What If Exercises - Week of 4/19

VI: Plot

Exercise 30: Three by Three

Carter leaves Earth

Heir to power

Vanquishes his enemy

VII: Story Elements as a Given

Exercise 40: Pyscho: Creating Terror

I pulled the shower curtain open slightly and poked my head out. I could have sworn I heard a scratching on the door. With all the steam from my shower, I wasn’t so much looking as I was listening, but there was nothing there. I shrugged my shoulders and re-entered my own personal waterfall. Sometimes living by yourself can give you the creeps.

I stepped out of the water stream, grabbed the bottle of semi-translucent shampoo off the shelf and lathered my hair up, getting a good handful of suds. Turning around I let the water droplets bounce off my head and cascade down my shoulders and back. Odd, the water doesn’t feel quite as warm and it was a moment ago and now it had...a different feel. My eyes opened up and looked down, a scarlet colored substance all over the floor of the white basin. I knelt down and reached out my hand when I saw that there were red beads of the stuff on my arm. I lifted my fingers to my nose, the substance smelled vaguely like blood. That was when I turned my head and gazed at the horrific sight of red liquid pouring out from the shower head. Panic took over, I freaked out, I scrambled to get out of the shower. I slipped on the liquid hitting my head hard on the side of the fiberglass tub. I reached up and grabbed the curtain, trying to pull myself up and out, while the blood was spraying my chest I quickly noticed that it was rising in the tub. I raised myself off the floor of the tub only little ways when I heard the plastic tear and fell back into the blood, the shower hooks spun around the their rod, making little clinking noises.

The brass doorknob violently rattled back and forth, the white door shook in its doorframe, little chips of paint littering the floor and the counter nearby. A blinding florescent light filled the room from the gap under the door. As quick at it began, it all stopped. The door stopped rattling, the green light dissipated and the blood flow from the shower head ceased. I carefully got out of the tub and wrapped my towel around my waist and walked over to the door and timidly reached out for the doorknob. If I wasn’t freaked out enough already, the lights flickered and went out, my breath started to come in ragged gasps, I could feel the blood drain from my face and my head get dizzy with nervousness. The lights flickered back to life bathing the room in 100 watts of pure daylight. I let out a nervous laugh. I’m being ridiculous getting freaked out over nothing, but then how would I explain the shower of blood.

I started to turn the brass handle when I smelled a pungent aroma from behind that tickled my neck and wafted into my nose. I looked out of the corner of my eye into the mirror, still streaked with steam. Oh shit.