Other stories for this prompt

I don't know what to say. The image was... IS astouding, but other than that, nothing. What do I see? A lonely figure on a windswept beach, but not one of sand, no, one of bright colors and soft, sculpted rocks. The ocean is so close, yet because the sky matches the color of the water, the sea seems to go on forever, endlessly rolling through the heavens, the white waves becoming clouds creasing the sky as they travel through the heavens. It's daytime, yet not as bright as you would expect. The clouds mask the sunlight, dimming it, not...

That is one big rock. Or a whole buttload of really, really small rocks. If you jumped from the top of that rock, and I mean off of it, not just up and down in one place or like a little kangaroo or something, but really just ran and jumped from the top of that rock and into the air and then aimed yourself toward the edge and launched yourself off of the rock and began to plummet toward the ground way, way, way far below the rock, then you'd be falling a long time, like even longer than this...

"It's like a huge, deformed penis sticking up out of the ground," she said. Red Gatorade sprayed her cheek. Nick wiped his mouth and capped the bottle.

"It what??"

"Look at it." She wiped her face with her sleeve. "It looks like a massive stone cock. Big ol' mushroom-tipped cock."

He shook his head, but grinned anyway. "Seriously, what is wrong with you? I thought men were supposed to be the ones seeing phallic imagery everywhere?"

"I can't help what I see. And I see a big cock. God, can you imagine..." She shuddered. "Though if I saw something that...

Pristine. Vacant. Blankly inspired I suppose.

I stood there stiff at the edge, the reservoir grasped my echoes of desperation, but regurgitated full truths. I was to die.

Only my faulty pretences did I end up here, it was only by my willingness to give up on all that was once so attainable. This rock here is the last tangible relic of my hope, but in my full awareness I know it is.

Where did this all start my thoughts of unforgiving failures? It started at that dream, that heart-wrenching dream. In my old home that creeked with emptiness and...

I came upon the stone after walking my whole life. When I reached it, I was surprised at how big it was. I looked up at this giant head of stone and it looked down at me and spoke.

"Why did you come here." the stone asked.

"To change you."

The stone laughed at me. "I have been here since you've known how to know. The earth has fallen away and yet I rise up. I am fundamental. How is it that you intend to change me."

I held up my hand. In my hand was a piece of sandpaper....

They did not know where they arrived, the landscape was strange and different. The last days was mixed up as the food on the lifeboat had been gone for quite a good while when they finally reached this shore.

Maybe they where in the afterlife, he had no idea and neither had Marc that was with him in the lifeboat. Marc was one of the sailors on the ship that he was traveling with, hunting for inspiration to write new rhymes about ancient mariners.

Now in this shipwrecked state he somehow had saved pen and paper. So important for him,...

The rock where my sister died dominated the landscape like a giant defrocked mushroom.

My parents were standing beside me, waiting for my response as I looked up at the seaweed and the striations. I wasn't sure what they wanted me to feel.

"It's cold," I said.

"We were just up on that ledge," said mom. "The tide was coming in, but the sun was setting and we wanted to watch it."

"Thought we'd just wade back to shore afterwards," added dad.

"But I lost my balance and slipped. Pregnancy does that to you sometimes, messes with your inner ear....

I retire to a grotto chiseled in a gnarled knot of stone on the continent's edge. The continent is irrelevant. And the stone and grotto, for that matter. Because when the ocean rises, no one moans but me. And the universe is nothing if not a bell for suffering. Ding dong, ding dong.