It’s been a strange season here at OCO, one that has required embracing ambiguity, calling on patience, and soldiering along even when the path was dark. I’ve also let my creativity go a bit fallow. After a very productive autumn, I felt called, in the first weeks of winter, to take a break from storytelling.
This is fine, good even, but the only trouble with taking a break is that it can sometimes be hard to start again. The momentum that carries you through rough patches vanishes, those old twin imps of doubt and distraction rear their ugly heads, and it can be difficult to tell the difference between a well-deserved break and a soul-sucking slump.
I needed something to dust off the cobwebs and help me get back to the words.
Enter Scoot’s Flash Fiction Friday. I’ve always wanted to write a story based on one of his prompt sets, and since he, too, was just restarting FFF in the new year, I thought this was the perfect time to jump in.
There are different ways to participate, but I chose to use all four prompts. The challenge is to find a way to tie them all together and create a story that’s less than a thousand words.
This week’s prompts were:
Write about the weather
a sharp bluntness
“who do you think will notice?”
A character who isn’t from here
I thought I would be relatively stymied by this set of seemingly disparate story elements, but it turns out once I sat down to come up with ideas, a story sprang up almost like it was just waiting to be unearthed.
The result is New Normal. Clocking in at 991 words, it’s an unsettling story that walks the line between sci-fi and horror.
Enjoy!
The weatherwoman tossed around words like polar vortex, blockbuster winter storm, brutal cold, and record snow.
I’d just returned from the mostly empty pantry, bowl of chip dust in my hand, couch cushions crumpled beneath me.
“It’s a good idea to stock up on essentials. It may take a while to dig out from what is sure to be a monumental snowfall.”
The weatherwoman made it sound like something to look forward to.
I swirled my finger in the bottom of the bowl, licked the salt away.
Knees popping, back whining for rest, I lifted myself up, not bothering to brush the crumbs from my shirt. I shuffled past the pantry. Checked the fridge, the freezer. Weeks-old leftovers and an ice pack I used for hangovers.
My keys glowed tarnished bronze from the stack of unopened mail, bright red letters peeking out from behind crisp corners. I grabbed them, ignoring the envelopes that slipped to the ground in a debt-laden avalanche.
Stepping into my grey shoes—they’d been white once, surely—I didn’t bother with the laces and took a few clumsy steps as the crushed backs inched up and around my heels.
Outside the air was cold and heavy, a sharp bluntness that hurt to breathe. I threw on the hood of my sweatshirt, made my feet move faster down the cracked sidewalk to the car.
Inside I pushed the key into the ignition, turned, turned again, waiting for the catch and cough of the engine. It rattled to life, and I wrapped my hands around the steering wheel, leftover salt and grease slicking the old naugahyde.
The streets were empty. I checked my watch. 1:11am. Later than I thought, but at least I’d be mostly alone.
I made a right onto the main drag, let the sound of the wheels sing me a song as the streetlights flashed sodium-yellow above. I put the heater on blast and relaxed into the worn velour of the seat.
Nice. Ordinary. Quiet. God knows I could use the peace after everything. Friends said it’d be okay. That it took time. That I’d find a new normal. I was still waiting for it.
A couple miles later and I pulled into the grocery store parking lot. The asphalt expanse was dotted with a few cars, the grid of white lines glowing pearlescent in the light of the moon. No clouds yet. No snow. But it was there, in the gnaw of the air: the threat of atmospheric violence.
I got out of the car and hobbled to the automatic doors. Inside the place was a fluorescent-lit jungle of packages, cans, bags, and bottles. I wanted to close my eyes against the onslaught of color, retreat to my car, a little capsule of warmth and comfort in the wide sea of night.
But the weather was turning and my stomach reminded me I couldn’t survive on chip dust and resentment alone.
I limped down the aisles, examining prices, trying to remember if I had a credit card that wouldn’t be declined.
I paused at the back end of one aisle in front of the butcher counter, plastic-wrapped trays of meat glistening pink and red. The butcher had long since gone home, but the tiled area where they cut and measured during the day still smelled faintly of antiseptic.
No one was there, and it had been so long since I’d had real meat. The kind with marbling, a firm texture, that pretty, pretty red color. When was the last time I’d sunk my teeth into a juicy cut of beef, perfectly cooked, medium rare?
My mouth went wet. I swallowed back salty spit. I wondered if the package would leak if I slipped the steak into the wide front pocket of my sweatshirt. I glanced around me. No one.
“Who do you think will notice?”
I started at the words, the package of steak slipping out of my hands and hitting the floor with a wet slap.
They were at my elbow, as though they’d stepped out of the glossy shimmer of groceries, the phantom of a market mirage. I scanned their face, eyes catching on almost-familiar features. They looked like me, enough that I tried to blink away the resemblance. But their face stayed the same, as though someone had taken the sad, crumpled-up version of me and smoothed it out with heavy, careless hands.
“What?” I stumbled over the single syllable. One word. So many questions.
They looked at me with my eyes. I swallowed, saliva gone bitter. I crouched down, back popping, and retrieved the steak. The meat compressed under my fingers as I stared at their knees, their white shoes, anything to avoid those eyes, that face. Mine, but not mine. A strange version of myself who wasn’t from a place where snow could be monumental.
I stood, opened my mouth to say something, anything, to end the agonizing silence. They were on me then, fingers in my mouth, face gone wild. They pulled themselves in, pushed themselves down my throat, swam in my stomach, filled all the holes inside me so that every last space was mine and theirs.
We strode out into the night. Steak in hand. Nobody noticed.
We breathed the storm-tinged air, expanding our lungs with the cold and exhaling vapor. The cycle of sharp and soft tamed the air. We felt powerful, changed. We felt ready.
Inside the car, we tore the plastic away from the steak, bit into the luscious flesh, pink juice sliding down our chin, hardly pausing to chew before the meat slid down our throat, feeding our awakening.
We licked our fingers, eyes on the quiet street, stomach growling for more.
Outside someone made their way down the frost-rimed sidewalk, their steps quick, like they were anxious to be out of the cold and the night.
We smiled, tongue sliding across our teeth, hungry heart thudding to the beat of our new normal.
Did you catch all the prompt references? Let me know what you thought with a comment, like, or restack.
Thanks again to Scoot for providing the thoughtful prompts and putting together this vibrant Substack project.
And if you’re hungry for more Only Child Originals, I’d love to make room for you at my witch’s table where things are sometimes dark, sometimes scary, but always served up with heart. 🖤
Wow, so visceral--it immediately drew me in. Do you find writing with prompts to be generally easier or more challenging? Glad to have found you via the Talebones' newsletter today!
Neat! I liked it, the tone was very seasonal!