Very Short Story: Sanguine

If you’re not familiar, there’s a writing prompt on Twitter for the writing community with the hashtag vss365. The “vss” stands for “very short story,” and the number is self-explanatory. Each month, a new Twitter user is tasked with posting a new word each day to prompt people. With the 280 characters available in a Tweet, a user has to come up with a story of some sort incorporating the posted word-of-the-day, although because you need to include the hashtag, the story itself is typically 273 characters (if you try to be exact, at least).

It also doesn’t necessarily have to be a story. Some play around with the form and structure by doing poetry or a haiku or whatever else.

For Oct. 12, the prompt word is “chat.”

Here is my entry:

Peter spent all night with his love out by the Shumard oak tree, the one she escaped to for reading excursions. Fall colors mingled with the moon for a sanguine hue over them. #Chat came easy with her. As he held her hand, a beetle crawled out of her hollow eye socket. #vss365