Fiction/Prompt/Old Wives Tale
On The Seventh Year
Don’t swallow your gum
In a town, where myths shadowed reality, the tale of gum lingering in the stomach for seven years haunted the young and curious Emily.
One fateful afternoon, as she accidentally swallowed her gum, panic surged through her.
Tears streamed down her face, envisioning the gum entangling within her, a prisoner for seven long years.
This fear consumed her, each day shadowed by the dread of what she believed was an inevitable consequence of her mistake.
Emily’s vivid imagination turned every minor ache and pain into evidence of her impending doom. She lay awake at night, fretting over imagined ailments ranging from stomachaches that surely signaled the gum’s sinister presence to headaches she attributed to its mysterious effects. Her anxiety spiraled, leaving her ensnared in a web of her own fears.
Determined to confront her growing list of symptoms, Emily embarked on an emotional quest for answers. She delved into every resource available, her journal becoming a testament to her escalating worry. Pages filled with notes on every perceived change in her wellbeing, a diary of distress.
Her relentless search for truth was as much a battle with her own fears as it was with the myth itself.
As the seventh anniversary of the gum incident approached, Emily braced herself to face her imagined fate.
Surrounded by loved ones, she recounted her journey through tears, her voice trembling with the weight of years spent in worry.
But as she spoke, she realized the ailments she feared never truly manifested.
The revelation dawned on her: the gum, and the illnesses she attributed to it, were phantoms of her fear, not reality.
The myth was debunked, not by evidence of harm, but by the absence of it.
Emily’s emotional odyssey, once marked by tears of fear, transformed into tears of relief and laughter.
Her story became a beacon of hope, a lesson in the power of facing one’s fears and the importance of discerning truth from tales.
Thank you Dr. Casey Lawrence for today’s prompt and Promptly Written
Write a story, poem, or essay inspired by one of these pieces of wisdom or another old wives’ tale
