Write Now Prompt: “Ellen’s Resolution”

At Today’s Author, our first goal is to get you (and us) to write. Write Now is our own collection of prompts to help you do that. With Write Now we’re not talking about writing, or trying to teach anyone how to write. Write Now is all about putting pen to paper.

Today’s Prompt:

Five days into the new year and her New Year’s Resolutions already seemed doomed.

How to play along with our Writing Prompts

1. Write in any format or style you wish: short story, poem, script – whatever you like.
2. Write for at least 5 minutes. There is no time limit – write for as long as you wish!
3. Editing is not required, though we do recommend that you run a spell check at least.
4. Post your work to your blog and include a link back here so your readers can find other writer’s work, too.
5. Come back here and provide a link to your work on the Write Now! prompt for which it was written.
6. Read other authors’ posts and leave constructive comments.

http://todaysauthor.com/2016/01/05/write-now-prompt-for-january-5-2016/

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Ellen’s Resolution

Five days into the new year and her New Year’s Resolutions already seemed doomed. It wasn’t Ellen’s fault though. Well, technically, it really was, because she made her plans based on knowledge gained from countless hours of television crime dramas over nearly a lifetime of years. The Rockford Files, Bones, Ironside, Castle, Danger Man, Columbo, Law and Order, The Untouchables, CSI, and on and on and on. Ellen was an avid crime fan, fictional or true, it didn’t matter, and her appetite for murder was strong enough to be instinct. The more television crime shoes she watched the more she identified with the killers, and the more she identified with the killers, the more she realized her need. Once Ellen realized her need she began her planning.

The planning took her just a little under three months. She was very thorough and when she wanted to speed things along she reminded herself that she wasn’t going to wind up like the losers in the last acts of her favorite television shows. She planned patiently and she had all the bases covered except for one: she never expected Bill’s body to way so much. They never, she thought as she stood over Bill’s skillet-pan-crushed head, weighed very much on television. Television killers bent over and picked up a limp arm and simply hoisted the body onto a shoulder and they were off, but she found that she couldn’t even so much as move Bill’s lifeless arm let alone his entire body.

Sitting at the table Ellen picked at the scrambled eggs and onions that Bill wasn’t able to finish that morning while she watched Rainbow lap up Bill’s brains off the kitchen floor like they were a bowl of tuna and milk.

“Hmm,” she said to the cat. “This is going to be a problem.”

Rainbow didn’t seem to care.

Elbows on the table she rested her head in her cupped hands and watched Miss Rainbow and thought and it didn’t take long for the light bulb to go off over her head. She smiled with the realization that her New Year’s resolution might not be doomed after all. She finished off a last forkful of eggs and onions and washed it down with some of Bill’s now-cold coffee and stood up and walked to the counter. She opened the utility drawer and pulled out the 7” meat cleaver knife, a present from Bill for their 11^th wedding anniversary, and checked the edge. She walked back to Bill’s body, got down on her knees and leaving Rainbow to continue her breakfast she started work on the knobby arthritic knees.

“Well, Miss Rainbow, Bill was always a good provider. Once I get him separated and packaged, why we’ll have a freezer full of food and we’ll be eating like royalty for some time.”

Miss Rainbow looked up and licked her whiskers and, at least Ellen thought, smiled.