Today I am starting a new writing project. I am dispensing with both quality and quantity in favor of regularity. Think of it as Metamucil for the mind. Or maybe don’t do that.
Specifically, I am going to use the prompts featured in 1,000 Creative Writing Prompts, Volume 2 (Goodreads link) to write ultra-short stories that are no more than a few paragraphs long. I will work through the prompts in order, one per day. After that, I will perhaps have a party of some sort.
Sometimes instead of a story I will simply answer the questions (most of the prompts are in the form of questions).
Note that in my first attempt below I completely blow the concept of “ultra-short” with a story that is 1123 words long. Whoops.
Prompt #1: If you could travel back to any time in the past, what date would you choose and why? Would you attempt to influence past events while you were there? Why or why not?
Story:
Bradley had been a barista at a Starbucks knock-off for five years and as he mindlessly sprayed whipped cream on top of yet another large mocha he thought that this was about four years too many. Maybe even five. He wanted to do more with his life. He wasn’t sure what that would entail except that it wouldn’t include spraying whipped cream on large mochas.
He finished his shift and as he walked through the cooling air of evening toward his shoebox apartment the sounds of downtown seemed muted and distant. It was a weeknight and things were winding down. His walk was short, only eight blocks. Once home he’d watch Game of Thrones or something else. It didn’t matter, he never really paid attention, anyway. He’d nosh on a nuked pizza pop and burn his tongue like he always did. Then it would be off to bed, followed by a Groundhog Day-like repeat of everything the next morning. It was life and it was quietly horrible, but Bradley was not a man of action. If there was to be a plan that would change his course, it would need to be delivered.
As he reached the halfway point of his short trip home, the delivery arrived. It came in the form of a nondescript man dressed so blandly that Bradley’s eyes couldn’t properly focus on him. He was wearing some sort of jacket and pants and a hat. A fedora, maybe, like hipsters wear. All of these items only registered at the most basic level, colorless shapes stuck to a human form. Bradley never saw the face of the man or if he did the face left no impression.
The man shoved a small box toward Bradley as he brushed past and Bradley took the box without thinking. A moment later he assumed it was a bomb and almost chucked it in the street, but that struck Bradley as a very bad idea just before he released the package. Instead he thought to gently set it down on top of a trash receptacle and let some city worker deal with it, hopefully without blowing himself or others up.
But he could not let go of the box. It was neatly wrapped in plain brown paper. It bore no writing or markings of any kind. Bright white string was neatly tied around it. Bradley put a finger on the string and as if by magic it unraveled and fell to the ground. He pulled at the paper and it, too, slid away, leaving him with an unadorned wooden box. It had a simple lid with no hinge and Bradley pulled it off. Inside was a small device that looked a bit like a TV remote. A slip of paper was underneath it. He took out the paper and written on it was the following:
Hello! This small device is a battery-operated time machine. Simply punch in the time you wish to visit and you will be taken there immediately. You can return to your own time by simply entering the appropriate date. Don’t be afraid to experiment! Time has a way of healing all wounds, even those to itself. Want to stop Hitler? Go ahead and give it a shot!
It was ridiculous and Bradley was hungry, so he went home and nuked a pizza pop. But he brought the device with him, and sat it on the coffee table. When he had finished dinner and salved his tongue with some Pepsi, he grabbed his laptop and did a search on when Hitler was born. He was no dummy. If he was going to take out Hitler it would be when he was a tiny baby, not a Nazi leader surrounded by other Nazis with guns and tanks.
April 20, 1889, in some town called Braunau am Inn. It seemed like ancient history to Bradley. Did they even have cars in 1889? Bradley tried riding a horse once when his family went on vacation to Wyoming and his ass had hurt for a week after. He didn’t like the idea of chasing down baby Hitler on a horse. He would add 15 years to the date because Hitler would still only be some brooding high school punk and he could run him down with a new-fangled automobile.
He went to the bathroom and checked his hair in the mirror. It seemed important to look decent for time travel.
He returned to the living room and took the device from the box. He punched in April 20, 1904 and wondered how it would know where to send him. Maybe he just had to concentrate on the name of the city. He said out loud, in a stupid-sounding German accent, “Braunau am Inn!” He pressed the neon green button on the device labeled GO.
An acrid smell rose into his nostrils and the apartment went dark. Bradley felt a surge of panic and began groping about, trying to grab onto something, anything. The darkness lifted suddenly and Bradley found himself standing in the middle of a cobblestone street. Old timey, he thought, as he looked around at the buildings. He heard a strange and ridiculous sound and spun around toward it. It was a car horn. So there were cars! Good.
Except the car was bearing down on him and he had no time to move. The horn made its strange and ridiculous sound again but cut off when the car smashed into Bradley, sending him tumbling toward a gutter where he lay broken and bleeding.
The driver got out and raced to him. The passenger, a sullen-looking teenage boy, also got out, but he went to the device that laid on the cobblestone. He eyed the display, still showing April 20, 1904. He nodded, then threw the device into a nearby field. Out of sight in the tall grass, he could not see it burn a black patch into the grass before fading from view.
The boy walked over to Bradley. Bradley looked up, focusing with his left eye, the other shut tight and leaking blood. He could feel some parts of his body and couldn’t feel others. He was no doctor but he was pretty sure he had suffered fatal injuries. He asked himself if this is what dying felt like and the answer was a confident “You betcha.”
“Are you Hitler?” Bradley asked the boy.
The teen tilted his head, neither confirming nor denying. Bradley took it as confirmation because clearly things were not unfolding as intended.
“Nuts. I should have chosen baby Hitler.”
The possibly teenage Hitler shrugged and walked away. Bradley coughed a mix of blood and spittle, then closed his eyes. He rubbed his tongue over his teeth and vowed to let the pizza pops cool down properly next time. Then he remembered there would be no next time and felt a small twinge of regret as he expired.