Every week, a creative prompt will be offered for you to unleash your imagination and artistic skills.
You can share your response in the form of art or any creative expression that the prompt inspires.
There are no restrictions and no deadlines, so feel free to take your time and enjoy the creative process.
Remember to label your response with #missysmadchallenge.
Your challenge for the week
- It was the time of the year when
M.A.D. Works 
#Missysmadchallenge#38
Written by
25summerz
in
#missysmadchallenge, creative writing
It was the season of the year when the town of Marrow Creek fell silent before dusk.
The natives claimed it was the wind—how it wailed the cries of the lost, echoing through the arid trees that lined the abandoned forgotten highways. But those who knew the truth… those who’d hung around long enough to remember… said nothing of the wind.
They spoke of her.
Lena Shaw never gave the rumors credit. She’d grown up in the city, lived in cities her whole life, and moved to Marrow Creek for peace, for a new beginning, after her brother vanished in what the police called a “tragic misadventure.” What they didn’t say was that he vanished exactly one year ago—last week of October. Just when the leaves began to fall. Just when the wind began to change.
Lena came back for answers. Not peace. Not closure. Answers.
She slept in the same cabin her brother did. Same creaking floors. Same windows shrouded in fog. Same scratched word on the doorframe: “Run.”
She outlined it with her hand her first night there, heart pounding as if trying to tell her something that her head wouldn’t listen. She slept nothing that night. Wind whipped and growled like a grieving wolf’s lamentations at the moon, and someonethething scuffled up over her front porch. A limb, she told herself. Just a branch.
But on morning rising, she opened to find no limbs. There was but the sound of footprints.
Little ones. Barefoot. From the woods to her front porch, leading.
She didn’t run away. Instead, she followed after them.
The forest of Marrow Creek was older than legend, older than the town itself. The deeper in she went, the quieter the world became. Even the birds stopped singing here. The trail twisted until she came upon it—a worn, stone well in the center of a clearing where the air was denser, thicker, as if it had a memory it didn’t want to break.
There was something in there. Something that breathed.
Lena leaned in close and whispered the name that no one had had the courage to say since her brother went missing.
“Jason.”
The wind stopped. The world caught its breath.
A whisper answered.
“.Lena?”
She moved back, divided between happiness and terror. That was his voice. It was him. But it sounded strange—like a person remembering how to talk, like bones trying to hold on to skin again.
And then she saw her.
A girl in white. Hair like soaked ash, eyes a pale blue so distant they looked blind—but they weren’t. They were watching her. Studying her.
“You shouldn’t have come,” the girl said, voice like cracked ice. “He belongs to me now.”
Lena stepped forward. “He’s my brother. I’m not leaving without him.”
The girl smiled—slow, impossibly wide, stretching her mouth into something not meant for a face.
“You don’t get it,” she breathed, throwing up her arm.
Jason emerged from behind the well.
Pale. Empty eyes. Cold skin.
“…Lena?” he muttered again, unsure now, like the word had lost its shape.
Lena’s breath hiccups. He was living-appearing—but the shadow of the girl lingered with him like smoke, twisting his shoulders.
“You can take him,” the girl retreated. “But something needs to stay behind.”
Lena looked at her brother. And then at her hands.
She nodded.
And without any hesitation whatsoever, she entered the well.
Jason collapsed onto the forest floor, panting, color in his cheeks. The shadow was broken. The wind came back.
The white-clad girl gazed down the well once more, expression inscrutable.
And Marrow Creek was still again.
Until next year.
#missysmadchallenge
LikeLiked by 2 people
I love it. Great job
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Thanks
LikeLiked by 2 people