Writing Resources from Fifteen Minutes of Fiction

The Park

Jasper, I feel blue."
"Maybe you need to shake it off and go to the park."
"Maybe I do... but the park will be moonlit, and you know that-"
"Take a parasol."
"...There's such a thing as too matter-of-fact, you know."
"I wasn't aware."

I left Jasper in his bowl, staring at the sickly pale green wallpaper, picked up my ancient parasol from its place leant against the doorframe and started off towards the park.
The sun was hot, like it normally is, and the air was rippling around me, like it normally does, but only when the sun is being hot. Which it normally is. My shadow matched me step for step until we got to the crossroads by the butcher's, at which point it went off towards the scrapyard on the other side of town. Luckily, that of the parasol stayed with me as we approached the park.
Sure enough, it only got greyer as I walked towards the gates. Feeling the moon poke out from behind the dark clouds, I hissed and pulled the parasol over my face. How could I have thought that the park would be relaxing? Ugh, Jasper. I place too much faith in that fish sometimes. I walked in, gripping the parasol firmly. There was silence. An expanding and contracting silence, a breathing, living silence that smothered you until you almost felt like your own footsteps echoed the drumming of a frightened heart that you didn't quite realise was your own. There was a darkness that made you miss the honeyed light of the fading day, and the stark, bare sun in a cloudless sky at which you always complained for beating down on you.That was the park. It made you wish.
"Miriam."
I turned at my name, but it seemed like just a whisper in the wind. You could never really tell, in that undulating silence.
I walked deeper into the park, into the blackness. Breezes brushed my cheeks that soon turned into harsh gusts of wind nearly wrenching the parasol out of my hand. I kept a white-knuckle grip on it.
The winds built and built until I could barely move. I couldn't see a metre around me. I was enveloped. All was still so dreadfully silent.
I felt a sudden jolt. No. The moon shone, the rays of pure white light breaking my skin as the whirlwinds tore the parasol from my grasp.

The wallpaper disgusted him. Jasper waited, waited until he felt the little, gentle breeze pass through the house and everything in it. His spine tingled.
He climbed out of his bowl and opened a door in the outer wall. He walked through and closed it firmly behind him, careful not to let reality seep in.

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