This is a writing exercise I gave a class today and since I had ten minutes, I decided to do it with them. The first two sentences are the same story starter everyone began with. The rest is my own personal madness…
It’s been four hours since I last heard from her. I am getting worried. Everyone told me to follow her out to the wall, but I said I didn’t need to do that. I trusted Madison. She was young, brash of course, but she didn’t make stupid decisions. If I am going to be honest here, the real reason I didn’t follow her out is because I didn’t want to get up. Third shift is hell, especially on the smoke nights when you spend so much time peering into the thick darkness for shapes that every hour on post seems like three.
Now she’s out there somewhere. Madison never made it to the wall. Jim woke me up, wild eyed and asked me if I’d walked her over. I told him no and tried to shake myself awake. He labors over me, a fat man with eyes sunken deep into the sockets of his puffy red face. He yells then, calling to Sara and Domingo, the other two in our bunk. Madison was the youngest of us and she was my responsibility. She was my sister, not a bound-sister in the new way, but blood born from a mother neither of us had the chance to really know. Madison was the only family I had after dad fell. We survived together until we found this place.
Domingo crashes through the front door looking left, right, then marching straight towards us. His expression is lost beneath the beard, but his eyes flash his anger. “What the hell, Jim?”
…. And that’s ten.