#Writober Day 20: Mountains or Oceans

#OctPoWriMo

Today’s OctPoWriMo theme is Mountains or Oceans. This was the second prompt I wrote for OctPoWriMo and I chose Haibun for the form.

The call of the seagull

The gull, a dark speck on the white mountain backdrop, reminds me how close I am to the ocean by wing. If I could rise above, I could see it from here, the crashing waves filling the tide pools, rocking the sea stars and hermit crabs, mussels, and barnacles. But I am not a gull and it seams so far away and so long ago.

gasping with wonder
inside a rising falling
turning of the tides

 

#Writober4

The image for Day 20 on the Pinterest board shows a man with small octopi all over his face. He looks scared.

My take: To go with today’s theme, this guy could have just gotten out of the ocean, but I think it’s much more creepy if these little guys fell from the sky, or jumped him, or grew out of pustules on his skin, ew.

Micro-fiction: Perry had an annoying itch. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he had been itchy since the last time he went to the beach about a month ago. He couldn’t help but scratch at the bumps and now he had scabs all over his face, neck, and shoulders. He couldn’t go out. People thought he was on drugs or unclean. Then the first tentacle poked out of a scab on his face. He couldn’t believe it. He watched it wriggle further as if testing the air, or scouting for danger. Then all the scabs burst to life.

Writing Process and Tools

Emotion:  Happiness – this is an interesting contrast to the image. I wonder how this story could be about happiness

Creepy verbs: repulse, gross out, sicken, fill with loathing, turn one’s stomach

Story Cubes Symbols: world, light bulb, shooting star, die, cane, rook, arrow all directions, magnet, magic wand

Woodland creature: raccoon – a gaze of raccoons, a mask of raccoons, a nursery of raccoons

Collective nouns: a handful of palm readers

Horror trope: evil wizards

Oblique Strategies: Humanize something free of error

 

 

Happy Reading and Writing!