Abhorrent, Potato, Illumine

3 things to inspire 1 story written in 20 minutes. #story320
words/phrase provided by https://wordcounter.net/random-word-generator

In the evenings Peter would walk around to the backside of the mall, where the dumpsters lived. Though the smell of the dumpsters behind the food court inspired in him a disgust and loathing that seemed to come from some unknown place deep within him.

Once in a while, Peter would visit the dumpsters, not for its tangible treasures but for those brief glimpses at illumined memories. Hopping into the rankest dumpster he could find, Peter closed his eyes and breathed normally. He didn’t want to force the memories, he only hoped to inspire them to surface.

The sound of a grown man’s yell might be the only memory.

A glimpse at crocodile skin slipping into murky water.

The weight of a dead body in his arms.

But they were only as real as dreams. They lacked roots in his current life. Living on the side of a highway, looking forward to meals under golden arches but otherwise settling for whatever could be found in dumpsters.

Sometimes, even while awake, Peter would lose all grip on reality and have the impusle to fly. He might stand on the edge of a freeway overpass, stuck between what he has experienced to be gravity and what he feels just might be true.

He’ll laugh when a passerby trips, falls or drops something they hold but if it’s a child, Peter rushed over to help. The guardians, the adults caring for the children tell him to “get outta here” or “get the hell outta here” or “Fuck off.”

More often than not he doesn’t feel right. He feels like a sand storm. Everything he is twisting, shaking and vibrating inside him. The only thing keeping it all in is his skin.

He kept potatoes just so he could watch them grow eyes. They looked like they were trying to escape themselves too.

Word, Square, Nice

3 things to inspire 1 story written in 20 minutes. #story320
words/phrase provided by @justninajo

In Cincinnati lived Samual Meeks. His old colleagues and friends used to call him “Smee”. Now the name felt detached from him, something of myth or legend, just another word that conjured up an old image.

He sat, sipping at his Irish coffee. Really, he had argued, it was the coffee of the working man. Each country had their slight variation on liquor and coffee. Caffeine to wake the body and whiskey to have a nice day, nothing spectacular, just a nice one.

Samuel read the newspaper, something he’d started to do after publishing his memoirs. The publicist he’d been assigned at Hukster & Simple’s Publishing told him he’d be asked about his thought on many topics, not just his book. The publicist said that would make him appear more approachable and position his persona for a much better second book launch.

So he made it a habit of scanning the news. He didn’t need to be an expert, “just care enough to look intelligent but not so much where you become a martyr. Media martyr’s don’t stay long in the public eye,” the publicist had said. He felt more like a square than someone intelligent.

The whiskey in his coffee began changing his mood. On page 6 or 7 of the paper, there was a short human interest piece about a man who claimed to have seen Peter Pan as an adult. The journalist covering the story made the angle more about an otherwise rational adult making an irrational claim. Samuel was curious about the claim itself, in the same way his intrigue was peaked when hearing about UFO or ghost sitings. He didn’t believe it but the possibility was always interesting.

What would make someone ruin their reputation and credibility by claiming to have seen a grown-up that was Peter Pan? That was crazier then Yeti’s or chupacabras.

Samuel finished his coffee, nearly half of it, before finished the article. He squeezed his eyes tight and stretched his throat, realizing how much “a little bit of whiskey” he had actually poured.

The man claiming to have seen Peter Pan was on his way to work at a construction job somewhere in the California Desert. He’d stopped at a McDonald’s for breakfast and said “Peter Pan grew up! He was taking handfuls of salt packets and shoving them in his pockets. He looked homeless.”

That was it. The journalist had not provided any context for which to allow the reader to decide if the man was making a reasonable claim or not.

What ere the man’s religious beliefs? Did he believe in Bigfoot? Had he also seen ghosts and/or UFO’s? A ‘No’ to these questions would make the claim more intriguing, thought Samuel.

Accept, Salt, Noiseless

3 things to inspire 1 story written in 20 minutes. #story320
words/phrase provided by https://wordcounter.net/random-word-generator

Peter woke up. It had been raining and water was running down through his spot on the middle of the hill.

He heard birds chirping and could see some light peaking through a slit in the tarp. He knew it was about 6 AM because the sound of passing cars on the freeway was intermittent.

The clock ticking next to him, he never se to the correct time. The ticking sound was all he needed. He wasn’t sure why but he couldn’t sleep in a noiseless environment.

Peter grabbed his hat and bent to step out of the tent. His breath was visible in the air and he pulled his hunting cap down over his ears.

Peter walked under the freeway and up around to the other side. Following the road for about a mile until he came to a McDonalds.

Peter ordered from the dollar menu. While he waited, he filled his pockets with as many salt packets as he could before the manager chased him off.

Peter walked back to his tent. Before stepping inside, he held the bag in his teeth to free his hands for tearing open salt packets.

One packet at a time he sprinkled the salt in a circle around his tent. Satisfied, he took the bag from his mouth and stepped inside the tent.

Sitting back on his pile of rags, he started a small fire and opened up the McDonalds bag. Once again he threw everything in the middle of the burger out of the tent, keeping only the bread, which he toasted in his hands over the fire.

After having eaten, Peter pulled out a crumpled spiral bound notebook.

On the open page was a drawing of a flag, black with a skull and cross bones. Taking a pen from his pocket, Peter continued coloring in the black of the flag. As he did so, a shudder ran through his body, jolting the pen through one of the crossing bones.

Pale, Review, Expansion

3 things to inspire 1 story written in 20 minutes. #story320
words/phrase provided by https://wordcounter.net/random-word-generator

Peter sat on the dock, his big right tow the anchor for some fishing line. Although nothing was nibbling, the skin around his big toe was whiter than the rest of his body.

He dangled his feet and looked up at the sky feeling a sense of nostalgia. The smell of the ocean, sound of seagulls and feel of the hot sun seemed to be trying to pull out some distant memory.

Peter had seen something on TV where a guy used one magnet to move around another magnet that was on the other side of a wall. That feeling of nostalgia was like that, a pulling of something that felt familiar but wasn’t seen.

Peter pulled up his feet on the dock suddenly. He cut the dangling fishing line from his toe with a switchblade and stood up. He looked at the sky. Now black clouds were moving to block the sun.

The nostalgia remained but it was blending with a sense of dread. He tried to review the expansion of feeling inside him.

How could he feel so many things? What was that nagging sense of nostalgia bordering on deja vu really about?

Peter walked to where the dock met the sand and picked up a half empty 12-pack of beer. Every time these feelings began to wash over him, he would take a drink. Such a simple, effective cliche. Another thing he had learned on TV.

This time, however, the feelings remained. This time, Peter thought he heard the muffled ticking of a clock and the distant sounds of raucous, drunken singing; chanting following the low rumble of drums.

Peter turned his head to look at the spot where the water met the sky. He finished his can of beer and grabbed another.

The sky above was beginning to thunder. Peter stumbled toward a nearby outcropping of trees and crawled under the tarp he had hung between branches. Before he passed out, he winced at what he thought was the sound of jingling bells.