Tag Archive | Uncharted Blog

Look UP a Little More – Six Sentence Stories

Look up a little more.

IMG_2458These days, he spends so much time looking down – his head is bowed, but not in prayer, he holds an alter in his hand, the god he worships speaks to him in 140 characters, hashtags, and memes, using click-bait to reel him in.

Look up a little more.

His friends consist of profile pics and avatars, voices speaking in emoji and acronym in a silent cacophony, deafening him to the sound of life beyond the screen.

Look up a little more.

He types LOL without even smiling, he lives for likes and filters himself for others to envy while his life passes by, he feels lost and alone in a crowd when wifi is weak, he doesn’t know he’s alone until the battery dies and he looks up, surrounded by strangers he used to know.

He needs to look up a little more.

Six Sentence Storied

This weeks word was UP, thanks to Ivy at Uncharted Blog for keeping us writing every week!

The Tomb at the Top of the Stairs

– A Six Sentence Story –

The attic looked much the same as it always had, the cobwebs were bigger and the dust was thicker, but it remained, as it had in her mind, a mausoleum of forgotten things and fading memories.

Being there left her with a physical ache deep inside, but the movers were on the way and if she wanted to salvage something, anything her grandmothers hands once held, she had to keep the tears from clouding her eyes and find it.

Picking things up and putting them down, she sifted through the moth eaten past packed away in boxes and stacked in precarious piles, she nearly missed the faded green volume propped almost proudly amidst generations of detritus no one could bring themselves to throw out, but like a guide, a sliver of sunlight found its way into the attic from the small vent beneath the rafters and lighted softly upon the gilt lettering decorating its spine, making it dance just for her.

The dust plumed and swirled and waltzed in the air as she gently wiped the powdery remnants of time from a beautifully illustrated copy of The Children’s Longfellow, tears again filled her eyes when she looked beneath the cover, a faded ex-librīs revealed the books lineage, her great grandmother, her grandmother, and her mother’s names were all printed there on that bookplate.

She stood and tiptoed back through everything she was leaving behind, cradling the book close to her heart, she closed the door to the tomb at the top of the stairs for the last time.

Sitting at her grandfathers desk, she carefully added her name beneath those of the women who helped shape who she’d become, leaving room enough for her own daughters name to one day be written.

* * *

My six, ever so slightly run-on sentences inspired by this weeks word from Unchartedplate.

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MINE – a Six Sentence Story

It’s it’s been a while since I’ve tossed in my own six sentences over at Uncharted for a Six Sentence Story. Actually, it’s been a while since I’ve even managed to write six whole sentences . . . not good ones anyway.

Have you tried your hand and linked up with your own yet? If you haven’t, you must . . . it’s quite fun and gets the creative juices flowing. Mine have been evaporating in a stagnant pool, so bear with me. Perhaps next week I’ll pen something super for my Six Sentence Story!

 – MINE –

How could you?

I’ve been thinking about this all day, I couldn’t focus on anything else, and here you are looking at me like I have a second head for bringing it up.

It’s like nothing that even remotely matters to me means anything to you, you just don’t care and I’m finally starting to see that you never did.

This has been happening since our first fricking date, I swear sometimes I wish I’d never even met you!

I’m not being overly dramatic, I have every right to be mad and damn it, I am.

I woke up this morning looking forward to eating that cinnamon roll for breakfast, it was supposed to be mine.

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Six Sentence Stories – Cold Case Files

This prompt, SUSPECT, is an old one, linky closed – but I couldn’t resist writing six sentences with it . . . 
img_0784There was plenty of evidence, all of it circumstantial though, we needed proof, what we really needed was a confession.

We corralled the suspects, four of them in total, and brought them one by one into the make-shift interrogation room; without the proper equipment, we were forced to handle things old school, no fancy forensics was going to blow the lid off that case for us.

They each pointed the finger at the others, feigned innocence and tears to gain our sympathies, it was hard not to believe their stories.

Looking into their eyes it was almost impossible to think any of them had done it, but facts don’t lie, it had to have been one of them and the guilty party couldn’t be allowed to get away with what was beginning to look like a perfect crime, regardless of how much evidence we had.

We held them as long as we could, any longer would have been tiptoeing across the line of false imprisonment and we were getting nowhere, it wasn’t the first time they’d been suspects in a case like this, and we knew it wouldn’t be the last; these four were good, so good our cold case files were bulging at the seams.

We never did solve the case, the statute of limitations closed that one before we could nail it shut, it’s been years now and not one of them has ever fessed up, we’ll never know who broke that window, I guess it was a perfect crime . . .

True story

The suspects :

1. Male, 12 years old
2. Male, 10 years old
3. Female, 9 years old
4. Male, 4 years old

Evidence:

Broken window in shared room of 10 and 4 year old boys
Glass shards in hallway closest to 12 year old’s room
Ball hidden under bed in 9 year old girl’s room
Small cut on girl’s finger, possibly from glass – unknown

Witnesses : There were no witnesses aside from the suspects themselves

Case : Unsolved

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Check out Six Sentence Stories on Uncharted. There’s a new prompt every week!

Six Sentence Stories – Home

img_0626When the postcard arrived, she laughed and tossed it into the junk bin without bothering to read the details, “You are cordially invited to attend . . ” was all she needed to see, being cordially invited to anything was near the bottom on her list of things she enjoyed, right under jumping out of a plane without a parachute; besides, there wasn’t even a return address – which usually meant junk.

Three days went by without her giving so much as a passing thought to the postcard laying atop the annoying pile of credit card offers and home mortgage refi pitches waiting to be shredded, but then a second invitation arrived.

This one was fancier than the last, the soft, paper linen envelope held a handwritten summons, the gilded ink danced across a clouded vellum insert, “Your presence is requested . . .”, it almost felt like a crime to discard the lovely solicitation into the bin, but she did.

Two more days came and went, as did curious thoughts about the odd invitations, not curious enough to need satisfying though, get-togethers, no matter how appealing the request was presented, held no desire for her; but still, there where those curious questions festering in the back of her mind.

That evening a third envelope arrived, this one in a plain, standard size business envelope, her name centered and typed with commercial precision, no return address, the equally plain white paper inside simply stated, “This is your final notice, please arrive promptly at noon tomorrow.”, the finality of the tone unnerved her, she retrieved the other invitations and scoured them for more information, there wasn’t any to be found.

Six days had passed since the first cryptic notice had arrived, noon came and went, the time between each tick of the second hand on the clock became slower and slower with each movement; the knock on the door came like a sonic boom to her psyche – standing in her doorway was a dapper gentleman, a three ring binder in one hand and an elegant walking cane in the other, “I’m sorry to bother you at home, ma’am, you really should have sent an RSVP . . .”

This is my third Six Sentence Story, and I have to say, this link-up has become one of my favorites! Each time I read the cue, I have no idea what to write, so I just don’t think about it and start. 

What comes out is kind of cool, it gets me inspired to write for the day, which usually lasts throughout the week. I admit to the liberal and questionable use of commas throughout my six sentences . . . brevity in the written word is something I am seemingly incapable of, and being limited to six sentences has forced me to embrace the run-on, rambling writing I so often beg writers I critique not to do.

Thank you, Ivy, for this wonderful link-up!

Six Sentence Stories is a weekly writing prompt hosted by Ivy on her blog Uncharted, this week, the cue was home. 

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Click the pic to join in and share YOUR six sentences!