Hi Everyone,
I’d like you to write an ending for the flash fiction below in three sentences or less. Drop your conclusion in the comments. Feel free to do anything you can imagine in those three sentences.
I was inspired to create this post because I recently finished Paul Tremblay’s Growing Things and Other Stories. In that collection, he has a choose your own adventure narrative called A Haunted House is a Wheel Upon Which Some Are Broken. I’ve also been itching to try writing a tale in the second person, and this seemed like a good opportunity to give it a go.
The Story So Far…
Work was hell. Heaven is returning to an empty apartment to dwell in solitude for the evening. You shower to remove the filth of the day. There were too many mistakes to count. You shower to enjoy the heat and steam. A little pleasure makes the day’s missteps easier to accept. You shower to forget. Not that anyone else will. The water pressure doubles as a massage. It’s one of the few good things about your apartment complex. As you close your eyes and lather up your face with liquid soap, you hear the squeak of the bathroom door opening. No one else has a key to the apartment. A footstep echoes off the tile floor outside the shower. Your heart pounds so hard you worry it might burst from your chest. Leaning forward, you let the stream of water rinse your eyes of soap. You open them to see your black shower curtain blocking your view of the potential intruder. There’s only one option left. You…
Here are two awesome responses I got on Twitter.
…you see the familiar rotund shadow, the silhouette of his famous bald head. You laugh as you pull aside the curtain, “Very funny, Alfred.” A woman in a Hitchcock costume plunges her knife into you.
— Michael Arnzen (@MikeArnzen) October 14, 2019
…take hold of the removable shower head with a trembling hand. The curtain tears away from the hooks with a swift stroke of your arm, and you deliver a jet of scalding water into an empty room. Are you losing it?
— Ronald J. Murray (@RonaldJMurray) October 14, 2019
