“Dêem-me café, vou escrever!” Translation from Portuguese: “Give me coffee, I’m going to write.” -Olavo Bilac, Brazilian poet

This is a sequel to my previous blog post: Constrained and as last time, I will number the little things I write, then after all the short stories, I will list the constraints.

  1. He was lost in a sea of nameless faces. Victims, Suspects, Officers. He cut people down with words. He had a sharp tongue and it served him well. He has many scars and they were the roadmap of his soul. She was sharper than him. Her hair was a flowing field of amber rolling down her shoulders. Her eyes were like fireflies and when she was gone, his eyes lost their light and became ice cold. He was going to sail away in the ocean of love but ended up wasting away in a desert of loneliness.

  2. People. There are wild conspiracy theories about the most mundane shit to distract people from what I believe to be the actual problem. The lack of effort to make a change has lead to a society of people who complain infinitely longer than they attempt to make any change. The willful ignorance of climate change or any science is going to hamper the US if not the world for a long time following this period. Vaccines need to be taken for herd immunity. Fighting to be contrary tears us apart. The stigma against mental illness only makes those illnesses worse.

  3. Skip runs among dense trees. Moving quickly with no target. Worried family running in heavy rain, yelling. Hunting for adventure enjoying wind blowing through his wet fur. Their city’s great lake spread out amongst him. Leaping over trunks and finally, splashing. “MOM! He’s swimming.” Kids shrieking happily the parents retrieve a missing loved one.

  4. “Both my children on diverging train tracks? ….bit cliche.” David is younger, he is smart and a good kid. He has so many possibilities to do good. Chris is working though, he has gone through a lot and proved he can help people. He doesn’t have a family though and we always fought… David is barely a teenager, but maybe he will change without his brother. At least Chris is stable and shouldn’t change so much. I can’t lose my youngest. She said to herself: “No matter what I choose, I will lose both. I have to save the left.”

  5. “At the drop of a hat, everything can change. A young American bit off more than he could chew at the Christmas Market. He was challenged to a race and in the heat of the moment, he accepted it. He jumped into a strangers car to race between two cities and from the starter’s gun it was clear that he shouldn’t quit his day job to be a racer. He was in a manual car and it appears he cut a few corners during drivers school because he had no idea how to drive one. The last words he has said is reported as ‘I will cross that bridge when I come to it’ after being asked what he planned on doing with the prize money. To cut a long story short, the 4 racers were seen racing down the AutoBahn and only 3 were seen at the impromptu finish line. We’ve heard through the grapevine that the car the American was racing was found upside down in a ditch less than two kilometers from the starting point. Every cloud has a silver lining though as the American was not found inside the burning wreckage so he is expected to still be alive but obviously wouldn’t be caught dead near that accident. We believe it is an attempt to save face after an embarrassing finish but we are still sending out this missing person report to try and contact him as friends and family are concerned.

Constraints

  1. Using only metaphors, describe a tragedy in your characters life.

  2. 100 Words precisely: Say everything that is wrong with the world today.

  3. Write a story about a lost dog. No word can be repeated more than once.

  4. 100 Words precisely: A mother must choose between two children.

  5. There is a report of a missing person on TV. The missing person is you, write the missing person report but use at least 5 idioms.