Drabble 130 – Propinquity

One of the best things about writing is that sometimes you get ideas that won’t leave you alone. This is also one of the worst things about writing.

I’ve had an idea that’s been haunting me for, oh, years at this point. And in the backlog of things I have to do–the short stories I’ve started, the book I’m editing, the other book I’m editing, the other book I should really finish before I start yet another writing project–I haven’t yet gotten to it. Instead, I keep ramping up this anticipation for it in the hopes that someday, when I get there, I’ll be so ready that the words won’t fight to come out and the whole thing will be smoother than any story has ever been.

It won’t, because I’m too in love with the damn thing to see that I have no plan beyond the first chapter. Logically, I know this. But I’m telling myself a different story and letting that hype build up and carry me through the difficult parts, when I’m certain I’m no good at anything. Because if this thing doesn’t work out, there’s always that next one, better than the one that came before.

I probably won’t have a drabble for next week precisely because of the aforementioned backlog. But for now, here’s one, a significantly altered taste of that thing I just can’t wait to start.

PROPINQUITY

(n.) From Latin propinquus, for near

Closeness, both in proximity and in interests or relationships.

There are meet-cutes, and then there is a man slamming the door behind him and begging you to hide him from the something (he won’t say what) that’s chasing him.

Penelope drops the knife she’s holding and freezes, wishing that she’d dropped the daisies she’d been trimming instead.

But there’s real fear in his eyes, the kind you can’t fake, so she ushers him to the back room to hide behind big barrels of flowers and sacks of dirt. Nobody follows, but she sees the fingerprints and breath fogging up the windows. There are no bodies to create them.