Been actually thinking about picking up writing again! It's been a few years unfortunately, but I do love being creative, and as you said, it is good for the soul. Your story as well as the one RaphaelleH wrote were soothing to read and listen to. I will definitely look into the 1-Hour Writing Challenge. Thanks for the inspiration, this is exactly what I needed! :)
@josephgordonlevitt I really related to your story, as an unknown singer, except I would like people to hear me sing. Oh, BTW, I'm a fantastic singer, a handful of drunks can't be wrong!! I also really enjoyed the story by RaphaelleH and the multiple levels it contained (between the lines).
I usually write my "short stories" as poems (being a songwriter primarily) and I actually find it faster than writing prose. Plus, I like it and others seem to like it too. This took me 24 min to write. I sometimes take a dark turn in my writing (I don't know why). It's either that or sci-fi or fantasy.
Glenn stopped looking outside.The full length front windows were always shaded by a long retractable accordion blind that let a bit of light seep through at the bottom. High angled ceilings seemed to swallow whatever light there was.The years had worn his face into a puzzled countenance, often framed by any one of an assortment of “cheaters,” allowing him to read the fine microprint on packaged food labels.
Life had lost all of its immediacy as the calendar blocks were mostly left blank; except that is, the occasional doctor’s visit. “The person looking outside of oneself is dreaming. The person looking inside is individuating, becoming whole,” Dr. Jung observed.
The upstairs room had become vacant, and up the spiral staircase to the top landing laid the creative lair. In one corner, a desk with a laptop, connected to an interface, connected to a letterbox monitor, connected to a pair of powered speakers, connected to but not connected to a wireless mouse. In the opposite corner, the entrance to a walk-in closet where a stack of guitar cases leaned vertically on both sides resembling subway riders standing in a line; a Celtic harp on the shelf alongside a ukulele and a mandolin. Adjacent to the computer desk, a keyboard on a cheap stand with a floor pedal.
Glenn lifted the top of the laptop, and the monitor lit up with a beautiful forest backdrop. Once inside the login protocol, he clicked on the Studio icon, and the screen was filled with a list of tracks each track containing a musical instrument. Glenn moved over to the huge cylindrical microphone, that resembled a grenade, and carried it next to a music stand with a legal sheet of paper of hand scribbled lyrics. He ran the cable into the Scarlett interface, and armed a vocal track that lit up red. With headphones on, he started the playback singing into the complete silence of the room. No other sound but silence and Glenn’s breathful warbling. He had been repeating this tranquil singing for two years, at times harmonizing with himself, but always, in complete and reverent silence. The condenser microphone was so powerful that when the heater turned on in winter, or the air conditioning in summer, it sounded like a category 3 tornado.
“Shit! Son of a bitch,” Glenn would guffaw ripping the headphones off of his head. Marching down the spiral stairs over to thermostat, he finagled the switches until the microprint of the display read “off.” Of course, this required grabbing a random cheater, whichever one happened to be handy. The small frame reminded him of “The Nutty Professor.”
This activity had become Glenn’s process of individuation, where he confronted the inner demons of his shadow, masterfully sending them through the air to be swallowed by the grenade. And in the hidden secret world of music spilling into his headphones.
Glenn had carefully assembled his lair into a state-of-the-art recording studio arming his arsenal with a plethora of instruments. His library contained symphonic strings, horns, woodwinds. He had collected intangible digitized drums, guitars, percussion, woozy pads that sounded eerily like space-aged extraterrestrial mating calls. All of these mixed together in a uproarious grandeur, yet still unleashed into the atmosphere. He began to sweat. His skin felt flushed and moist.
“Damn!”
Glenn ripped of the headphones off his secret world and barreled down the spiral stairs. Grabbing the cheaters he turned the air conditioning on. The cellphone began to vibrate and ring.
His sister would call every morning to check that Glenn had not passed in his sleep.
“Hello?”
Valerie greeted him, “Good morning! What are you up to today?”
Glenn paused as the air conditioner kicked on.
“Well, Val, I’m mixing and threw Nectar on my vocal, Neutron on everything else, then plopped Ozone on the Main. I’m about to crunch everything into a WAV. Why?”
A noise from the cellphone then a voice.
“That’s nice, so long as your busy. Don’t forget your meds.”
“OK. I won’t. Let’s head to a matinee soon at the AMC.”
“I’ll see what’s playing. It’ll be good for you to get out.”
Challenge accepted. Shall delve into this prompt asap :) thanks for reading yours and Raphaels out loud wow both were so brilliant. Loved the contrasting choices.
Rain falls steadily right by my ear at the window. Patters and splashes. It started as a summer shower, the kind my wife and oldest son, David, loved; now it's "big fat rain"; I'd just watched Forrest Gump for the first time since I was David's age and now I'm reclining, head touching the window, feeling tiny vibrations.
I think David's nineteen or twenty, now.
The rain keeps falling, a beautiful little chamber piece drowning out the old quiet of this house. Sometimes I play music, records, like the ones my wife loved, and, if I've had a little too much brandy from the wooden spirits cabinet, I dance like no one is watching.
No one is watching these days.
My wife took David and our adopted daughter from Korea, Megan, about four years ago. We'd been married twenty six years, which, if my math is right, means we spent eight or nine years never wanting children until it seemed like the only thing that might keep us going. Something fresh. Another person to breathe what life remained into, since the air we shared had grown stale.
In the backyard is one of those big, deep tubs people buy for cold plunges. I wonder how full it will get today.
Kids, especially Megan, were really my wife's idea. If I'm being honest. I know I'm not supposed to say that, but it's the truth.
Sometimes, when it rains, I imagine a banging on the door and open it to see my wife, no kids, soaked in a white dress that clings to her breasts, her perfect nipples that I always took for granted showing through, middle parted hair drenched down like two black waterfalls frozen still. We stand there, rain crashing down on her, and then I step forward. I'm soaked in seconds, no words exchange between us as I stare in wonderment at the way she looks at me, through the deluge, like she hasn't in decades.
"And it still ain't over!" she yells, and embraces me, and our tears mingle with the rain into something like miracle water.
"The Notebook" was a movie she made me watch. Back when we were first dating, two college students attending classes and parties just a mile or two down the road from this house. "I said no romcoms!", but she always got her way in the end, and, when I got choked up at that scene in the rain, she leaned over and kissed my cheek. And that was that, as far as a tender moment transforms into an inside joke that dulls, bleeds dry, and eventually becomes a memory.
I turn my head and look at the rain pelt the grass. Every week I mow the lawn now, just like I used to before she left. Routine was kind of our thing. I'd do maintenance around the house and cook on the weekends, she'd help David with his school projects, play with little Megan, and join me only when the kids were asleep to watch TV.
We would watch shows together, excitedly exclaiming "Just one more!" We'd watch films and, if they were any good, discuss them afterwards. It was our thing. Cozy, simple. Made even better if it was raining outside.
Over time, even our TV nights dwindled, and when she started watching our shows without me while I was at work (I'm an accountant, in the truest sense of the word), I knew it was the beginning of the end, though I still had hope.
The rain begins to dwindle now, and I feel a mild discomfort, precursor to panic, perhaps, well up deep in my gut. I hate the silence, though my therapist, who has an expensive, private practice downtown, always tells me to try and sit in the silence in order to move on.
Everything we need is here, I used to say, as she curled her mouth in a sort of sour way, like she wanted to smile in agreement with me but just couldn't. She had wanted to travel, to bring the kids to different countries, to get out of the burbs and walk the streets of cities, metropolises, cobblestone lined towns.
I look at the dark living room. The rain becomes a patter again, the last tears of a good cry. The tub out back is just a rain barrel now. In recent years, I took to adding to it, making the rim taller and taller each year.
My wife and I, and David sometimes (Megan was deathly afraid of it), would do the cold plunges every morning when we first got the tub. It centered both of us, the ice catapulting us beyond the mundane, into the now. The Power of Now. Her favorite book (I was the one who'd given it to her). Climbing out of that thing left us smiling at each other.
After a few weeks, we did the plunges sporadically, and never at the same time. It would be very hard to get out of the thing now, as tall as I've made it.
The rain stops. The feeling in my gut grows like an ulcer. It's time to go check the tub.
A few years ago, David published a poem called "The Cup of Pain", and Megan contributed an accompanying illustration of a cup balanced on the edge of a table.
I think Megan is...thirteen now maybe? She was always a quiet kid who liked to draw. My wife learned Korean but I didn't; she needs to adapt to life here, I'd say.
The poem received some real recognition, especially since he was a teen. I was in a bookstore when I saw it in a new issue of a magazine I used to read in college. Always thought I might try my hand and submit there. Good job, David.
Even though it didn't seem that great when I read it, it stuck with me, a poem about a cup filled with pain that, unless emptied eventually signals the end when it overflows.
I go out back to empty the tub, heart thumping. The rainless, windless afternoon silently guides me over the wet grass, my bare feet squishing and squelching. I step on the little garden stool and peer over, accounting for the water level using the measure lines I etched into each new addition. It had been a dry summer, until now. The water's reached the 7-foot mark. Only about six inches of steel left to the rim.
My heart releases like some primordial sigh, then I let out an actual sigh, and I step down to pull out the stopper and empty the thing once more.
A peal of thunder rocks the air.
Rain comes down, fatter than the fat rain, filling my imagination with a flood of angels and terrors. I fumble with the valve, it's slippery, and I forgot to bring a rag or gloves or anything to create friction.
I pull up grass and dirt to cake my hands and I squeeze and turn, fingers hurting, until I finally feel the valve handle turn.
And then it breaks off.
My heart stops. I stand up slowly. I close my eyes.
The rain pours and pours, not like tears anymore at all. Like a wound in the sky gushing and never, ever ceasing.
"Mary." My wife's name that I haven't said aloud in a long, long time.
The water flows over the rim as I step upon the stool once more and then I climb in.
Oh! The art we craft to ourselves! The many many stories that no-one will ever read.
I remember that story from RaphaelleH. An exceptional writer. Those were the times! So glad to see this here.
Here was my contribution to that WWC back in the day.
https://hitrecord.org/records/3447145
"It seemed that neighbor friends only do care when you live within reach of their eyesight. " No TRUER STATEMENT HAS BEEN WRITTEN!! USING THIS FOR MY SHORT STORY!! 🎊 🎊 🎊 🎊 🎊 🎊 🎊 🎊 🎊 🎊 🎊 🎊 👏🏽 ☺️ ✨ ☺️ 👏🏽 ☺️ 💛 💚 💙 👏🏽 ☺️ ✨ ☺️ ✨ 👏🏽 ☺️ 💛 💚 💙 👏🏽 ☺️ ✨ ☺️ ✨ 👏🏽 ☺️ 💛 💚 💙 👏🏽 👏🏽 ☺️ ✨ ☺️ 👏🏽 ☺️ 💛 💚 💙 👏🏽 ☺️ ✨ ☺️ ✨ 👏🏽 ☺️ 💛 💚 💙 👏🏽 ☺️ ✨ ☺️ ✨ 👏🏽 ☺️ 💛 💚 💙 👏🏽
Been actually thinking about picking up writing again! It's been a few years unfortunately, but I do love being creative, and as you said, it is good for the soul. Your story as well as the one RaphaelleH wrote were soothing to read and listen to. I will definitely look into the 1-Hour Writing Challenge. Thanks for the inspiration, this is exactly what I needed! :)
Here's my contribution to your challenge. Decided to go for a sort of personal story: https://hitrecord.org/records/6898105
Joe, *Holy of Holies* was so beautiful - it made me cry! So lovely. Wow. 💖
@josephgordonlevitt I really related to your story, as an unknown singer, except I would like people to hear me sing. Oh, BTW, I'm a fantastic singer, a handful of drunks can't be wrong!! I also really enjoyed the story by RaphaelleH and the multiple levels it contained (between the lines).
I usually write my "short stories" as poems (being a songwriter primarily) and I actually find it faster than writing prose. Plus, I like it and others seem to like it too. This took me 24 min to write. I sometimes take a dark turn in my writing (I don't know why). It's either that or sci-fi or fantasy.
https://hitrecord.org/records/6898100
For those that don't have access to HitRecord (although the formatting is all screwed up here):
What Goes On Behind Closed Doors
I see him often on the train
A nine-to-fiver just like me
We walk the same way every day
We both work in the CBD
I don’t know when I got obsessed
Or why this stranger fills my mind
I walk behind him in the street
He doesn’t know I’m there behind
I watch him as he goes to work
His office building’s on my way
(Well only if I walk past mine)
It’s not too far to go astray
And when it’s time to travel home
I wait in shadows till he’s there
And once again I walk behind
A trek he doesn’t know we share
I’d thought about this long and hard
Decided that the time was right
To follow him to his abode
To find out where he spends the night
As he was always on the train
(I get on last and get off first)
I didn’t know how far we’d go
But by now I was too immersed
We only travelled two more stops
He got off first while I held back
Letting people go ahead
So I was hidden by the pack
But as we left the station grounds
I realised with rising fear
The crowd that I was hiding in
Was surely now to disappear
And so I kept my eye on him
Keeping distance as we walked
He never turned around at all
Was unaware of being stalked
His house was in a cul-de-sac
I waited till he went inside
Thankfully the night was dark
Enveloping me as I spied
Creeping to a side window
I nervously began to peer
Not knowing what I’d see inside
Or why my madness brought me here
I saw him come into the room
And walk towards a cupboard door
I suddenly felt so ashamed
Deciding I should spy no more
But when he opened up that door
The sight just glued me to the spot
I couldn’t even look away
My backbone chilled my face grew hot
Although he looked a normal guy
His cupboard held a gruesome sight
Graphic photographs of gore
Large sharp-bladed tools of fright
He seemed to worship at that shrine
But I just could not ascertain
If this was just like watching porn
Or if he used these tools for pain
And so compelled to walk away
I went back home confused as hell
Is this a secret I should keep
Or is it something I should tell
I was surprised how much came out in the time spent, but I think this fits decently well...
https://hitrecord.org/records/6898910
Something else I wrote in under an hour (which got more hearts and comments than I usually get):
https://hitrecord.org/records/6898239
https://theouteredges.substack.com/p/what-is-he-writing-in-there
Glenn stopped looking outside.The full length front windows were always shaded by a long retractable accordion blind that let a bit of light seep through at the bottom. High angled ceilings seemed to swallow whatever light there was.The years had worn his face into a puzzled countenance, often framed by any one of an assortment of “cheaters,” allowing him to read the fine microprint on packaged food labels.
Life had lost all of its immediacy as the calendar blocks were mostly left blank; except that is, the occasional doctor’s visit. “The person looking outside of oneself is dreaming. The person looking inside is individuating, becoming whole,” Dr. Jung observed.
The upstairs room had become vacant, and up the spiral staircase to the top landing laid the creative lair. In one corner, a desk with a laptop, connected to an interface, connected to a letterbox monitor, connected to a pair of powered speakers, connected to but not connected to a wireless mouse. In the opposite corner, the entrance to a walk-in closet where a stack of guitar cases leaned vertically on both sides resembling subway riders standing in a line; a Celtic harp on the shelf alongside a ukulele and a mandolin. Adjacent to the computer desk, a keyboard on a cheap stand with a floor pedal.
Glenn lifted the top of the laptop, and the monitor lit up with a beautiful forest backdrop. Once inside the login protocol, he clicked on the Studio icon, and the screen was filled with a list of tracks each track containing a musical instrument. Glenn moved over to the huge cylindrical microphone, that resembled a grenade, and carried it next to a music stand with a legal sheet of paper of hand scribbled lyrics. He ran the cable into the Scarlett interface, and armed a vocal track that lit up red. With headphones on, he started the playback singing into the complete silence of the room. No other sound but silence and Glenn’s breathful warbling. He had been repeating this tranquil singing for two years, at times harmonizing with himself, but always, in complete and reverent silence. The condenser microphone was so powerful that when the heater turned on in winter, or the air conditioning in summer, it sounded like a category 3 tornado.
“Shit! Son of a bitch,” Glenn would guffaw ripping the headphones off of his head. Marching down the spiral stairs over to thermostat, he finagled the switches until the microprint of the display read “off.” Of course, this required grabbing a random cheater, whichever one happened to be handy. The small frame reminded him of “The Nutty Professor.”
This activity had become Glenn’s process of individuation, where he confronted the inner demons of his shadow, masterfully sending them through the air to be swallowed by the grenade. And in the hidden secret world of music spilling into his headphones.
Glenn had carefully assembled his lair into a state-of-the-art recording studio arming his arsenal with a plethora of instruments. His library contained symphonic strings, horns, woodwinds. He had collected intangible digitized drums, guitars, percussion, woozy pads that sounded eerily like space-aged extraterrestrial mating calls. All of these mixed together in a uproarious grandeur, yet still unleashed into the atmosphere. He began to sweat. His skin felt flushed and moist.
“Damn!”
Glenn ripped of the headphones off his secret world and barreled down the spiral stairs. Grabbing the cheaters he turned the air conditioning on. The cellphone began to vibrate and ring.
His sister would call every morning to check that Glenn had not passed in his sleep.
“Hello?”
Valerie greeted him, “Good morning! What are you up to today?”
Glenn paused as the air conditioner kicked on.
“Well, Val, I’m mixing and threw Nectar on my vocal, Neutron on everything else, then plopped Ozone on the Main. I’m about to crunch everything into a WAV. Why?”
A noise from the cellphone then a voice.
“That’s nice, so long as your busy. Don’t forget your meds.”
“OK. I won’t. Let’s head to a matinee soon at the AMC.”
“I’ll see what’s playing. It’ll be good for you to get out.”
I posted something on HitRecord. Don't know if it uploaded.
Dead Maggot Swimming Pool.
I wrote it a while back. It took about an hour to write and a couple more to edit, so it probably doesn't count but whatevs...
Challenge accepted. Shall delve into this prompt asap :) thanks for reading yours and Raphaels out loud wow both were so brilliant. Loved the contrasting choices.
Uber
Rain Barrel
Rain falls steadily right by my ear at the window. Patters and splashes. It started as a summer shower, the kind my wife and oldest son, David, loved; now it's "big fat rain"; I'd just watched Forrest Gump for the first time since I was David's age and now I'm reclining, head touching the window, feeling tiny vibrations.
I think David's nineteen or twenty, now.
The rain keeps falling, a beautiful little chamber piece drowning out the old quiet of this house. Sometimes I play music, records, like the ones my wife loved, and, if I've had a little too much brandy from the wooden spirits cabinet, I dance like no one is watching.
No one is watching these days.
My wife took David and our adopted daughter from Korea, Megan, about four years ago. We'd been married twenty six years, which, if my math is right, means we spent eight or nine years never wanting children until it seemed like the only thing that might keep us going. Something fresh. Another person to breathe what life remained into, since the air we shared had grown stale.
In the backyard is one of those big, deep tubs people buy for cold plunges. I wonder how full it will get today.
Kids, especially Megan, were really my wife's idea. If I'm being honest. I know I'm not supposed to say that, but it's the truth.
Sometimes, when it rains, I imagine a banging on the door and open it to see my wife, no kids, soaked in a white dress that clings to her breasts, her perfect nipples that I always took for granted showing through, middle parted hair drenched down like two black waterfalls frozen still. We stand there, rain crashing down on her, and then I step forward. I'm soaked in seconds, no words exchange between us as I stare in wonderment at the way she looks at me, through the deluge, like she hasn't in decades.
"And it still ain't over!" she yells, and embraces me, and our tears mingle with the rain into something like miracle water.
"The Notebook" was a movie she made me watch. Back when we were first dating, two college students attending classes and parties just a mile or two down the road from this house. "I said no romcoms!", but she always got her way in the end, and, when I got choked up at that scene in the rain, she leaned over and kissed my cheek. And that was that, as far as a tender moment transforms into an inside joke that dulls, bleeds dry, and eventually becomes a memory.
I turn my head and look at the rain pelt the grass. Every week I mow the lawn now, just like I used to before she left. Routine was kind of our thing. I'd do maintenance around the house and cook on the weekends, she'd help David with his school projects, play with little Megan, and join me only when the kids were asleep to watch TV.
We would watch shows together, excitedly exclaiming "Just one more!" We'd watch films and, if they were any good, discuss them afterwards. It was our thing. Cozy, simple. Made even better if it was raining outside.
Over time, even our TV nights dwindled, and when she started watching our shows without me while I was at work (I'm an accountant, in the truest sense of the word), I knew it was the beginning of the end, though I still had hope.
The rain begins to dwindle now, and I feel a mild discomfort, precursor to panic, perhaps, well up deep in my gut. I hate the silence, though my therapist, who has an expensive, private practice downtown, always tells me to try and sit in the silence in order to move on.
Everything we need is here, I used to say, as she curled her mouth in a sort of sour way, like she wanted to smile in agreement with me but just couldn't. She had wanted to travel, to bring the kids to different countries, to get out of the burbs and walk the streets of cities, metropolises, cobblestone lined towns.
I look at the dark living room. The rain becomes a patter again, the last tears of a good cry. The tub out back is just a rain barrel now. In recent years, I took to adding to it, making the rim taller and taller each year.
My wife and I, and David sometimes (Megan was deathly afraid of it), would do the cold plunges every morning when we first got the tub. It centered both of us, the ice catapulting us beyond the mundane, into the now. The Power of Now. Her favorite book (I was the one who'd given it to her). Climbing out of that thing left us smiling at each other.
After a few weeks, we did the plunges sporadically, and never at the same time. It would be very hard to get out of the thing now, as tall as I've made it.
The rain stops. The feeling in my gut grows like an ulcer. It's time to go check the tub.
A few years ago, David published a poem called "The Cup of Pain", and Megan contributed an accompanying illustration of a cup balanced on the edge of a table.
I think Megan is...thirteen now maybe? She was always a quiet kid who liked to draw. My wife learned Korean but I didn't; she needs to adapt to life here, I'd say.
The poem received some real recognition, especially since he was a teen. I was in a bookstore when I saw it in a new issue of a magazine I used to read in college. Always thought I might try my hand and submit there. Good job, David.
Even though it didn't seem that great when I read it, it stuck with me, a poem about a cup filled with pain that, unless emptied eventually signals the end when it overflows.
I go out back to empty the tub, heart thumping. The rainless, windless afternoon silently guides me over the wet grass, my bare feet squishing and squelching. I step on the little garden stool and peer over, accounting for the water level using the measure lines I etched into each new addition. It had been a dry summer, until now. The water's reached the 7-foot mark. Only about six inches of steel left to the rim.
My heart releases like some primordial sigh, then I let out an actual sigh, and I step down to pull out the stopper and empty the thing once more.
A peal of thunder rocks the air.
Rain comes down, fatter than the fat rain, filling my imagination with a flood of angels and terrors. I fumble with the valve, it's slippery, and I forgot to bring a rag or gloves or anything to create friction.
I pull up grass and dirt to cake my hands and I squeeze and turn, fingers hurting, until I finally feel the valve handle turn.
And then it breaks off.
My heart stops. I stand up slowly. I close my eyes.
The rain pours and pours, not like tears anymore at all. Like a wound in the sky gushing and never, ever ceasing.
"Mary." My wife's name that I haven't said aloud in a long, long time.
The water flows over the rim as I step upon the stool once more and then I climb in.
Y'all need to do something it's getting worse
I love that short story you wrote.
Gale is me in so many aspects.
I love the way the story flowed.
Your remarkable ☺️ ✨ ☺️
Thanks for the inspiration. I love the idea and it felt Nice creating again. I do not know if this would get to You, but here the link to My writing story: https://sserrat.wordpress.com/2025/08/15/joseph-gordon-levitt-had-this-idea-and-i/
Sex Life is on Netflix!!!! Boom!