Other stories for this prompt

She was walking down the sidewalk in the downtown area of Seattle when she noticed a pile of white blankets and other pieces of cloth laying haphazardly on the right side of the sidewalk.

When she approached the bundle of the white blanket and other cloth, she briefly felt for it, thinking that there could be someone sleeping or even a dead body that was either abandoned, or may have died from an illness related to the recently unbearable heat.

However, she found that no one laid in the blankets, made obvious by the way that it was just tossed...

They would never stop.

She used to love the sight of birds on a rooftop, electric wires, even clotheslines. She used to feed them in the park, throwing crumbs and other leftover sandwich bits to the flock that would land on the concrete and nibble at her feet. But they were not content.

They wanted more.

Soon, she noticed the flock flying behind her car as she drove home from work, the store, the school. They would line up behind her like children behind the Pied Piper, only these children had coal black eyes and hearts to match. They were...

Disappeared into the cityscape,
hiding unintentionally,
friend to only the birds,
for they are the only ones who
will keep this lone soul company.
On days like these, it's easier
for him to just stay in the shadows,
he has, after all, been living as
one. A familiar shadow of his former
life before he had succumbed to
the circumstances that brought
him to this humble time in his life,
whatever they may have been-
drugs, loss of a job, mentally
unstable. But this man was- and still
is- a man. Although it may not seem
like it on this...

Homeless, the art installation won first prize. John Wentworth had planned to ruin the artist Kitty More. She used his idea. The one he told her about during their snakebite drinking days. The ones when they both woke up with hangovers worthy of bad poetry, the agony of headaches.

John posted intimate, embarassing photos of her. Lovers amateur sex tapes. Recorded snores and farts. Millions of hits. She retreated from the public eye, she always had low self esteem.

But he never thought she was the suicidal type.

The birds had not come in last night and now they would be lost.

Common birds! She spat twirling a small gold spoon in her coffee clattering nervously on the edge of the doll like cup.

So long years of sorrow, so long back breaking toil. The training, the binding of tiny claws the midnight dropper feedings. All of it for nothing. Now they would peck at trash and pretend to get excited when they heard the fog horns of a garbage trawl.

Why do I bother? She picked a tiny scar at the corner of her mouth and drank...

In the morning, he'd wake up, stretch a bit and roll up his things into a small bundle and be on his merry way. There was a gym nearby with public access to the showers, where he'd wash his clothes and hang them to dry on a curtain bar somewhere as he brushed, shaved, showered and took care of his other personal grooming.

After that, he hopped on the back of a trolley and got his exercise for the day walking from the trolley stop on the edge of town to the orchard just a mile down the road. He'd...

The ground was cold and he could feel the pigeons surrounding his pack. He had half a sandwich in there and they tried in vain to pick it out from beneath the clothes.

The sun was rising and in the distance, he heard shopkeepers opening up as workers trudged through the streets on their way to work. He sat up and stretched with a yawn. He would have to find a shower. He had gone a good four days without one and the smell was starting to bother him. Maybe he would spring for a hostel. Clean sheets and running...

The cold bit at her toes. Pulling them to her body, she peered over the top of her blanket. The world was beginning to come alive. People hurried on there way to work, lights flickering on across the pale grey skies.
It was an odd time of day; it brought with it relief and pain. She was glad of the sound, the sights of other people. The nights grew monotonous, full of nothing. Every minute seemed like hours, every hour like days as nothing but black emptiness stretched out before her. As day broke, cutting through the darkness, she often...

Day 1750: It feels eerily similar to Day 1. I wake up with the sun beating down on my face, no longer held in check by the facade I'm sleeping against. The heat is starting to sting, which I contemplate for a few moments. I'm so glad to be feeling something upon my skin which isn't gravel or my own beard, curling back up to itch me in the very same spots where I'm sore. It's as if even my own face wants nothing more than to detach and fly away.

"Oh god. Oh god, oh god, oh god. I think there's something underneath the bed."

Jacob sighed, rolling over and twisting the blankets in an infuriating fashion. "Anna, you're twenty-five years old. Don't you think you're a little old for this?" Of course, he would say that.

Anna twisted the blankets right back. Blankets were protection. Blankets were life. If she were covered with the blankets and Jacob were not, the rules dictated that Jacob would be eaten and Anna would be spared. Everyone knew that. But Jacob wouldn't let this go without a quarrel.

"Jesus, Anna! I'm cold! It's...