So here’s my first Writers In The Woods assignment:  a 500 word piece involving a ‘man in black,’ a ‘fishbowl,’ and ‘train tracks.’  I wrote it in the presence of four children, but the task is complete, so I’ll post and post happily!  Please check out the writer’s links in the blogroll to see other stories using the same guidelines.

She lived alone, and most days The Watchers didn’t come to her. She’d hear them knocking on the neighboring doors, up and down the hall, and she strained to listen each time. They would stomp past her door while she waited on the inside, goldfish bowl in hand, ready to prove its sustained livelihood.

She’d never had a goldfish die. Once every three months or so a man dressed in black would come to her door, collect the old bug-eyed specimen, and deliver another in a tightly knotted plastic bag. She thought it was the same man every time, but it was hard to say. He came alone, never smiled, and had cool blue eyes that refused to become familiar. The first few months she’d tried to question him and then make polite conversation, but he had obviously been instructed not to partake in such niceties.

“Ma’am,” he’d say loudly. “Ma’am, I’m in quite a hurry.” He’d speak over her until her voice was just a whisper, and eventually, she stopped trying to talk altogether.

On a Tuesday morning near the end of her third September as a Fish-Watcher, she woke with a start. She’d been dreaming of the blue-eyed man. His eyes protruded from his face and his mouth was drawn up in a funny way. She waited at her open doorway, wanting to ask him what was wrong but unable to speak. She stood, terrified, as he slowly pursed his lips and blew a fat, slobbery, opalescent bubble. As it drifted toward the ceiling her fright grew. She stifled a scream and woke as it popped.

She dashed over to the bureau and saw before getting there that the fish was drifting sideways through its bowl.  “No, no, no, no…” she mumbled. She tapped at the glass and then shook it a little. A cloud of dust stirred from the bottom of the bowl and the fish sloshed through it gracefully, obviously dead.

There was a knock on the door. She spun and glared, hoping the person on the other side would pass her over. The next knock was louder and accompanied by a strong voice. “FW 1264, open the door, please. Routine check, please.”

She walked trembling to the door and held out her bowl to be checked. In less than a minute, the bowl was sealed and placed in a black box, and she was being escorted to the waiting train behind the building.

Sitting all around her were the other fish-killers, and the blue-eyed men in black, sitting silently. She noticed each of them had eyes that protruded slightly from their flat faces, and they all looked eerily alike.

I haven’t written a blog entry in several years, since ending the chronicles of Ms. Meshuga and Her Pirate Children in 2006.  After losing motivation to update regularly, near the end of a $3 bottle of Shiraz and under piles of laundry, I’ve busied myself providing freelance web services for local companies and attempting to accomplish the many fiction writing goals I’ve set for myself.

Writing has always been a mainstay for me, from a very young age.  Whatever hobbies and interests I immerse myself in, I always end up acknowledging a need within to write; it’s not simply a pleasure.  I am a lunatic unless I create via the written word, and this blog will be motivation for me to do so often, as well as a method of communication between myself and other writers (namely the ones in my newfound writer’s group!)

Please feel free to comment, or if you are a writer with a site you’d like me to link to, send it along.  Cheers!