Another long stretch of no blog posts, time for another writing prompt!
Whether you’re enjoying a summer full of blissful nothing, or are trying to cram work in before a busy autumn, it’s never the wrong time to exercise those writing fingers.
I’ve dubbed this game Fire Starter.
The rules: Write the supplied sentence/sentence fragment at the top of your page, (computer, notebook, etc. Whatever you prefer) set a timer for 10 minutes and start writing whatever you think would follow that first sentence.
Today’s sentence:
He took off the mask.
After you try this out, you can find what I wrote by clicking here (because comparing everyone’s different ideas is the best bit!). I fixed some of the punctuation and spelling to make it easier to read, but this is about fun, not editing. Also, I wrote for more like fifteen minutes because I had an “end” sentence in mind still, when the timer went off, so I just went ahead and kept writing.
Same as last time, this game’s sentence was supplied by my brilliant little sister. You can read her take on it here.
If you’re really feeling brave, you can post what you’ve written in the comments because, as I said, comparing our unique takes on the sentence is the best part.
Have fun!
Sonora Hills 
He took off the mask. His face rippled and shifted, twisting and contorting into something new. The two figures who’d stood so confidently before him just moments ago scattered, leaving their firearms behind them, discarded and unwanted, alone on the floor.
Shadows beget shadows. This had always been the way of the underground, of the streets. You wanted to hide, you simply created more places for your enemies to stow away, biding their time to stab you in the back. Saddeus had only ever wanted to fit in, to hide away and keep himself to himself, but he had certain… talents that had made that impossible. Crime was drawn to him like a vulture to a carcass, and though he’d resisted for a long time he had eventually crumbled, falling into the world he had once sought to avoid.
Saddeus sighed and replaced his mask, his figure once more becoming that of a normal, fairly well kept man. He wasn’t ashamed of his appearance, nor his abilities, but they didn’t half cause him issues. The technology that kept his rather distinctive features hidden from the world was complex, costly and difficult to buy without drawing attention. He had pinned his hopes on the two sellers he had come to meet today, and they had betrayed him. Snakes through the grass, no, shadows. Shadow snakes.
A noise lifted Saddeus from his reverie, and he noticed a small animal limp across the floor, dragging its leg.
The rat, for that’s what it was, was clearly very hurt, on its way through the final vestiges of its journey on this planet. The rat attempted to climb up a short step and collapsed, squeaking solemnly as if to say “I give up, I will wait here to die.”
Saddeus took pity on the small creature. He felt a strange affinity to it, as if this small being somehow neatly defined his own existence.
Raising his hands, Saddeus concentrated. A thin beam of pretty orange particles began to wind around his hands. They flickered slightly and Saddeus frowned, and pushed himself harder. The beam solidified, and finally it shot from his hands, enveloping the rat before him. Just like that, gone. From dust to dust, shadows to shadows. Saddeus sat down, exhausted, and reached up. From the side of his facial façade leaked a small white fluid, which Saddeus carefully wiped away. The mask flickered, just for a second revealing a face so horrific that the bravest warriors would have been left trembling, before returning to its solid unflickering state.
No, the world was not ready for the mask to be removed.
No world was ready.
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I feel like I tried a bit to hard with this one – hence the short length and utter saturation in adjectives :p
It was still fun though – thanks for the prompt!
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He took of the mask, and immediately gasped- grasping at the cutting dry air in desperate gulps, ridding himself of his own stale breath and the mask’s heavy, foreign scent. With the woollen black lattice that had been hiding the sun now gone, his eyes were left to scrabble for purchase in this new searing landscape – searching for meaning in the glaring desert drifts.
Shaking, his bound hands drew the reversed balaclava towards the ground, dropping it limply beside him in the sand. Sweat clung to the threads of the mask – as if it had excreted from the mask’s own woollen pores rather than his. Briefly he caught a glimmer of reflected sun shining off the gleaming sweat.
He looked up again and his captors were arrayed in a circle around him – dark, tall figures with heavy guns that scraped into the sky.
His breath shook out of him as he tried to constrain it, and then hung: a tortured mass of molecules suspended in the empty air.
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