These are my responses to the Writober prompt post Fear of Torture.
OctPoWriMo
But to What Specific Purpose?
It’s broken, and I can’t fix it
This complicated warning system
meant to keep me from harm
has too many switches stuck on
firing and firing its alarms
but like the broken light switch
in the hall, they flicker, sending
new jolts to the already excited
Hands tied, attempts
at relief break other systems.
Vicious cycles of deadening
and strengthening
until every sound is a threat
and every touch is a cut.
The harness holds
my eyes open, so
I can’t look away.
What is the question
I haven’t answered?
The secret I hold
that can’t be pulled
from my lips?
Electricity and
water don’t mix, yet I
am electricity in water.
Strapped in contortions
while every sharpened instrument
on display is internalized
and actively trying to carve
a way out. The electric eel
has its warning system
it says Stay Away, but
I can’t stay away from
my own body, my captor,
the deliverer of pain.
Writober Flash Fiction
Tipping
After his divorce, Darren started doing things he used to do before he was married. This night, as he drove past Hesher’s Farm, he remembered how funny he had thought it was to tip cows. He and his buddies, a bunch of beers, and some sleeping cows, had been a laugh-riot. Or so he remembered.
He parked on the side of the road, and started climbing the fence. chuckling as he sized up the closest cow, but then a bright light filled the sky like someone had switched on a spotlight from above . He felt a tug that became a yank. He held on tight to the fence as he was tipped upside down, his feet flying up over his head, but he couldn’t hang on. As he flailed higher and higher, his car and a few cows lifting up below him, all he could think about was the probing to come.
Why did everyone get probed? he wondered. Wouldn’t the first dozen or so probes reveal any useful information they wanted to know? Wouldn’t they have much more advanced ways to scan the human body without being anally intrusive? Could it be that he and the cow had more in common than just being Earth species? As the ship opened and pulled him in, Darren wondered at what age the aliens had their mid-life crises.
Halloween Photography Challenge
For today’s images I was thinking about how torture is using our own nerve endings against us, so I cut a new filter of what that looks like to me and played with it in the mirrorworld.
Experience Writing 