thefolksbetween | 2019 Writing Challenge

⭐ The Challenge:
Four times a week, we follow the same prompt to write something at least 150 words in length. It can be over but never under. It can involve any character or no character at all. At least one of the four days must be tailored toward a writing skill that we know we need to work on. The prompts can be from a website or from our brain - one word, many words, a setting/location, or anything that will inspire.

Drabble Header:
Week #, Day #
PROMPT
Name/Canon
Word Count

⭐ Prompts Week One
Day One: Freak
Day Two: Numb
Day Three: You appear in an infinite white room with nothing but yourself and a piece of paper saying "You have been banned from existence."
Day Four: You run a tattoo parlor. Every couple of weeks, the same customer comes in, always requesting the same tattoo - an additional tally mark on an ever-growing cluster of tally marks.

⭐ Prompts Week Two
Day One: "I accept no responsibility, and I would do it all again."
Day Two: Try Again
Day Three: Dance/Dancing
Day Four: Venom
(I got that) adrenaline momentum
and I'm not knowin' when I'm ever gonna slow up
and I'm ready to snap any moment.
I'm thinkin' it's time to go get 'em.
They ain't gonna know what hit 'em.

⭐ Friends:
bullethewords
arabbitholeofwander

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"You have been banned from existence." I spoke the words out slowly, reading each one with care, as if my brain didn't quite understand what it was I was reading. "You have been banned from existence." I repeated, trying out each word in a more firm voice.

Curious, I thought, staring at the little white piece of paper with the very firmly stamped typewriter letters on it. I don't remember writing those words when I attempted to fix the errors of my life story. I don't remember this blank white room with these clean white walls and white floors.

As a matter of fact, the floors and walls weren't even there. Nothing was there. Just an expanse of white. I stood there dressed all in pure white, an oddity, I thought to myself, as I never wear white. Too easy to get dirty. Too easy to ruin. The walls were nothing, and I stood on nothing as well. There was no ceiling nor no sky. There was just nothing.

I stood there (or did I float, for if there is no floor to stand on, would that not be floating?) looking around in the stark white space I found myself in.

Banned from existence.

Yet here I was? Is this not existing still? Having a formal full thought about the existence of self?

"Hello?" I called out, though I knew no one would answer. I was, after all, banned from existence. Banned from anything and everyone. How, I wondered, as I started off into white space, feeling as if I were trapped on a clean white page in which to draw a new life on. How did I get here? Who banned me? Was it myself?

I had wished to start anew.

Wished that I had never existed.

There was no bang or collision. There was no meaningful instant of realization. There was just this. A white space and a note.

I looked over the note again. The E was off kilter, like my old typewriter. Had I wrote this myself. Had my wish come true? To ban myself from all things, to protect others from my own existence. Had I managed to abolish all things around me so easy that I ceased to exist?

Or had I finally wished all things around me to be gone? Bringing the end of everything and leaving only myself with my lone thoughts. My depressed mind and morbid imagination. Neither of which would do me much good in a blank space of endless white and nothingness.

I lifted my hand with the note in it, seeing the page slowly fade in my finger tips. Slipping away into nothingness.

I felt alone.

Even just the paper that told me I had been banned was something, and now it was nothing. I existed in a world of nothing, but the words said I existed no longer, so how does one manage? How does one cope? What does one do?

I try to walk, but with new vantage point, no view of anything, it's like I was going no where. Just like I had always thought my life was going. No where. I stop and move to sit, or was I crouching. There was nothing there to sit on, but no gravity to stop me from falling. I floated there in nothing, lost in rambling, jumbled thoughts.

Why was I here?

Who banned me?

Was it a wish?

How long will this last?

Will I fall off into a void of self loathing and depression, or was that gone now as well? If I ceases to exist, does that mean all the self pain and hate stops as well? In this non existence, am I free? Or can I start over again.

I float there feeling as if I could cry, but tears are something and I am in nothing. I no longer exist, and have been banned from everything.

It tingles at first but then feels like nothing. My body starting to fade as if it were the paper. My feet going white to translucent. My legs dissolving into the background. I look at my hands and they too are becoming clear. Soon I melt away into the white.

Banned from existence, I am no more.

2019 Writing Challenge

Week 1, Day 3 | EXISTENCE | Self | WC:712 | Work on: First Person