Howdy and yeehaw! After a month long break, Carrot Ranch is back in the saddle and riding high with weekly 99-word writing challenges. The January 24, 2022, prompt: “In 99 words (no more, no less), write a story about “the wish I made.” If you make your way to the Ranch you will find that the challenge is presented every Monday and open through Saturday. What is special about this challenge is that participants’ work is presented every week (Wednesdays) in an artfully curated collection at Carrot Ranch, published in a collaborative work with individual work linked back to their blogs. With the collection, rich discussion of storytelling craft happens in the comments. Carrot Ranch is a great place to go and read and hang out with other writers.
I’m out of the gate with three responses to the prompt. The third one was posted earlier as a Six Sentence Story in a slightly different form.
Knowing by D. Avery
She hadn’t known death. Now she did. Death was the grey sadness veiling her mother’s face. It was the dark weight of her father’s slumped shoulders. It was the dense silence of the closed bedroom across the hall from her own. It was the accusations from her shadowed eyes when she looked in the mirror.
Every night the star filled sky pricked bitter tears. She could not undo the one wish that had come true. She didn’t remember the argument, only her words. “I wish you were dead!”
Death was turbid pond water dripping from her brother’s still body.
The Magic Fish by D. Avery
The fisherman’s wife said not to come home without dinner.
Treading home empty-handed, letting the talking fish go now seemed foolish.
“I sure wish I had a beer.”
All of a sudden a bottle of beer appeared. He quaffed it. But one beer always made him desire more. Shrewdly he wished for a bucket of beer. A bucket appeared, full of beer. He quaffed it. Not too late and a little drunk, he realized the greater potential.
“Yesh! I’ll shave the world! My last wish’s for’s world peaz.”
Instantly, peas filled the bucket.
“Hope she gives peas a chance.”
Wearing Thin by D. Avery
“I wish the kids had taken us out to dinner for our anniversary. They never invite us out anymore.”
“Maybe they don’t want to hear you complain that you’ve nothing to wear and then spend all of dinner complaining about the shops you had to go to before finding something acceptable.”
Or maybe it’s because you always wear that godawful shirt, even to fancy places.”
“That’s my fancy shirt. I want to be buried in that shirt.”
“I want that too, believe me.”
“You’re wearing on my last nerve, woman.”
“I wish the kids would come by more often.”
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