I work with a bunch of wonderful, creative people, and we decided that this year we all want to make time to flex some of the creative muscles we don’t get to use at work.

We’ve been doing writing exercises in a few of our weekly meetings, and this week I got to wear the taskmaster’s hat.

I decided it’d be fun to use the kinds of prompts we used in the AW blog chain a few years back.

Here are the prompts we used:

• Word count: 350
• Genre: Drama
• Character: A soulless man
• Material: Ice cream
• Sentence: “Not for you”
• Bonus: Your story involves a damsel in distress

And here is my incredibly silly story, written in around 10 minutes and left unedited:

The eminent widow Dame Edith Featherstonehaugh had been abandoned in the Gobi Desert by her latest fiancé, the explorer Sir Percy Wargarble.

Modesty prevented her from doing so much as loosening her stays, and her parasol was ineffectual in the noonday sun.

At the sound of hoofbeats, her heart quickened. Was this a band of desert raiders coming to kidnap and/or ravish her?

But no, it was a pedlar with a cart, a cart that somehow had steam billowing from it.

The driver spotted her and halted his horses.

She looked up at him, head lowered, blushing furiously, and trying to remember the etiquette for such situations.

After a moment, she squeaked, “Might I trouble you for some water, sir?”

He blinked slowly at her, “Water? I only have the finest ice creams in my cart, for delivery to the Sultan and his harem. I have no time to dilly-dally.”

“Sir, sir, could you not take pity on me? Surely you can see that I am not here by choice and am suffering gravely in this abominable heat!”

He blinked once more, “Heat? Not by choice? Ice cream? Not for you!”

She gesticulated at him with her parasol, “Have you no heart, man?”

He thought for a moment, “I have a heart, madam. But, unfortunately for you, I am bereft of that thing called a soul.”

She took a step back, spirits and parasol both drooping, “What…what devilry is this?!”

He grinned, “I sold it, you see. For I was once stranded like you, thirsty like you, and met by a man on a cart who had the solution to all that ailed me.”

Dame Edith felt a fainting come upon her, merciful blackness descending as the soulless man asked “Would you like to buy an ice cream cart?”

 

I don’t know why the parasol became a thing, but it evidently did.