Here’s your prompt for today. What do you think we have here? It could be a bookstore or it could be an unusual library. What is written on the ceiling? Is it junk or could it be related to the books? Who is the man? Who is looking in?
There are plenty of story hooks right there for you. Grab one, give it a tug, and see what you can tease out of this picture. Remember that you get 100 words, in the comments or at your web home (and do link back to us, please).
Tell us your story!
(Photo Credit: parretl on Pixabay)
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They know what will happen if they cross the threshold. They’ve read about it it books, ironically enough. For now, they’ll just gawk, and convince themselves that it won’t happen to them. Eventually they’ll venture in. And then, they too will be placed upon a shelf. Their life stories captured between two covers… collecting dust. The writing is on the wall.
“It’s here. It’s got to be here!” the weary, old man muttered as he rifled the bookstore shelves. He had checked the library from his hometown he had left fifty years ago, only to learn that it had sold a lot of old books to this bookstore. He had only an hour before closing time to locate the tome that he had checked out a dozen times as a young child. For all he knew he was the only one to have read it over what? Seventy or eighty years? If it were lost, so was he.
She scrambled the dusty room, desperately trying to hid the fact that she was scrambling. She could feel their eyes locked on her through the window, watching her every move.
“Stay calm, Matilda,” she whispered, refusing to acknowledge her pursuers.
She was safe here. For a minute.
Her fingers skimmed every book on the shelf, her body tense and hyper aware. She wasn’t reading anything in front of her, her supernatural hearing monitoring the breathing of the bodies outside the window.
Suddenly, the glass shattered. Her chest tightened as her body shifted. Four legs. Wings. She took off through the newly formed hole in the wall. This was where she was her best.
The old man was carefully, even reverently replacing books on the shelves when Lorraine and Pete walked in. How could they not? They were on a backpacking adventure, stopping anywhere interesting, and this dusty, tiny bookstore with the strange writing on the ceiling certainly caught their eye.
“What do you think it means?” asked Pete.
“What does WHAT mean?” replied Lorraine.
“The writing. On the ceiling. What does it mean?”
“What? There’s nothing there, weirdo.”
The old man turned to the duo, his gaze fixed on Pete.
“Very few people have eyes to see. You must follow me…now.”