A Sane Kind of Insanity.

There’s a shirt that speaks of doing what the voices in your head tell you to do, but isn't that what we do as writers all the time? We have a cast of characters that come with us everywhere we go, and they’re real, in some dimension, on some level, anyway. We talk to them too, to coax their stories from them — encourage them to whisper in our ear.

It’s not always at an opportune time, then we end up with hurried notes, complied from bits of scraps of paper, in stolen seconds pulled from the otherwise ‘saner’ sides of our minds.

One such conversation today, an island in a sea of chaotic black and purple that was school today… a messed up day — for good reasons, (congrats to all the seniors). Those not seniors were left to contend with the ‘Three Wishes’ creative writing prompt, lessons left too short in order to ensure we still got in all seven… and the conversation on repeat, on a loop in my head until lunch time finally came, and he and I could ‘talk.’ Went something like this:

Talk to me
I can’t. You won’t hear me.
Then show me. (Silence) Why not?
I don’t know what to say; where to start.
The beginning?
Where is the beginning — no, scratch that. This is the beginning: This tree, this sunset…
The rail car?

He shivered and she stepped up again — a hand on his arm that he didn't anticipate. The touch was foreign. He wanted to move from it but a part of him held him immobile.

“It’s getting dark,” he said instead. “We should — ”

“Tell me what you were thinking first.”

“I can’t.” He turned his eyes toward the lingering sun, wanting — needing — the light to bring back the memory that had calmed the painful uncertainty inside him. “ — find shelter. It will be dark soon.”

The kitchen faded. The deck, the buggy… the girl at the table. She had whispered his name.

“Not the rail cars,” he said, shaking of his companions hand. He moved closer to them, wanting to know why he had rejected them as potential shelter.

“Why?”

The woman behind him echoed his question…