642 Things to Write About

Prompt: Put your iPod on random shuffle, write down the lyric of the first song that comes on, and use it as an opening line.

"Everything in its right place," he muttered, his knuckles bloody, fingers wound around a bleach-soaked cloth. Seven hundred strokes, he'd counted. Seven hundred was better than six hundred. Safer. 

Now that the sink was pure,he could begin washing his hands. One, two, three, he counted. The scalding water cut its way through the cracks in his skin like so many glass shards embedding themselves in his raw flesh.

Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen...

642 Things to Write About: Describe nearly drowning.

Under the water you see only black. Invisible siren's hands pull you down; water replaces the air in your lungs. For a moment, all is peaceful. Calm. You accept your fate, that you will die here in this black water, not more than fifty feet away from your mother. You wonder if you will be missed, if anyone notices that you're nowhere near the surface of the water. Another set of invisible hands tears you away from the siren; you are free. You take in your first new breath of salty sea air.

This entry comes from a journal called 642 Things to Write About. One of my new goals is to complete at least one exercise from this book each day. I really like this journal because the topics range from real-life based writing to fictional writing, with some prompts that could be either. I will be adding some of my writing exercises to this blog for your comments/criticism.