations later, Ron was immobile again. How long he stayed that way he couldn’t say. An hour, two, who knew? He didn’t move again until he heard the clop of hooves coming from behind him.
    He turned and whispered, “Finally.”
    He watched the four horses pass, each steaming in the night air. A flick of the wrist from the driver brought them to a halt. At least, Ron assumed there was a driver. The actual shape sitting behind the horses was less than defined in the darkness, an implication more than an image.
    “This the part where you’re supposed to invite me in?” he asked the shape. In answer, the door to the carriage opened. Ron almost expected it to be accompanied by a horror movie cliché screech, but the door opened soundlessly. “Well oiled. Good. That’s what I like in my spectral visitors, a good sense of maintenance,” Ron said.

  3. Only in dreams do landscapes appear with such specificity: The blank white walls, the clothing, white with a ferocity that glistened in the bright, white light of a midnight sun. Noting that the orgiastic austerity of the dream-scape was of a sort that would likely drive her mad, she woke.

    Shuffling into the dark, silent kitchen, she made herself a cup of chamomile tea. With the sharp delineation between asleep and awake tripping an adrenaline rush, she knew it would be hours before she sank back into bed. Cradling the ceramic in chilled hands, she took a seat at her table and pondered the implications of the stark severity of her dream. Hands reaching for pen and paper she scrawled impressions until the sound of thunder broke her reverie.

    She saw trees bending in fierce winds, the sky lit up in the afterglow of lightning strikes, and the swirl of snow in the amber glow of the street lights.
    “Only in dreams,” she thought.

  4. countrogan countrogan

    Being single again is appealing. Only in dreams where I find myself standing naked on a public train do thoughts of liberation without implication touch me so deeply.

    These thoughts don’t account for consequences or hurt feelings. They are primal urges, like the need for cooking meat on a fire. Evolutionary programming.

    Man is meant to be independent and the contrast of that to a woman’s genetic drive is cruel. THAT, Alannis, is ironic.

  5. As his frosty breath dissipated into the cool night air, he thought of a time long ago. It was Christmas eve, as he stood on this very spot. He shifted his weight as the cold started to take it’s toll. He’d not been here for twenty years, and certainly not in such cold, and never did he think he would be standing here under the same streetlight. All the pain, all the sordid implication, all the treachery and anguish, it all come from this very spot.
    As the snow began to fall, he could barely make out the tree off in the distance. The light barely filtered its way to the might oak that stood there so very long. It was always a difficult time of year, yet somehow, he decided that this year he would resolve it. He was there to try at least.
    Slowly, almost cautiously he stepped from the light of the streetlight toward the wooden hulk. As he neared he could hear her words whispered into his ear as if she we right there, right now. “Only in dreams could this ever work out.” He heard. “a dream turned into a nightmare…” he spoke in a barely audible tone to no one. even now he did not want to know that it would have been impossible to be with her, yet it was all pointless worry. It had been for a very long time. He finally got close enough to the tree to see the sign. “In Memory of our Dearest Anna” it still read. Obviously someone had kept up with it, painting it and keeping it legible all these years. No doubt it was her husband, his brother, a good man that lost so much, whom he could never console.

  6. Zoe Zoe

    It’s been raining for three weeks. It’s been three weeks since she’s been able to get any sleep.

    Her bed is too hot, her body too restless. She finds her mind wandering back to days gone by, past mistakes, past memories. Past dreams.

    There’s a particular dream she can recall perfectly—a faceless man, his face doesn’t matter. She’s happy. She’s free.

    And then the rain starts pounding her window again and she wakes up, once again restless, the glare of a streetlight coming through her window into a life where she is not sad, but she isn’t happy either.

    She tries to find sleep again, but it’s useless. The dream is gone, gone forever, or for now.

    And the rain continues to fall.

  7. It’s raining.

    It tends to do that at this time of the year. You know, winter and all. Doesn’t snow a lot and you don’t see much hail anymore, but the rain lets us know that the clouds aren’t wasted. It’s weird rain tonight. Can’t actually hear it, but that street lamp across the road lights it up real good. Looks kind of nice, you know, running water and such. Bit like a waterfall ‘cept without the white bits.

    Grandpa used to dream about living under a waterfall. Said he liked the idea that nature would have been happening to him, not around him. Said he wouldn’t mind the water and all. Not sure he’d thought it through. Even the fish don’t live under waterfalls. Too noisy and the pools at the bottom are real swhirly. His home would wash away. Or he’d have to live in a cave with other animals that got caught under the waterfall.

    ‘Those animals ain’t got caught nowhere,’ he’d say, ‘they all want to be there.’

    Nature don’t choose where it goes or who it falls on. It falls, rises, pushes and pulls wherever it is and whoever it meets. Guess that’s what Grandpa meant, you know, that you can’t get caught under a waterfall, that you’d have to want to be in the cave with the animals. ‘Cause nature don’t really want to catch anybody, it wants you to catch it. Under the waterfall and all. Or in the forest up a tree, or in a field between the grass, or by a pond on a bench, or, you know, looking at the street lamp across the street and knowing…

    …knowing that it’s raining.

  8. JasonSeas JasonSeas

    He stood there in the rain looking up at her window. Again he finds himself outside her building. Six times in the last nine days he has found himself here after going for a walk. Absentmindely, all roads seem to lead here. To the park bench in front of her building where they would talk into the dark night, lit only by the single streetlight or the occasionally passing car. He pulls the hat down tighter on his head to keep the rain out of his eyes.

    He looks back up at her window, wondering what she is doing.

    Will he get over her? Yeah, he should. She is just another girl.

    But damn will he miss her cheesecake.

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