So a couple of weeks ago, I recommended Reedsy.com’s Book Title Generator. I played with it a while, and it threw up the most unpromising title ever:
2619: Prayer
So of course I wrote a story with that as the title. I read it to the Southern Indiana Writers Group critique session, and they accepted it for their upcoming anthology. I’ll let you know as it nears publication. Meanwhile, here’s how the story begins:
My random result:
Father Jericho put what he probably hoped would be a calming hand on my shoulder. His hand was soft and heavy, like his voice, like his eyes, and the weight of it did calm me a little.
“Shalla,” he said, “prayer is prayer.”
I whispered what I had just shouted three times, the last shout so loud, he had rested that calming hand on me: “They aren’t people.”
He said nothing more, just stood by me as I watched the bank of units—ten rows, each unit one meter cubed, a solid floor-to-ceiling bank stacked eight high. They were painted sky blue, except for the stiff double pincer-like extrusions on the fronts, which were silver, and the scarlet beaded chains that ran, in a continuous loop, through the pincers.
The chains paused. The digital read-out that ran across the units paused. The read-out on one unit began again and, after a few seconds, the read-outs on the others synchronized with the singular unit and they all began again, beads clicking, black digital letters scrolling, “Hail Mary, full of grace….”
I grunted in disgust and shook myself free of Father Jericho’s suppression, turning my back on the robots and slamming out of the room. I couldn’t think of it as a chapel, no matter how dim the light or how lifelike the statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary looked.
~*~
I love unpromising prompts.
A WRITING PROMPT FROM ME TO YOU: Outline a story involving disgust with something that’s usually sacrosanct.
MA