A tourist is stranded after a mysterious incident destroys all the paths leading to the tourist’s home, a seemingly identical city that once existed just beyond the surface of a mirror.
Music: “Level 1 (Loop)” by Chris Logsdon
This story is from Year 9 of Storyfeather
Every year’s short stories (mostly) follow a theme. This year, I will turn the Wheel of Fiction to help me decide what to write. There are thirteen spokes on this wheel. Eight are occupied by the eight themes from the previous years of stories. One is a prompt to turn the wheel again. One is a wildcard (hmm…curious). And three are covered only in question marks. I suppose I’ll find out what’s beneath those questions as we go along.
Welcome to the WHEEL OF FICTION
I spun the wheel and it landed on PROMPTS, so I retrieved one of my books of prompts and turned to a random page. The prompt was to list five facts about myself that no one knows. I listed five facts about my main character instead. A phobia of the color yellow. A requirement to wear stripes. Turning invisible by reflex. And somehow this reminded me of the premise for a novel draft about people from another city, a city familiar and foreign at the same time, who were stranded in one of our cities.
[Video Description: Trailer. Duration, 47 seconds. Music: “Level 1 (Loop)” by Chris Logsdon. Digital drawing. Center left, a humanoid figure seen from waist-up and in profile reaches out with the left arm toward a ball of light surrounded by hazy light at top right corner. The figure has six digits on their hand and an elongated ear that rises into their flowing hair and above their head. Bottom right, dark hazy shapes suggesting skyscrapers and high-rises at night. The sky appears filled with iridescent clouds. Ghostly after images of the figure appear around the figure. Title card with the words “Short Story” and “Genre: Mysterious Fantasy” and the story title are displayed in front of the image. The title card and story title fade. Lines from the story appear over the image: “‘I’ll be damned,’ I heard a voice say. My roommate’s voice. And she…saw me. She saw me vanish. She saw me reappear. She saw me without stripes on. She saw my fluted ears peaking from under my indigo hair. She saw the copper shimmer and the green gleam of my skin. She saw my irises, round but spinning slowly, almost imperceptibly, like the minute hand of a clock.” The title reappears at top just before the last line appears. A watermark of the site URL appears at bottom center throughout.]
Genre: Fantasy, Mystery
Tags: CITIZEN, LOS ANGELES, LOWER CITY, MIRROR, PARNI, STRANDED, UPPER CITY, VACATION
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