Rec And Parks

He doesn’t know what to make of it.

It’s ugly and it’s not, it’s beautiful and it’s not, it’s simultaneously everything he could have wanted and everything he dreaded.

She was leaving him.

She was leaving him, and wasn’t that fantastic? Wasn’t that horrible? Wasn’t that everything he could think of, alone but together with himself and a bottle that he could’ve sworn had fused to the callouses on his fingertips, had been superglued there and never ever left.

She was leaving him.

He still had his wedding ring, stuck to his finger in a different way than when you try on a ring and have to take it off with soap and water and time. It was stuck by the adhesive of his own mind. Trapped. He couldn’t take it off, couldn’t bare to pry it away.

She had taken hers off long ago, so why was his still stuck, like the bottle to his callouses and to his lips and permanent streams of saltwater that clung to his cheeks for days and days and days? Why?

All of his breaths were shudders and all of his thoughts were endless strings that never had a conclusion, an essay with an infinite word-count. He could still see the amber spilt on the floor through watery eyes, and still found it ironic that he was back to crying over spilt milk and spilt Jack Daniels and spilt tears and he was crying over everything and nothing and whatever was in between, so why did it matter anyways?

He clenched the bottle even tighter in his hand, and he wasn’t sure how much of it was alcohol and how much of it was his own tears at this point, and he knew he had to stop.

He had always known he needed to stop. He knew he needed to stop the first time he took a secret sip from beer in the fridge and the first time he had a serious hangover and the first time and the first time he met her and the first time she left him and the first time she came back and the first time she left a second time.

So many firsts. To him, the milestones didn’t matter a single bit. To him, all that mattered was that he didn’t have to care about what really did matter. And he was incredibly proficient at that in particular.

So he was good at knowing when to quit, but he was never quite as good at quitting. He was still stuck on that one time she smiled at him and she had looked so genuine, so real, and how she had looked just as real and tired when she said that she wanted a divorce and that she had had another.

She had another, didn’t she? Of course she did, she was always good at back-up plans and back-up-back-up plans. He knew it when she had a beer spilt on her shirt that neither of them liked (like the Jack Daniels on the floor and the milk knocked over to the ground and his heart to hell fires). He knew it when she came home with her lipstick smeared and with her eyes wild, he knew it when she stopped looking him in the eye and started looking at the wall behind him.

(The last time she looked him in the eye she told him straight to his face that she had another.)

(The last time he looked her in the eye he didn’t say a word.)

He stood up and slipped on the whiskey and prayed to whoever was out there that he wouldn’t be able to get up. It didn’t work.

It never worked, did it? Whoever was out there doesn’t care much for people like him anyway, and he could hear in the back of his head the whisper screams of ‘alcoholic’ and ‘acute mania’ his own screams weren’t loud enough. The shards of the bottles scattering everywhere when he smashed them to drown them out hid under his couch and beneath the coffee table to escape him and he understood why, because he was running from himself too, like her.

He didn’t know if there was a God anywhere.

Prompt #10

Soulmate AU where when you touch your soulmate for the first time, you see colours.

(Character A) doesn’t touch anybody, because of their fear of being stuck with someone forever.

One day, (Character A) accidentally touches their long-time best friend, (Character B) and sees colours. Since (Character B) doesn’t react, they assume (Character B) doesn’t see colours too, and is their soulmate, but (Character A) isn’t theirs.

(Character B) does see colours, but thinks that (Character A) doesn’t, and pretends they don’t see them.

Mutual pining and angst ensues.

Prompt #20

The world is run by the intelligent, and the dumb are considered as lesser humans.

(Character A) is one of the most elite, knowledgeable people, and holds a high ranking. Contrastingly, (Character B) isn’t smart, and is looked at as scum.

However, both of them find each other through the internet, and as they talk more and more, they realize that the system may be rigged.

burn

It wasn’t about him. It was never about him.

In fact, she never meant for him to have any involvment in the matter, never meant for him to ever know about it. He was never meant to know anything.

It had started long before she ever knew him.

It started when her father had brought out a lighter one evening. He opened his pack of cigarettes and took a long drag, his shoulders relaxing. He sunk into the chair. He no longer cared about hiding his addiction from his daughter, playing with a doll idly on the carpeted floor, six years old and quiet as a mouse.

She was known for being a rather emotionless child. Not once had she laughed or grinned or cried. Her mother fretted about her, but her father didn’t mind. No tantrums was fine with him. The lack of feelings wasn’t a problem with him. She watched with glazed eyes as flaky ashes fell to the carpet. She stared at them as they floated gently to the floor, choking and coughing a bit from the fumes.

She stared even longer at the lighter. How could a fire be hiding in the tiny object?

Late into the night, she snuck into the living room where the lighter was still lying next to the ashtray, and stole it. The next morning, she hid it in her backpack and ran off into the woods to play.

It was yellow and shiny and had a grey top that flipped open. She immediately was fascinated, entranced. Her eyes lit up for the first time. It was so small, but had such power! When she mimicked her father’s motions, it let out a fizzling spark once, twice, thrice, and then burst into a tiny flame.

She knew what she was doing tomorrow. Her eyes burned with the fire she now possessed.

Her mother found the neighbor’s cat later that month, half-decomposed and covered in soot, and she had screamed. It was the kind of scream from a horror movie that got half-hearted reviews, one that never really sent shivers down your spine. It never even got under her skin. She didn’t care that she had been found out. The cat was annoying anyways. Her flames were bright, unstoppable, unable to be extinguished, and she would feed the fire until everything came down around her.

Years later, in her twenties, she met him. Her lover. He was sunny and bright and passionate and emotional and everything she wasn’t. He was her fire. She wanted him, in a way that she hadn’t wanted since she’d laid her eyes on that lighter over a decade ago.

And eventually, she got him. It seemed like she had attached herself to him, in a strange way. She wanted him to be hers, and only hers, but shied away from affection and emotion. She didn’t know how to respond to his hugs, how to smile for him. She didn’t know how to be genuine.

And that meant that she had to avoid him, and that meant that she left the house often, coat over her shoulders and lighter in her pocket.

She didn’t know what she wanted more, him or her fire. And that scared her.

She hadn’t known what it was like to be scared before.

She flicked the lighter, and threw it down on the large pile of dry grass and twigs at her feet. The willow tree sheltered the newborn flame, and it slowly climbed higher and higher. As it began to lick the tree top, she backed away to admire the light in the drizzling rain. Her light.

Her eyes gleamed.

Her fire burned.

Her lover still smiled for her when she came home. He smiled through watery eyes, and she wasn’t sure if it was from her late return or from the water drops tapping out a rhythm on the sidewalk or from the ash that clung to her shoulders, even through the rain. She didn’t know how to understand what he felt on their best days together.

He hugged her close and securely whenever she came home, and she responded the same. Her eyes were as dry as the Sahara, saved from the rain by her umbrella, glazed over with disinterest. Waiting for the next opportunity to buy another lighter. To buy more gasoline. To build a stack of sticks and grass. To relish in the newfound brightness.

To burn.

(She never thought about how he had had an umbrella of his own when she came out to greet him, and how his clothes were dry.)

She would set the world on fire just to watch it go ablaze, and she would smile the same smile she always had before. An answering smile. An answer to the questions, to the counselors at school and the dead cat her mother found covered in charcoal and gasoline, to the classmates who were afraid of her in kindergarten, to the prescriptions in her cabinet, ever fluorescent.

To her lover, whose eyes were still full of water on the sunniest day of the year. She still ignored the drip-dropping of water on her neck whenever they hugged.

(It wasn’t raining.)

(She didn’t know how to explain it, so she avoided it.)

(Sometimes, she thinks that he cries because he doesn’t know what to do anymore.)

He cried when she left and cried when she came home, and he cried when he was alone and cried when she was with him. He cried when she smelled like a campfire and when she had ashes sprinkled in her hair, and he cried when their budgeting started to include lighters and gasoline.

He cried every tear that she never could.

Sometimes she wished that she could cry for him instead. He must have been so dehydrated.

(For his birthday, she bought him a nice water bottle. “So you can stay hydrated. You cry an awful lot,” she said. He grinned and hugged her, then pulled away quickly.

“Thank you.” His lips were wobbly and saltwater streamed down his cheeks. She smelled like a campfire.)

She always had grey peppering her clothes. Her smile was subdued, but her eyes were distant and wild. Like they knew something. Like they had already watched the world burn down in their head a million times, and enjoyed every second.

A psychopath.

An arsonist.

Someone who burned trees and papers for fun. Someone who bought too many lighters in too little time. (The gas station attendant had never seen so many lighters be laid out on the checkout counter.) Someone who watched her lover cry and looked away with disinterest. Someone who didn’t leave the house one day to burn.

(He was still home, crying in the corner. She didn’t notice him until the end.)

Someone who never cried when she watched her lover scream and his tears evaporate, ugly crying, with eyes of crimson and half moon bruises underneath and snot running down his face, saltwater on his tongue and dripping off his chin just to go up and evaporate in flames and smoke.

Someone who died with her lover by accident and didn’t care. Someone who watched the flames with gleaming eyes until the end.

(Her eyes were still gleaming when they burned to the ground.)

Prompt #29

Soulmate AU where the last words your soulmate says is written on your skin.

(Character A) doesn’t have any words. (Character B), their soulmate, is immortal.

I made me!!!!

Picrew

Girl Maker｜Picrew

My tumblr is https://ummmmandy.tumblr.com/ If you use this for posting on other places I'd prefe...

i’m just gonna spend the rest of my summer making myself in these things i swear

anyway anti os should make themselves

Prompt #18

(Character A) is a rebellious angel. (Character B) is a caring demon.

(Character B) tries to stop (Character A) from being too crazy, (Character A) tries to influence (Character B), and they’re both a mess.

Prompt #14

Take your OTP. Imagine them as an angel and a demon, based on personality.

Switch them.

Writing Prompts?

I have a lot of Spotify playlists with unnecessarily long and weird names.

I make them up on the spot most of the time, and I don’t even have a reason or story for most of them. I thought that maybe they could be used for writing prompts, or at least inspiration.

So here you go, have some prompts. If you use them, then please reblog or message me. I would love to see what you make of them.

‘do you remember my name or the way i said yours?’

‘yellow + purple = grey’

‘catch me on the next ‘snapped’’

‘water, carry me down the drain’

‘here we are, at my hundredth funeral, and we should really stop doing this by now’

‘the catch to dying is consciousness’

‘necklaces of the gold star stickers i never got’

‘happy tears of pity and envy’

‘consequences of the consequence’

‘purple prose’

‘did you love me or were you lonely?’

‘lack of love is the new hatred’

‘i’m sorry you thought i was sorry :/‘

‘make orange juice from lemons’

‘our house, their home’

‘perfection is relative’

‘the fork in the road’

‘close we hold the fallen’

‘wonder where my mind goes’

Prompt #12

(Character A)’s life is set up completely by their parents for a social experiment; complete with castings for background characters and side characters.

(Character B) is a side character in (Character A)’s life. They’re supposed to be the bully, but as they find themselves falling for (Character A), they start to break their script.