Welcome to my "Fast and Furious Festival" post, based on the "Day 4" prompt.
The #fastandfurious Festival is a 20-day event in The Ink Well community. Anyone is welcome to jump in at any point. The goals of the festival are to help writers build and exercise their skills, and (just as importantly) engage with other participating writers, by commenting and providing feedback on their posts.
We are exploring dialog, character development, scene building and other important elements of fiction. You can read the festival rules and sign up here. And you can check out any of the festival posts in @theinkwell to participate in the prompts and engage with other participants.
Now, on to the task for Day 4, which is about the story arc.
For this task, we are to select elements from four lists and use them to construct a short story. I made these selections:
A. My main character is: A bartender.
B. My main character's problem is: He is disturbed by something seen by moonlight.
C. My main character is living with, encountering or at odds with: His best friend.
D. And the thing keeping him from resolving his issue is: A fear of ghosts.
Let's see what these elements inspired. I welcome your comments!
Closing Time
Image source: Pixabay
Marty prepared to lock up the tavern just a bit past 2 in the morning. He had turned off the music to clear his head of the noise of patrons shouting over its drumming beat. He hated this time of night, when the place smelled of old beer and seemed a hollow shell of wasted dreams.
He’d done all the usual things to wrap up and clear out, which always started with turning up the lights and letting the stragglers know the time had come for them to go home. A couple whose lips were locked together had to be broken up. One fellow was falling off of his barstool and needed a taxi summoned. Another demanded one last scotch long after last call, and when he got surly, Marty had the bouncer toss him out.
Now he was the last one there to finish up. He turned down the lights, wiped down the bar and put the last glass back in its place.
Time to go.
A prickle on the back of his neck made him shudder. It was something he had felt before − the sensation that he was not alone in this place, even though of course the bouncer had checked the bathrooms, stock room and closets before exiting for the night.
There it was again. The tingling of movement. Air on his face and his neck. Like the breath of a lost soul.
He froze. “Hello?”
The dim lighting made it hard to see all the dark corners of the tavern. He was afraid to move and the light switches were across the room. He looked toward the windows, where thin moonlight fell in through oak branches outside. Just then, he saw a shadow pass through the pale beams of light.
Petrified, he backed further away, into the bar. “Who are you? What do you want?”
No sound came. Without looking away from the space where he had seen the shadow, he pulled his cell phone from his pocket and told Siri to call his room mate, Tom.
Tom answered, his voice full of sleep. “Marty, what the hell? You know what time it is?”
“Dude. Hey. Can you come get me? Down at the bar? Something freaky is going on here.”
“Seriously? No. If you’re in trouble, call the cops.” He hung up.
Marty suddenly wished very dearly that he had tried to straighten things out with Tom. It hadn’t been going well. Differences of opinion since they'd found a flat together had stacked up to drive a wedge between them. They seemed to disagree on everything from the thermostat's setting to how much to feed the cat. And now here he was. Alone. No one to call upon. And something was between him and the door.
He heard footsteps, slowly creaking across the floor. But he could see nothing. Where was it? Where had the shadow gone? Was it coming for him? He was now at the far end of the bar, no place to go.
At that moment, he remembered the words of his ex-girlfriend, Lily, the night she broke up with him. “Your problem is you don’t believe in yourself, Marty. You are broken, and I can’t fix you.” She was right, he knew. Why this thought? Why now?
He listened for the sound. It seemed to have stopped. Like the thing stalking him was watching, waiting for him to make a move.
The last thing Lily had told him just before she walked out the door came back to him now. “To quote a philosophical bear, ‘You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.’ I hope someday you’ll believe that.”
Another tenuous creak. The feeling of air on his neck, on his face.
That was when he screamed. Not from fear, but from resolve. It was a rebel yell. A call to arms. His own battle cry from within.
He grabbed the key, and took five long strides to the end of the bar, and five more to the door. He pulled it open and stepped outside. Then he shouted, “You’re nothing! You’re just air, and fear itself. Nothing more!” He closed and locked the door, as if shutting a chapter of a terrible novel.
“What’s the deal, pal?”
Marty turned to the source of the voice, thinking it was a police officer checking up on the disturbance. But it was Tom, idling in his pickup.
“Oh Tom," Marty said, calming the beating of his heart. "Thanks for coming down.”
Tom’s hair was a mess, and he looked like he was half asleep, but he smiled. “Come on, hop in. Sounded like you got the upper hand.”
“Yeah,” Marty said, as he climbed into the cab and chucked Tom lightly on the shoulder. “Yeah, I think I did.”
Thanks for reading my short story!
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