Exciting news: I’ve added a new category on the blog for writing prompts.
It’s kind of exciting to me, anyway. A little.
Breaking writing prompts out into their own category will make it easier to find them, which will be handy for me and any bots scraping the site for inane exercises based on random writing prompts.
And now, a prompt.
Prompt #6: A mystical but seemingly omnipotent being appears before you and commands that you provide the solution to world peace or all the world will be destroyed. The omnipotent being has given you sixty seconds to respond. What do you do?
Story:
I was vacuuming in the living room, annoyed as always at how the couch sits just low enough that the vacuum cleaner head won’t fit under it, forcing me to either pretend it never gets dirty under the couch–something that would require a level of belief akin to that of the most devout person ever in history–or to haul the couch aside, grimace at the dunes of dust and hair, then pray that the vacuum will not clog, explode or catch fire while I roll it over the couch-shaped section of carpet. My vacuum is not one of those sleek Dyson models that sucks up dirt through magic while making so little noise you could clean with a baby sleeping nearby and never disturb the tyke. Mine is a beat-up hand-me-down my mom gave me when I moved into the college dorm. She probably figured it would do well enough for dorm-level cleaning and she was right.
That was over ten years ago. I’ve become sentimentally attached to the vacuum since, as I’ve sunk enough money into repairs and parts that I could easily have bought a new, magic-powered one. The sound of the vacuum is a comfort, a space in which all else is shut out, where I can lose myself in thoughts or to just not think at all.
This is to say the vacuum cleaner is noisy, rather like a jet on take-off, so I didn’t hear the knocking at my door. I didn’t hear it until I had finished vacuuming the couch-shaped section of carpet and by this time the vacuum was getting hot to the touch. This is the signal that vacuuming is over, so I turned it off. It was then I heard three polite taps on the front door. I wasn’t expecting company and in the time I’ve lived here I’d never had anyone come to the door to sell me something. I was puzzled.
I looked through the peephole and standing there was someone wearing a cloak, a hood pulled over the face and the cloak sufficiently shapeless to hide the gender of the person. Also the person was surrounded by smoke. I scanned as best as I could to the left and right and the smoke was pretty much sticking just to this individual. It didn’t seem like a good idea to let this person in.
“Yes?” I said in my most neutral tone.
Silence.
I peered through the peephole again. The figure was still standing there, the smoke slowly curling up and around it. That’s some serious self-control to not be coughing, I thought. Unless it’s just dry ice fog or something.
“I’m sorry, I’m not interested,” I said, assuming without further information that this person was probably going to try to sell me something–cloaks, a dry ice machine, who knew.
I looked through the peephole a third time and the figure was still standing there, motionless.
Oh shit, I thought. What if it’s the Grim Reaper? I quickly looked again. No scythe, but maybe he didn’t always carry it with him. Or maybe he was hiding it in that great shapeless cloak in order to trick me into not suspecting a thing, opening the door and then promptly getting struck by lightning. It was looking a little like rain.
But that was silly, the Grim Reaper isn’t any more real than Mother Nature, Father Christmas or Aunt Jemima. Still, it seemed unwise to open the door to a stranger that refused to identify him/her/itself. I was no teenager marked for death in a some found footage horror movie and I wasn’t going to act like one. I decided to appeal to authority.
“If you don’t identify yourself, I may have to call the police. I don’t want to, understand, but you may leave me no choice.”
Three polite taps on the door followed.
“Yes, I heard you knock before. I’m not letting you in, see? Because you seem very odd. I’m not judging, I’m just saying.” It occurred that I perhaps didn’t want to upset this person because let’s face it, short of bars on the windows and doors, if someone truly wants to get into your house, they will get in, and it’s probably better all around if they come in on friendly terms and not by smashing through the windows.
I reverted to my original stance, expanded for clarity. “Well, what can I do for you?”
The doorknob turned. Bugger, had I forgot to lock the door when I’d come home from the grocery store? Probably. I reached out to grab it but it suddenly seemed a bad idea so instead I took several steps back and grabbed the nearest thing to a weapon within reach, one of my sneakers. Truthfully, if I held it up to your face and kept it there it would constitute a war crime.
The door swung open silently and the figure stood there, just as it had been doing, except now the smoke could billow into the house instead of just gathering around the step. I made a vague threatening motion with the sneaker. The figure took no notice and stepped inside. The smoke, which was odorless, thoughtfully clung to the figure instead of spreading out all over.
“You,” it said with a voice that may have been male but was definitely low and sounded a bit like it had been rigged with a cheap echo effect.
“Me?”
“You,” it confirmed.
“Yes?”
“You have sixty seconds.”
I already didn’t like where this was heading.
“That’s not a lot of time for whatever it is. I mean, unless it’s something like eating a cookie. I could do that in ten seconds, easy.”
I was to get no cookie.
“You have been chosen,” it said. “As the one who has been chosen, you are given sixty seconds to complete the task.”
“Right. Is the task eating cookies, by chance?”
The figure did not reply. An awkward silence followed, but I was damned if I was going to be the one to break it. It’s not like we were on a date.
Finally the figure continued. “You have sixty seconds to come up with an answer.”
I tossed the sneaker aside, suspecting it would have done no good, anyway. “An answer? Oh, is this one of those radio quiz things? I’m going to have to name four countries where it’s illegal to breed rabbits, aren’t I?”
Awkward not-a-date silence descended again. This time I did break it.
“Well, what is it? It shouldn’t take sixty hours of build up to give me sixty seconds to answer.”
The figure turned, walked into the living room, then turned back toward me, gesturing that I follow. I did and it seemed to regard the vacuum cleaner for a few moments before looking at me again.
“You have sixty seconds to devise a plan for world peace,” it said.
It had to be a radio quiz. I was probably moved to the living room so the hidden camera could get a better shot of me from the street. It didn’t make sense that a radio quiz would be using cameras but none of this particularly made sense so it seemed as good a guess as any.
“Do you mind if I sit?” I asked. I nodded to the couch, which was still sitting away from its usual spot. The figure said and did nothing, which I took to mean go right ahead. I sat down and continued. “Considering the luck others have had with far more than sixty seconds to devise a solid plan for world peace, I don’t think I’m going to come up with anything decent, you know. Do I win something if I do?”
“If your answer is deemed inadequate the world shall be destroyed.”
I had so many questions in response to this.
“What do you mean by ‘destroyed’?”
“It will be obliterated. No more. Gone.”
“That seems a bit arbitrary. What if I refuse to give an answer?”
“The world will be destroyed.”
“But you said it would be destroyed if I gave an inadequate answer. If I don’t say anything, that’s not an answer at all, inadequate or otherwise.” Now I wished I’d kept the sneaker. I wanted to bounce it off echo-voice’s head.
“You have sixty seconds.”
“Can I try out more than one answer?”
Silence.
“Will you tell me if I get it right? Oh, I guess I’ll know because the world won’t be destroyed.”
Continued silence.
“Has the sixty seconds started?” Best to assume it had, so I began thinking out loud. “What if all weapons suddenly disappeared? Without any handy means to kill or hurt each other we’d be forced to at least talk for a bit and from there, who knows? World peace! Actually, now that I think of it, we’d just start pulling each other’s hair and poking at the eyes and scratching and biting. It would be savage. Not very peaceful. Hmm.” I stood up. “How about if everyone were suddenly–and safely–moved off the planet for ten minutes or so. Without any humans here, there would be world peace. Then everyone could be put back and it would probably be the same as it ever was, but for that ten minutes, world peace!”
I didn’t think the figure was going to buy these suggestions. So far it seemed very by-the-book, whatever book it may be. I was running out of time but each idea I came up with was more ridiculous and unworkable than the one before. “Look,” I said, “I’ve got a few seconds left, I’m going to just do a little vacuuming to help me think.” The figure shifted slightly.
I turned on the vacuum and its guttural roar instantly soothed, taking me back to the days of my youth when mom made us all cookies and we weren’t threatened with planetary destruction by weirdos wearing baggy cloaks. When I looked over to the figure it was backing away. I could still not see its face but sensed fear. I could understand. The vacuum is honestly kind of terrifying if you’ve not been around it before. “I’ll just be a moment,” I shouted, as I pushed the vacuum over the carpet. “I’ll have one last suggestion for you and I guarantee you will absolutely flip over it.” I had no suggestion in mind, so this was going to be a good–if perhaps final–test of my improvisational skills.
The figure continued to back away awkwardly and bumped up against the ottoman, a cheap ugly thing my mother had given me at the same time as the vacuum. Unlike the vacuum, she stated up front she just wanted to get rid of it. The figure wobbled and then fell over, puffing out the smoke as it hit the carpet. The smoke was very well-behaved, though, and almost instantly returned to its master. I came forward with the vacuum to offer an apology and the figure scrabbled away. It seemed quite silly that it should be so afraid of a vacuum cleaner.
As I advanced I also tripped over the ottoman. It really is a terrible little thing. The vacuum cleaner hose spring from my hand, flexed briefly then straightened out and shot forward like a snake, the power head landing on the edge of the figure’s great baggy cloak. The figure began screeching horribly, still with the cheap echo effect. A few minutes of that sound would drive anyone mad. Fortunately it only lasted a few seconds because the vacuum cleaner latched onto the cloak like a super-strength leech and sucked up the cloak, the smoke and the figure.
I can’t say if it was my imagination or not but I am nearly certain I heard the vacuum gurgle after this.
I got up and turned the vacuum cleaner off. Nothing happened. Well, the vacuum got a bit cooler, but nothing else happened. I waited to see if I would hear a muffled but still echo-filled voice calling from inside the canister. I heard silence.
Had I saved the world or insured its destruction? I pushed the couch back into place, stored away the vacuum, grabbed a cookie from the jar on the kitchen counter and thought about it for a minute or so. Unless the sixty second deadline was measured on a cosmic time scale where it was actually several billion years, I figured the world was most likely safe. Or as safe as it ever was.
I celebrated by locking the front door and taking a nap.
