So, in some misguided attempt at improving my writing, I'm writing one (very) short story a day, using a variety of random prompt generators. I'll try post them here most days whenever I find time, but sometimes they're such a pile of garbage that I don't want to hurt anyone's eyes, and then I won't share them. Constructive criticism is appreciated, however, please keep in mind that these are relatively unedited and are not supposed to be masterpieces. Thank you!

Contents:

1. Impatience

2. Canvas

3. Untitled because I have no creativity

4. Beginnings

5. Fools

6. Almost

For anyone who is interested, these are my usual generators:

Impatience

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“Are you going to arrest me or not?”

He grinned up at her, raising one eyebrow with a cheeky glint in his eyes. Sheila resisted the urge to crack his skull there and then - only narrowly - and opened the police car door pointedly. “In.” She prodded Sebastian’s back with the butt of her gun, unloaded though it was. This boy is going to be the death of me. When she received a tip-off from some worried neighbours two hours into her shift, she’d thought nothing of taking the chance to earn some points in the superintendent's eyes. As a new and female police officer, she was teased enough already - she needed it to stop. And what better way than to bust some illegal drugs at a late-night party?

She’d never guessed that the main orchestrator would be one of her closest friends, and on-again off-again boyfriend. He now gazed up at her saucily, his bright blue eyes dancing playfully. “I can put the handcuffs on myself, you know.” His tone was as laidback as if they were discussing a game of Balderdash, not the possibility of him going to jail.

“This isn’t funny, you know!” she snapped, her jaw clenching. “I do not have time for this today. Gosh.” Locking on the handcuffs with an icy glare, she shoved him into the backseat for the third time. This time, though, he complied with only one impudent glance at her - usually, it’d have been at least four. “Aww, I was hoping I’d ride shotgun.” He shot a mock-dramatic glare back at her, mimicking her cold expression perfectly. “But we could sti-”

The rest of his words were blurred out as she slammed the door on him, before getting in the front seat herself. She felt like screaming - surely after all those conversations surrounding her training and work, he would’ve been clever enough to stay out of the wrong side of the law? Or at least, not get caught. She bit her lip at that second thought; that wasn’t the process of a police officer. You’re an idiot, Hernandez. The sooner Sebastian Fairfield exits your life, the better. Who knows, maybe you can even visit him in jail.

“So, are you like, a proper policewoman now? Like you’re coming on this raid, and you actually caught someone? That’s progress.” His words taunted her, yet another reminder of how far she’d come - and how much more she still needed to go. When Sheila had landed her first job at the local police department, she’d been over the moon. Sebastian was the first person she’d called when she heard the news, seeing as they were in the on-again phase of their relationship at that point. When she arrived for her first day, though, she was in for a shock. She was handed a wad of papers and told to order them by chronology - very different to the hair-raising car races and superhero stunts she’d been imagining.

“And aren’t you supposed to read me my rights, or something like that?” She bit back a saucy reply, instead opting for a forcefully cool tone. “You’d better shut the hell up, before I make you. Satisfied?”

This was going to be a long ten-minute drive.

Long time no see lol. This is a short story, because I felt like writing about my synesthesia but also fleshing out my comfort character.

Canvas

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Red. The deepest scarlet he'd ever met, but the shade couldn't quite be put into words. Maybe a blue, burgundy tint at the edges, if he had to describe it. And a glossy hue all over, as if it was inside a glass bottle that reflected everything inside and around it. That was the best he could do, even if those few sentences did nothing at evoking Pax to the amount that she truly was. Nothing did, in all honesty.

Colours, as simple as it might seem, were how he saw the world. A sound, a voice, a number might all have a certain complexion that was assigned randomly, instinctively, without any thought or purpose to do that. Still, there was no arguing what colours - canvases, he called them, nothing was as flat as a basic colour - everything was. It was as fixed as any other scientific certainty. Pax had told him a word for it, something that fitted with the actual idea. He couldn't recall it, wouldn't recall anything she'd said, but all he could remember was that it was purple. Not the dark royal purple people were all too fond of using, but a lighter shade - almost lilac, but a touch off of it in a way he couldn't describe. The word would come to him; they always did, eventually. It would come.

That was the tricky thing about words - they were obstinate, stubborn, and never listened when called. Silence was much more peaceful, where he could hide in his own head and pretend that everything else was a dream. It was easier, too easy, and on days of surprising lucidity he was aware that it was a steep, slipper slope. But the reward was far sweeter than the lack thereof, and as usual, he chose to ignore his remaining common sense. Less complicated, that way. For the time being at the very least, and that was all he was living for. Another hour, and then another, and maybe one more minute if you can handle it. Break it up into bite size pieces, and choke regardless. That was the way of life, after all. His twenty-odd years had shown him that, if that was all he'd learnt.

But the colours. Synesthesia, that was the word. The confusion of senses. It was everyday, the usual experience, and after two decades he should be better at blocking it out. As much as it was fascinating to the outside mind, it was exhausting internally. A person with an ugly-computed voice would never have the privilege of Alex's relaxation, and too much sound did more than make it difficult to hear - everything was a trial, as he fought to override the barrage of sensory stimulation his mind was receiving. Not only through sound, but by the vision so intrinsically linked with it. It was a struggle to process everything at once, and usually his brain resorted to an automatic shutdown - generally, this was simply an impromptu lack of consciousness of the brain, although his body still functioned perfectly and could still stand, but every so often everything in him would rebel and his entire system would collapse. It was always an uncomfortable experience, to open your eyes to see a face peering at yours with a perturbed expression. They always asked, "Why didn't you say anything?" I did, he wanted to say. I asked you to be silent, I told you it was too loud. I did.

But inevitably, he stayed just as quiet as the stillness he'd longed for. Words were tricky things

A short piece I wrote a few days ago, again to flesh out the same character and get into his head a bit more.

Untitled because I have no creativity

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She was falling. Whether by chance or by purpose, she was slipping away from him. What could he say? There was nothing he could do, nothing he could say, that could make anything change. Had everything always been this fixed, or had it moved from an ever-shifting ideology to the certainty that no matter what either of them did, it was destined to fail.

There wasn't a clear point, at least that he could remember, where it had begun to change. It was gradual, gradual enough that at first he didn't notice the tide that was pulling at Pax. Payton, as she'd told him to call her then. She probably didn't notice it, either. Maybe that was when it changed - the point where suddenly, he wasn't close enough to use the nickname he himself had coined. It was such a small, seemingly inconsequential thing, but it was so much more than that. The day - he could still remember that one, if not some of the others he'd purposefully blocked out. Those ones were too painful, too raw to be looked at. He doubted that would ever change. That day, though, it had started as one of his favourites. They were out on an early morning ride, before the bustle of the barn kicked in and he'd be needed to exercise the schoolhorses, and the weather was kind, for once. A warm summer's day, as warm a day as you could get in England, and even though there was still a scattering of mist it somehow made it better. It added to the mystique of it all, like she'd commented when they were tacking up. Majik was behaving uncommonly well, and she'd been able to talk while working with him. Some days, he was too much of a handful. But by some stroke of luck, the cantankerous gelding was calmer than usual. Phantom, who he'd wrangled permission to take him out on hacks now that he was better-behaved, was also eerily responsive. That should have told him that something was wrong, in hindsight. Although the stallion had taken leaps and bounds in comparison to a few months ago, he was never an easy mount. Animals were intuitive, more than he could ever be. They knew if something was amiss.

He should have picked it up as well. Although Pax had chatted lightly while they worked around their respective horses, her laugh was slightly too happy, too forced, too strained to be natural. He was looking for something else, and he found it, even if it had never been there to begin with. There was something tense about her tone, more than her usual anxieties would warrant. Besides, he was her closest friend, if not her only true one - they were both comfortable around each other. Weren't they? He wasn't sure about anything anymore. Retrospect was a terrible thing.

But for the first hour or so, nothing was obviously different. They rode, they talked occasionally - this should have warned him, Pax usually talked nonstop despite frequent requests to stop that he never really meant - and raced on the flat stretches. Nothing strange, and yet when looking back everything was wrong. Not the individual actions, but the overall feeling - that was where the problems lay.

It was only once they were on their way back, both horses walking on a slack rein down the last trail. Since they were riding beside each other, he'd never felt it necessary to use her name so far. There wasn't exactly anyone else he could be talking to. But now, in the peaceful morning sun, he said, "Pax." It was supposed to be a random gesture, he wasn't quite sure why he'd done it. He was about to carry on into his original thought, before noticing her tight expression.

Her face was drawn, lips tightened, and she spoke barely above a whisper. "Don't," there was so much force in that single syllable, "call me Pax. My name is Payton."

At first, he thought it was simply one of her random irritations. It wasn't uncommon for her to be frustrated by an idle mannerism out of the blue, and then forget about it the next day. Surely, this was one of those. But every time he said it, regardless of how reading or serious his tone was, he couldn't help but notice how she'd withdraw a little deeper into herself, the slight flinch she masked almost immediately that told him that it meant more than he thought.

That was where it began, he thought. The first visible sign, the first thing that could have, should have, set off alarm bells in his head but didn't come close to doing that.

In hindsight, he could see what she had been doing. In the beginning, it was too soon to think about it. Too raw, and the wound still hadn't healed. He doubted it ever would. She had been such a large part of his life, and then that too was gone. It was only natural for it to leave a gaping hole in his heart, and though he could've fixed it he didn't even try to. He left it, as a reminder - vulnerability helps no one. It was there and would never leave, but it was old enough to make it possible to think of her without grief. In theory, at least. Regardless, her logic made sense now, whether that was a good or a bad sign. She'd tried, she'd tried so hard to protect him from her own self. It stung, it was more painful than he had ever imagined, but at the very least she'd taught him something in the process. Ticking bombs were destined to explode, and the least you could do for the people you loved was leave as few casualties as possible.

It had been too late for him, though.

Chaos Stables said:

These are so good! Love your writing style Tangle. You're really talented <3

Can't wait for the next short story...

More of the same character. Of course I'm not obsessing over him what are you trying to say? I promise I will try get something which uses a random prompt up soon.

Beginnings

The airport was bustling with people and their baggage, a few snippets of conversation escaping the loud hum of chatter that seemed to overwhelm his thoughts. It’s better this way. “And then the flight was delayed two hours, so we were this close to missing our connecting one-” “-have you seen Evan?-” “-need to be there by eight-” “-are we going to-” “-to tie my shoelaces-” Everyone seemed to have someone to cling on to, be it a traveller beside them or a welcomer, holding an extravagantly coloured sign that was obviously made by the toddler beside them, or anyone, anyone, that happened to be willing to help them out. They were all on separate missions until their baggage had been found, and then it changed to a friendly camaraderie within a moment. Light comments as they waited for their person, a short chuckle exchanged with a stranger.

There were the exceptions, naturally. A young man, though his ghostly complexion and worn appearance made him appear older than he truly was, stood to the edge of the teeming throng. His hands were firmly placed in the pockets of his black hoodie, the hood turned up either to contain his warmth or to remain unrecognizable - both were likely in the cool English weather. His gaze flitted from person to person, as if searching for someone that was yet to arrive, interjected by a subtle shake of his head every few seconds. This was fine. He was fine. They weren’t here, at least not yet. This was fine.

She wasn’t here either, and although it may have once sparked hurt, he forced that down. This was for the best.

What was he here for? Remake a reputation, remake himself, and burn it all back to the ground. That was what it was for, what those years of scraping ends together to have some savings set aside were for. Wasn't it? At the beginning, maybe, it was different. It was for the fulfilment of dreams his fourteen-year old self already knew could never come true - they never did for boys like him. For the outcasts, the misfits, the people who were just too 'other' to be absorbed into society. They were the loose change at the bottom of a money tin - heavy, weighty, but almost worthless in the end.

His thoughts had inevitably proved prophetic. Only one of those foolish, adolescent hopes had persisted and, at one stage, he'd believed had been completed, but the fact that he was standing at Heathrow Airport contradicted that: get out of that godforsaken place, and never return. Some habits die hard. The instinct was still there, if not amplified by being closer to his hometown. He wasn’t supposed to be here, he shouldn’t be here. Was he already breaking a promise he'd made to himself? He was better than this; he should be better than this.

Hope. That fickle, fickle feeling, so convincing that he'd almost believed it for a while. He had believed it - more fool him. He'd been let down again and again, and of course he leapt at the opportunity to burn himself out in the process. Once bitten, twice shy, and yet he'd ignored those feelings, those warnings, those safety mechanisms, for want of something more than living from day to day. Would he never learn? People ended in heartache. It was better, easier even, to avoid them entirely. He'd done it before; he could do it again. It couldn't be so hard.

Except that he knew it would. It was simpler before he'd had a taste of true life, when it was straightforward to suppress his emotions and ignore any that somehow resurfaced. It'd take practice to get back into his old rhythms, but he would get there eventually. He had to. If he could hang himself in one last strand of hope - there that word was again; would it always haunt him? - he might as well do it in something he could base in logic.

Shifting his backpack from one shoulder to the other - the benefits of travelling light meant that he didn’t have to fight for his luggage - he began the painstaking process of forcing his way through the masses of people. His indecision at the beginning - the process of deciding, he wouldn’t let himself use such a weak word - if nothing else had let the crowds disperse slightly, and the walk should have taken a quarter of what it had. It was his old injuries playing up - of course it was. He couldn’t think of the other possibility, wouldn’t think of it.

Still, his pace was haltingly slow. His eyes flitted behind him, beside him, anywhere that logically no one he knew would be but that he couldn’t help but search. It was best that he hadn’t recognized a single stranger around him. Wasn’t it? They weren’t here, and neither was she. He was alone, despite the people packed around him, as alone as he could ever be. This is for the best.

He gave himself one last glance over his shoulder at the doors. Lingering, as if some part in him wanted to see her running towards him, calling his name, any sign that he mattered more than he’d believed. It was irrational: he’d said as much in that last letter, but still that traitorous scrap of his soul wanted her to ignore his boundaries.It was a bare moment; that was all he could allow. One step after the other, too forceful to be considered comfortable, until he was outside and had left all chances of redemption behind those revolving doors. He wanted it to be easy; it had to be easy. Another searching glance, clinging to that illogical, irrational hope, before he let go. He was falling, falling, again, and this time he knew that he couldn’t survive the crash. This is for the best.

More ramblings with no goal in mind whatsoever. Honestly, I'm just taking whatever keeps me going right now. One of my five-minute drabbles without editing other than grammatical errors, so please bear with the inaccuracies.

Fools

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We are fools to think we know anything of love. I whisper an I love you to a stranger on the sidewalk as their knee-high rainbow fox socks come into view. The moments between consciousness and sleep are filled with murmurs no one is supposed to hear but inevitably are gathered by the very people they are meant to be hidden from.

My lips falter when I try to say those three words to you. There is nothing to say, there is everything that hasn’t yet been said and that speaks louder than anything I will never manage to say. I am a fool to believe that it has already been spoken, unknowingly, in the pauses between the plans we are making, together: a lingering finger touch, your memorized account of my favourite things, the speculations we make daily we need to be true, which come down to these three words that refuse to be spoken. Your soul is in my skin, my hair, my hands, and suddenly it is too much to live without it. We are fools, fools for love, and I would have it no other way.

Almost