Prompt

This prompt was it had to be on a riverbank. We had 15 minutes, but my 3-year-old was being a 3-year-old and making life difficult, so I got maybe 10. lol

First dates are the most important. The ones you spent hours preparing for. Picking your best clothes for, picking the most uncomfortable underwear that ride up your crack but make you look your sexiest.

All that work…wasted. If only I could have stopped the wave of disgust from showing on my face. Or ignore the scent of sewage or the putrid green sludge that coated the riverbank, making my stomach heave.

Nathaniel stands next to me, rubbing his hand on the back of his neck as it flushes red. Looking anywhere but the shoreline. “It wasn’t like this last time,” he swears as he sneaks a glance at me.

My cheeks are tinged green, and I probably look like a chipmunk hoarding my fall stash in my cheeks as I try not to vomit all over his shoes.

Prompt directions: 

Use as many of the words as you want: Pear, Sand, Dark, Play, Bird

I should have known better than to trundle out into the dunes alone, but anger makes you stupid. It coursed through me, rushing through my veins like electricity, making it impossible to stay still, impossible to listen to reason.

As the sun crept lower, sending long, haunting shadows across the sand, regret burrowed deeper into my bones. The shadows reached like claws from the twisted brush that barely clung to life, twisting my insides with worry once my anger had fizzled. Worry wasn’t good company. It left me alone in the starlit expanse of darkness with the occasional eerie hoot of a bird I hoped was an owl.

It was all so stupid now. Throwing a fit over the way she had peeled my pear instead of sliced it. Was I a child throwing a petulant tantrum? Could I not be trusted to interact with civilized company? Or at least pretend I didn’t mind, thank her for the fruit and play nice?

No. I definitely couldn’t be trusted. Not that it mattered now as I wandered, hopelessly lost in a world of sand. I only hoped that this would not end with my bones bleaching beneath the harsh summer rays and that someone would care enough to find me. Even if I am an idiot.

(Prompt was to include any of the following words: Yellow, Branch, Potato, Mountain, Spoon)

I sat, surrounded by the flapping tarp walls of our glorified grow tent, going wild. The sky was angry and yellowed as the reddish granules were kicked into the air in suffocating clouds. Not like it was the clouds that would kill me out there, being there was none of this air stuff my fragile body relied on. With a grumble, I shoved my small spoonful of half-eaten potato into my mouth, mashing the bland substance between my teeth and wishing more than anything that I had some ketchup to slather the thing in. But on Mars, we weren’t growing tomatoes; we were growing potatoes. So I had to suck it up and long for the artificial red-hued sauce that I may never taste again.

What I wouldn’t do for that little zing it would give my tongue. Or the little bit of moisture it would add so that the potato wouldn’t stick like taffy to the back of my throat. I’d even take some salt. Anything to make the damn vegetable more appealing after having eaten it for the last 365 days. While today marked a year of being on this planet, and I had spent the better part of the morning dragging my sorry ass up the side of the mountain—that was more like a glorified hill—that rose up behind our settlement. Planting a flag as if I were Neil fucking Armstrong, because I’ve lasted here an entire Earth year. Not a Martian year. That’d come though, just hopefully not with 322 days more of fucking potatoes.

(Inspired by the Martian, one of my favorite movies)