Writing Challenges 2026

Death of A Mermaid

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When I worked across the street from this building and looked out of our window and into their window I used to see this, I think it’s a Mermaid’s tail.

Photo AM Moacoso

I used to wonder what happened to the rest of her.

Were her poor mutilated remains on display in the art gallery below? Did people stare into her flat dead eyes and call them ‘art’

 

My thoughts about the Mermaid’s tail were dark and fanciful….Until, that is,  I saw the same thing hanging in a shop that specializes in knives and cutlery a few blocks away from where the company I work for moved.

Now I’m wondering if we have a serial killer who hacks up Mermaids and turns their tails into art.

I wonder who the killer is and where she finds her victims.

Time To Fly

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🌍 If you could live anywhere for a year, where and why?

If I could live anywhere for a year I’d hop on a rocket and make tracks to Mars.

I want to wake up in the morning and see a new sky. I want to hear an alien windstorm. I want to feel dust that maybe carries the remains of an ancient world that may be gone but haunts the entire world and not just a building.

Most of all I want to look for ghosts on Mars and cemeteries created by hands different then my own.

” Mars ” Ray Miller

Money Ain’t Everything

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WP Prompt: If you had an unlimited budget for 24 hours, what would you do?

If you could give me unlimited trips to the oddest, strangest out of the way and beyond reality stops not only would I jump on the chance, it’s very likely that I wouldn’t come back.

Give me an hour in a planet haunted by ghosts, an Island where spirits slither down from the trees, follow you home and then wait under your bed or in your closet for you to fall asleep.

Take me to a place where people can watch their nightmares acted out on screen in a drive-in theater and turn me loose in a museum full of paintings and sculptures painted and crafted by people who never sleep.

How does that sound for a fun packed day?

If you’re going to wish, wish big.

Midjourney creation by Irina Shamaeva

The Ending Should Have Been The Ending

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I never watched the final episode of ” Supernatural ” because my favorite character wasn’t included ( Crowley ).

The writers had given a lot of airtime to Crowley and I thought his absence was a cheat, so I opted out.

Then there was Stranger Things.

I just got bored with it and checked out midway through it’s season.

The one finale I loved turned out to be one that divided it’s fan base, but I agreed with it.

The main character was a serial killer and his fans lived in hope he would find redemption at the end of the series and he didn’t.

But I agreed with the finale and this is why:

Dexter was a serial killer who enjoyed what he did. He kept right on enjoying himself and having to lie to his wife, his best friends at work only seemed to concern him  and caused him grief when these people got to close to seeing him for what and who he was.

By the end, Dexter’s fans were cheering him on because that wonderfully dark and complex character had done what actual serial killers do in some cases- he seduced them and convinced them to see what he wanted them to see.

Dexter wanted you  to know he  good guy at heart and if you gave him the chance you’d see him as athe good and noble creature he was. Actually. Dexter never really went that far- that’s what the viewers did all on their own.

In case you don’t  know- the goodness Dexter was doing  involved torture before he killed  these monsters and then he chopped them up. In the end he buried his own sister at Sea the same way did with all of his other victims- but he didn’t chop her up. On the other hand laying her to rest near to where he dumped bodies lifted that mask of the misunderstood hero from Dexter’s face.

Dexter was on his way to showing us what he really was.

Dexter claimed  what he did was a justice of sorts, however the families and victims  of the crimes Dexter was avenging never knew what happened to these vile humans, so exactly who got the emotional benefit from this?

Besides, he was doing what he did because he wanted to kill, he could justify his actions by only killing evil people. But let’s face it, if the pickings got slim Dexter could have justified killing anybody for any reason.

Butchering people after you’ve murdered them  isn’t justice, but Dexter convinced us it was.

Dexter was a brilliant character and I did and still do adore him.

When Dexter lost everything at the end of his series and was regulated to a cold and lonely world ( kind of like being stuck in a cooling unit used in funeral homes  and morgues in hospitals ) it seemed like a fitting ending.

He was never a hero, not really. Not even Dexter thought he was. In the end Dexter was a monster who was banished alone back to the shadows there to ponder his fate and probably plotting a way back out into the world to dispense ‘justice’ no matter who he has to kill to get there.

So at the end of Dexter’s story we saw him with his ‘human mask’ off and his monster face showing. In that final shot we were reminded that this is who we were cheering for all along.

I thought that ending was brilliant.