
I found a random picture on the web (try 'Google Images' or Flickr). I felt the image really triggered my imagination and I found myself thinking about what kind of story could grow out of this simple moment "suspended in time". The following is what I wrote. I want you to try it too. Find two (2) images, use each as a stimulus for two (2) totally original stories.
It had been a sprint. Hadn't run that fast since Dougie Clothier terrorized me, daily, back in '83 when I was the skinniest kid at St Monica's. But that was another history of mine, relegated now to the long, long ago. I figured late at night down Bakker Alley was going be my safe place. I'd taken short cuts through here, coincidentally back during the terrifying Clothier reign. No-one would know the ins and outs of this part of town better than me. The great plugholes of darkness here would more than adequately hide me, my cheap Russell Athletic hoodie and my clapped-out Wild Rhinos. Avoid the light. No light. Must stay out of the light.
Skidding and sloshing through puddles on my way, I momentarily catch reflections of myself. "Who am I kidding?" Even I think I look guilty." No wonder they're chasing me. In the 12 minutes since I slipped those cuffs, they've probably recruited every low-life and deadbeat in the borough to hunt me down. As I scrunch in behind the big industrial bins that scream Mainwaring Waste Management in thick yellow lettering, I wonder if I'm going to live long enough to see the headlines in tomorrow's paper. God forbid, my name appears on that same front page!
My wondering quickly stops as the smell of the festering trash invades first my left nostril, then the right. They take it in turns being pummelled by the stench of what I can only assume is three-day-old meat scraps. That, or the maggot-ridden corpse of a wharf rat. I hope I'm not soon to be joining it in the 'dead' category. Right this minute, above me, behind me, all around me, every brick in Bakker Alley is grimy, wet and silent. I think to myself - I, too, and all those three things.
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