Beyond Words

Create a brief fragment of an epiphany, a moment beyond words, beyond explaining, in which a character sees the necessity of change.
(from prompt #36 in The 3AM Epiphany)

Read my response:


"feist: I feel it all" by visualpanic



I feel it all, I feel it all. I feel it all, I feel it all. I don’t know how to sing but I keep repeating the words, repeating the track. The bay looks overwhelming, driving over it, more expansive than I’ve ever noticed, has there always so much? The wings are wide, the wings are wide. I am going home but I want to keep driving. I want to know where I’m going but right now I don’t want to go where I’m going. I want to keep driving and make the decision to go home or go on, somewhere else, later. Wild card inside, wild card inside. I feel like breaking down but I don’t know what to break, or how. Maybe I am breaking down, maybe it isn’t something you know until the existence of pieces. I’ll be the one who’ll break my heart. I scream the words without trying to make them sound pretty. Just to scream, I’ll be the one to hold the gun. No matter how loud I yell it isn’t loud enough, I keep trying to find the right way to scream the words I’ll be the one to hold the gun. I’m shouting and crying without any idea how I sound anymore or how I look, just sobbing and trying to make noise that I can hear, that sounds right, until I do, and it shames me, my selfishness. I know more than I knew before, I know more than I knew before. I know how to say words, and I want God to hear, so I pray and I pray. I didn’t rest, I didn’t stop. Yelling at God, in my car driving over the bay. Did we fight or did we talk? I yell the words. I love you more.

Canned Film

Write a very short synopsis of an imaginary film, as if writing for one of those video analogies—perhaps 10,000 Films in a Nutshell. Concentrate on images as much as you can in this summary of a plot or an interesting combination of images and time.
(from prompt #19 in The 3 AM Epiphany)

Read my response:

"the headless lovers" by Cane Ludico Rosso



The film opens in black and white, with stock footage of the two main characters in their daily life, just before they meet. The woman, played by the ubiquitous leading lady of period pieces, Keira Knightley, is shown wearing pristine white gloves and dining with company at a banquet table, attended to by servants, which is neatly juxtaposed by the man (played by underrated Ben McKenzie), with dirty fingernails, jumping out of view of two slovenly matrons to eat an apple in a busted door frame.

When the two meet up at a greasy café, the woman looks to the man, who ignores her and in fact walks out of the diner. After a beat, the woman gets up and follows the man to a closet-like room in a tenement building with laundry hanging out the windows. In the next scene, we see the two damp with sweat and half-clothed, and the woman is begging the man to tell her a story. As he talks about aliens living in a highly developed industrial society on an arid planet, haunted by ruby-lipped Zombie women and hunted by a nomad army, the camera pans out to the night sky and zooms into a full color, animated planet. McKenzie and Knightley’s voices interrupt each other, changing details in the animated cast. When she is offended by something, the animation pauses while an appropriate substitution is created collaboratively with McKenzie.

As the lovers continue to meet amid poverty and squalor, adding to the story the viewer sees literally animated, the man struggles to avoid imprisonment for arson, which the woman’s father framed the man for in order to collect insurance on his least profitable factory. Tension simultaneously builds between the nomad army and the insulated alien society, but before the woman is ready to leave her life of privilege for her lover, WWII claims the man, which we see amid the devastation in the science fiction story. Years pass, and the animated world begins to fade away, until finally, the animated priestess voiced by Knightley defies the Father figure, and begins to rebuild.

No Ideas, But in Things

Write a very brief story (300 words) told only in images--concrete, simple, visually efficient movements and details. This exercise does not ask you to eliminate people from your prose, just to watch what they do and what objects they crave and caress rather than what they say or think about these objects and actions.
(from prompt #14 in The 3 AM Epiphany)

Read my response:


Boxes of detergents line a shelf hung above a row of washing machines. Two boxes of Tide, Sunny Meadow scent and Fresh Spring Rain, take up the most space. A bottle of All Small & Mighty rests on top of one washing machine. Five quarters go into this washing machine's slot. Inside the machine are two wifebeaters, thirteen elastic-banded socks, a flat sheet, two pillow cases, three boxers, a crewneck undershirt, a t-shirt from The Killers' Hot Fuss tour, a thong, and a lace cami with a built-in bra.

Four chairs flank the windows to the left of the door. In the second seat from the door, there is book of Sudoku puzzles, a pen, and a woven coin purse with orange, red, yellow, and green stripes and $4.75 in quarters. In the third seat from the left there is a boy sitting with his elbows on his knees, rotating a cell phone held by his right hand's thumb and forefinger. His left foot taps unevenly, between six and eight taps every ten seconds.

The machine with the All Small & Mighty buzzes. The boy grabs a metal cart and takes everything inside the washing machine, puts it in the metal cart, and wheels the cart from the washing machine to the row of dryers. The boy pulls his cell phone out of his pocket, looks at it, notes the time, puts it back in his pocket. He puts all of the clothes in the metal cart into the dryer, plus one sheet of Downey Soothing Lavender fabric softener. Six quarters go into the coin slot for this dryer.

The boy sits down on the third chair from the left and picks up the book of Sudoku puzzles and the pen. He puts down the book and takes his cell phone out of his pocket and flips it open, goes to the Dialed Calls screen, then flips it closed. He opens the phone, goes to the Received Calls screen, then closes his phone.

The buzzer rings for the dryer. The boy grabs the All Small & Mighty Detergent, the Downey Soothing Lavender fabric softener, the coin purse, and his laundry hamper that holds two wifebeaters, thirteen elastic-banded socks, a flat sheet, two pillow cases, three boxers, a crewneck undershirt, and a t-shirt from The Killers' Hot Fuss tour. The book of Sudoku puzzles and the pen remain in the laundromat with the boxes of Tide and other leftover objects.