So Rebecca has inspired me (or shamed depending on your point of view) to attempt to blog anew! Below is a ten minute writing prompt I did several months ago. I had to pull three words or phrases that I had cut out of magazines, articles and newspapers, incorporating them into a creative writing short.
These are my phrases: 'Relatively', 'tremendous gifts' and 'Oh yes, he did'
'Well,'
he thought in desperation, 'this should be relatively easy,' trying to ignore
the animalistic fear that was gnawing at him. He gazed out with broken eyes at
the ocean, blue and fierce. His ship had fallen in the storm two weeks ago and
he was lucky to find himself alive and aground. The island he was on could not
be considered deserted for that would imply that life had been here before.
Inhabitable. Inhospitable. A tiny rejected place of rocks, wind and sand. If
not for the tremendous gifts of the ocean, that same mercurial beast that
dropped him here, he would have perished days before. Stores of food in tins
and wood, bits of wreckage and luggage, along with a few precious containers of
water had washed ashore with him. But no other passengers or crew. He was
alone.
It had
been a terrible and frightening battle of wind and waves that dark dreadful
day. His eyes closed as the memories washed over him, the howling, the thunder
and the cries of the crew while the Captain shouted his orders. 'No', he told
himself firmly. 'I mustn't remember,' fighting to fall to his knees in despair.
He had survived, he reminded himself, shaking off the memory. Oh yes, he did.
And he would find a way to continue to survive. He clung to that thought
tightly in his abandoned solitude.
He
never thought of himself as particularly brave or as a fighter in any shape. He
was a simple man, thin and average in stature, an accountant on his way to the
New World. A new life, full of promise, the flyers had boasted. Cautious and
careful by nature, an inexplicable whim drove him to answer. This wasn't
exactly what he had imagined. Instead of desks and numbers, he salvaged and
scavenged enough around him to build a new ship, a patchwork raft with the
remains of his hoarded supplies. He could not live on this island. Even if the
island could have supported him, he knew the loneliness would drive him insane.
He had made his decision.
He
would take a new journey, one that didn't make promises. One where the numbers,
numbers that he has always thought of as a safe haven, were not in his favor.
'Easy,' he thought again as he forced his trembling hands to push his cobbled
ship into the water and climbed aboard. "I wonder," he said aloud,
"if the ocean will devour or save me?"
