Writing Stories in my Head

I’ve been writing stories in my mind for a few weeks now.  They just come to me, and I entertain them for a bit and then let them slide away out of my grasp.  Today, I decided to actually take the time to write one down.  I thought it might be fun to share. 

Left for Dead

The young woman sat out on the front porch of a run-down, tan house. It occurred to the passers-by, if not to the young woman, that the porch might one day collapse taking her to the ground with it. She sat there watching them pass as if it were the only thing in the world she had to do; at that moment it was. As the world passed her by, she sat there in a trance-like state, chain-smoking, and lazily flicking the ash from her cigarette to the porch floor.

She sat on that porch day in and day out for weeks on end. Sometimes wondering if she felt the same as an old, retired spinster who had nothing better to do than sit on the porch and fuss over her many cats. Surely, she convinced herself, that it wasn’t the same, if only for the fact that, in her mind’s eye, those old ladies never sat on the porch smoking, and usually had a broom in hand sweeping the stray leaves onto the sidewalk below, periodically using the broom to chase off stray dogs that hunted her beloved cats.

Lost in thought, the young woman absent-mindedly picked at the frayed armrest of her chair. She wondered how long she could stand doing nothing. It felt as if the world really had passed her by, left her for dead along the side of the road. The pedestrians out on the sidewalk paid as much attention to her as they did the headstones as they walked by the cemetery down the street.

“Left for dead, indeed,” she muttered under her breath as she reluctantly stood from her tattered old chair and headed for the door.

The screen door slammed as she walked into the house, the inside nearly as ill-kempt as the exterior. The young woman picked up a remote, turned on the television, and unceremoniously plopped to the old, plaid couch. The television screamed for her attention, but she paid it as little mind as she had those walking past her house while she sat unmoving on the porch.

Hours passed, her comatose form welcomed death; in fact, she yearned for it, but deep down she knew, even in the depths of her depression, that she was alive. She felt the spark of life, the need for passion, but that passion at the moment lay dormant, lost for all intents and purposes. Time slowly passed and eventually the darkness only marred by the flickering of the television enveloped her. She had lost all track of time, minutes melted into hours, and thoughts danced in her head.

Abruptly, she bolted upright grabbed a pen and a bright yellow post-it from the random collection of odds and ends on the coffee table. She scrawled a note, stuck the post-it on her roommate’s door, and bounded off into the night.