Hello, all you Wacky Waving Arm-Flailing Inflatable Tube People!
Do you have any favourite pranks and gags? Any go-to goofs and jokes? Do you sometimes make yourself laugh so hard you get light-headed? Then you’ve come to the right place, because…
This week’s Writing Group prompt is:
Describe the Colour Purple
RULES AND GUIDELINES BELOW!
Make sure you scroll down and read them if you haven’t! You may not be eligible if you don’t!
For this upcoming April Fool’s Day, we decided to go with a more silly prompt! One that is so vague it could literally be anything your goofy mind wants it to be!
You can describe what purple would taste like, for example. Is it crispy? Is it sweet and chewy? Dense? Maybe it’s even spicy? Maybe it tastes so good that you can’t stop eating it. Or maybe it tastes like all normal foods because you just like to put purple food colouring on everything you consume. Step aside, green eggs and ham! Purple pancakes and bacon are on the rise!
What about what it smells or feels like? It could be a gentle lavender scent on freshly pressed bedsheets! Or it could be a fluffy feeling as you whip your purple yams into mash! Grape scented shampoos, Catmint scented candles, or even just Amethyst Deceiver mushrooms on their own, there’s all kinds of scents and textures purple can have!
Purple can even sound like anything! Play a purple kazoo, or listen to a purple slinky folding on and on down a set of stairs! Smack some PlayDough, throw a rubber Sticky Hand against the wall, or shake your head with your Spring-Eyed Glasses on and listen to the weird sounds they make! Anything is possible!
So get out there and show us your silly side! If you want to write about the one time you were sure you actually met the One-Eyed, One-Horned, Flying Purple People Eater and lived to tell the tale, by all means do it! If you want to write about the kaleidoscope toy you had that was all blues and purples and silvers and made you dizzy, go ahead!
*Silly glasses, playdough, slinkys, sticky hands, and kazoos not included
—Shawna
—
Remember, this is part of our weekly Writing Group stream! Submit a little piece following the rules and guidelines below, and there’s a chance your entry will be read live on stream! In addition, we’ll discuss it for a minute and give you some feedback.
Tune into the stream this Saturday at 3:00pm CST to see if you made the cut!
The whole purpose of this is to show off the creativity of the community, while also helping each other to become better writers. Lean into that spirit! Get ready not just to share what you’ve got, but to give back to the other writers here as well.
Rules and Guidelines
We read at least four stories during each stream, two of which come from the public post, and two of which come from the much smaller private post. Submissions are randomly selected by a bot, but likes on your post will improve your chances of selection, so be sure to share your submission on social media!
Text and Formatting
- English only.
- Prose only, no poetry or lyrics.
- Use proper spelling, grammar, and syntax.
- Your piece must be between 250-350 words (you can use this website to see your wordcount).
- Use two paragraph breaks between each paragraph so that they have a proper space between them (press “enter” or “return” twice).
- Include a submission title and an author name (doesn’t have to be your real name). Do not include any additional symbols or flourishes in this part of your submission. Format them exactly as you see in this example, or your submission may not be eligible: Example Submission.
- No additional text styling (such as italics or bold text). Do not use asterisks, hyphens, or any other symbol to indicate whether text should be bold, italic, or styled in any other way. CAPS are okay, though.
What to Submit
- Keep submissions “safe-for-work”; be sparing with sexuality, violence, and profanity.
- Try to focus on making your submission a single meaningful moment rather than an entire story.
- Write something brand new; no re-submitting past entries or pieces written for other purposes
- No fan fiction whatsoever. Take inspiration from whatever you’d like, but be transformative and creative with it. By submitting, you also agree that your piece does not infringe on any existing copyrights or trademarks, and you have full license to use it.
- Submissions must be self-contained (everything essential to understanding the piece is contained within the context of the piece itself—no mandatory reading outside the piece required. e.g., if you want to write two different pieces in the same setting or larger narrative, you cannot rely on information from one piece to fill in for the other—they must both give that context independently).
Submission Rules
- One submission per participant.
- Submit your entry in a comment on this post.
- Submissions close at 12:00pm CST each Friday.
- You must like and leave a review on two other submissions to be eligible. Your reviews must be at least 50 words long, and must be left directly on the submission you are reviewing, not on another comment. If you’re submitting to the private post, feel free to leave these reviews on either the private or the public post. The two submissions you like need not be the same as the submissions you review.
- Be constructive and uplifting. These submissions are not for a professional market, and shouldn’t be treated as such. We do this, first and foremost, for the joy of the craft. Help other writers to feel like their work is valuable, and be considerate and gentle with critique when you offer it. Authors who leave particularly abrasive or disheartening remarks on this post will be disqualified from selection for readings.
- Use the same e-mail for your posts, reviews, and likes, or you may be rendered ineligible (you may change your username or author name between posts without problem, however).
- You may submit to either or both the public/private groups if you have access, but if you decide to submit to both, only the private group submission will be eligible.
- Understand that by submitting here, you are giving us permission to read your submission aloud live on stream and upload public, archived recordings of said stream to our social media platforms. You will always be credited, but only by the author name you supply as per these rules. No other links or attributions are guaranteed.
Comments on this post that aren’t submissions will be deleted, except for replies/reviews left on existing submissions.
“What’s Purple?”
By Hemming Sebastian Bane
The door swung open and a chemical smell mixed with the smell of Mama’s stew.
“Papa!”
I grabbed my cane and stood up. I heard him chuckle softly.
“Not now, Vaiva. I’m still in my work clothes. Let me change into something clean.”
“Okay, Papa!”
His heavy footfalls went towards the bedroom, and I heard him shut the door. With some sounds of shifting clothes, I heard the door open again and heard Papa’s footsteps approach the table where I stood. Using my cane, I found his chair and pulled it out for him. Wordlessly, he sat down, scooted up to the table, and patted my head. I almost tripped over myself as I returned to my chair.
Papa hummed in content. Then I heard metal against metal. Mama must be stirring the stew. I heard her fill up the bowls and set them in front of us. Immediately, I heard Papa’s wooden spoon leave the table and clatter into the bowl. He scarfed and slurped like a starving beast.
“Jokubas! We gotta say grace first!”
Papa’s bowl hit the table. “The rich man says grace before a meal; the working man says it at the beginning of every day.”
“Heptadeka preserve me…”
I heard more stew plop into Papa’s bowl.
“Wow, you’re hungry today, Papa!”
“We worked really hard today. We spent all day dying silk purple.” I heard him start slurping again.
“Papa, what’s purple?”
The house fell silent. Did… did I say something wrong? Papa pushed his bowl away.
“Well, purple’s this color fancy folks like. It’s pretty and it lets people know they’re important.”
Papa’s bowl slid back to him and he started eating again.
“Maybe someday I can have something purple.”
The supper went on without another word. A week passed and Papa came home tired as always, but there was a lightness in his step. Instead of going to the bedroom, he approached me and fumbled with something.
“Vaiva, let me see your cane.”
After the sound of tying cloth, he handed it back to me.
“There you are, my dear. There’s your purple.”
Around and Around It Goes, When and Where It Ends…
by Lunabear (CW/TW: violence, blood, death)
Caruso chased his beloved Desiree through the bustling streets of Rome. Her short yellow strands splayed and swirled in the wind.
He left angry shouts and heated scowls behind as she darted down a shadowed alley. She backed against the wall, an intermix of love and fear culminating in her eyes.
Caruso took her face in his hands and gently kissed her lips. Next, he rested his nose against the base of her throat. Even though he knew what the smell signified, he inhaled deeply of the lavender oil coating her skin.
“Does your betrothed cause you such pleasure?” Caruso teased shakily.
Desiree helplessly entwined her arms around his neck, trembling as he kissed her collarbone.
“We do not speak of him, my dearest. You know this.” She was breathless from his touch.
Tears trickled from them both.
Caruso’s eyes emanated amethyst, and the same color webbed through the veins of his face and neck.
“I’m sorry, my beloved.” Caruso slammed his hand into Desiree’s chest. Twice. Thrice.
Desiree screamed through the agony, but she still found reason to smile. “I’ll wait for you,” she rasped with her dying breath.
“I’ll find you again. And again. I promise.”
The bloody knife thunked into the dirt.
The gathered mob behind him turned vicious at the heinous sight. He was bound and dragged away, surely to his death, for murdering the high priest’s promised one.
“We’ll stop it next time!” he swore with all of his being.
*****
Megan bolted out of bed, sweat cascading from her pores. No matter how much she cleaned and scrubbed–and even when she sweated–the scent of lavender menaced her. Her every waking hour. Her sleep, her memories.
Megan could still feel her beloved’s blood on her fingers, the weight of the knife in her hand. She shambled to the window, looking out over the bustling night streets from her high rise. She pushed it open and sighed from the relieving breeze.
Somewhere, Megan’s love was out there, and she had to find them.
This life, this cycle, they would stop it. She wasn’t strong enough for another.
Indescribable (Illusions of Heroes)
by Gerrit (Rattus)
“Looks like you have a visitor.” Niri’s voice pulled Emrys’s attention to the door. Standing in the doorframe, travel cloak soaked from the pouring rain, stood Serennia.
Emrys rose from his chair, mouth slightly agape, desperately searching for any words that might convey his feelings. Only one word was able to break through the silence.
“Ren.”
Niri stood from her seat, tapping her hand against the table a couple of times. “I’ll leave you two alone.” Without another word she walked past Serennia and out the door, closing it behind her.
The two former lovers were left alone in the room, with nothing more than a table and a hundred unspoken emotions between them.
“What are you doing here?” Emrys asked.
“I figured you’d be happier to see me.” Serennia dropped the hood of her cloak, and her face was even more beautiful than Emrys remembered.
“I am happy, I just…after everything that happened I didn’t think you would want to see me again.”
“I didn’t, at the time.” She took a few steps towards him, rounding the table towards him. “But the more I thought about it, the more I thought about you, the more I realized that I couldn’t stay away.”
“Ren, you deserve better. I hurt you. And I can’t promise it won’t happen again.”
Her hand went to her arm, where Emrys’s blade had cut her. “I’ve been through worse. Besides, I know it wasn’t really you who did it. It was your body, but not your mind. Not your heart.”
She was mere inches from him now, her arms resting on his shoulders, hands clasped behind his back.
“How can you still feel this way about me?”
“How can you explain colour to a blind person? Some things are just indescribable, Emrys. All I know is that I love you, and you’re just gonna have to accept that.”
She smiled, that playful smile that he had missed so much.
Without another thought he pulled her in, and their lips killed the distance between them.
War of the colors
By Jesse Fisher
The blue robot stared at the screen in front of him, even as he looked it over and it reflected off of his visor. The words were clear and the meaning understood.
“But how?”
His silver gray hands hovered over the keys ready to go until something came to his mind and multiple ideas flowed.
“Are we going with the HEX CODE?”
“No RGB is the best one!”
“Maybe HTML, that would allow us to further break it down.”
“HSL is also good.”
“Pantone might be more in line as that is physical.”
Indecision locked him up, the line of code began to fight with itself. Which process was best to use to execute the request. As such the multiple lines of codes began to pick holes in each other’s positions.
Days go by, the monitor had long gone into sleep mode as the bot remained trapped in a statue of a statue. Lines of code seemed to move behind his visor as if a newsfeed played beyond.
—
The land was once peaceful, and then the armies of color began to fight with a passion that only self righteous people could.
The Hex Horde was the most massive among them all, axes raised in a war cry as they charged. The Kingdoms of Royal Grand Blades and High Thaumaturgy Magical League joined to defend from the horde. Pantonians and Highland Source League fell to the horde in the first days of the war.
This was to be the last fight, the armies set up and began to fight. Then the earthquake shook their world.
—
The blue robot shook himself as he woke up the screen.
“Screw it purple aint worth it.”
An Art Lesson
by Carrie (Glaceon373)
Imagine red. Now imagine blue. Now imagine dumping them into a bucket and stirring it with a stick.
That’s purple, right? At first, yes. But not really. There’s something I need to acknowledge.
You see, purple isn’t real.
Don’t freak out! I understand that was a bold statement, but let me finish.
The wavelengths of visible light only make up a small piece of the entire light spectrum, yes? Common knowledge, don’t need to go into detail…? Good, I’m not one for science talk. I majored in art, not physics.
Anyways, red light is on one end of the visible spectrum and violet light is on the other. Not magenta, not burgundy, nor any of the reddy purples. Those aren’t on the visible light spectrum, so how can we see them?
Simple: our brains make them up, blending short and long frequencies together.
Weird, right? But isn’t it fascinating? That we can make up colors, I mean? Apologies, I wasn’t a neuroscience major either. I understand I’m not talking about things I’m an expert in, but I think it’s important.
There are shades of purple that are not real. But does that stop us from enjoying purple? Does that stop purple from being in advertising everywhere, being a lovely addition to our flower collections—heck, being the names of many flowers?
We love purple, and some parts of purple are just something our brains made up.
Did we do the same for our stories, our myths and legends? Or maybe our anxieties, as we struggle to let them go? The doubts we hold about whether or not our loved ones truly love us back? Our ungrounded worries and fears?
… I’ll stop now. I wasn’t a philosophy major either.
I’ve rambled long enough. No homework, but you can turn in a piece made with just shades of purple by next class for extra credit. I just wanted to talk about my favorite color for a bit today.
And yes, before you ask, it is my favorite color, which is also why it’s the color of my hair. Class dismissed!
[Removed]
Purple-Tinted Glasses
by Gage Jarman
Purple is, well, it’s purply. It’s cool. It brings to mind royalty and excellence, except when it’s lighter. A pastel purple, that’s garish and not the wonderful purple we desire. This isn’t convincing enough. Well, not many animals are purple. Mollusks and fish and cnidarians, but worms are simply splendid….
Oh right, I guess you haven’t seen any of that. Do not worry, enlightenment will come. Why don’t I just show you. It will take but a moment. I suppose it’ll actually be longer. Several minutes, hours, days is probably more apt, but I will show you the glory of purple if you are compliant. Relax. Everything is ok. I only have to, hrrng, place these restraints on your person to protect you from yourself. I assure you, you are safe. I have done this many times, most of them successfully I might add…. What, no. We’ve come too far. I nearly have the equipment in place. No, stop, stop your struggling. It might make the procedure go awry, and neither of us would like that. They need a host and purple shall be their vessel. You wanted to see didn’t you, and you shall, through their glorious purple eyes. Oh, you are a lucky man indeed. Purple is a blessing. Once they take root, you will realize how right I was. I can hardly contain myself. What jubilation we shall have….
Stop it!… Hhhhhh, my apologies, that was unbecoming, but a vessel must not cry, no no no. You really are souring the mood, but this gag should help alleviate that…. There we are. Oh come now, this is something to celebrate. However, you may feel a bite or two or twelve, do not mind it. The purple do not always find the right places to attach at first, but that is a small price to pay. Don’t you think? Of course you do. Now, we just have to remove the eyelids. Shhh stay very still. We wouldn’t want to damage those wonderful orbs beneath. Your rebirth is at hand. What a wonderful purple existence it will be.
Memories From Before The Fog (Mary’s Story)
By Calliope Rannis
“Have you seen many purple things?” Daisy had asked her once, during a long evening by the fire.
“…What?” Mary had replied, turning stiffly to face her goblin friend.
Daisy winced, aware of the subject’s delicate nature. “Sorry, I know that’s maybe a strange thing to ask you, but – well, I haven’t seen much of it. Any dye like that is extremely expensive, and my hometown didn’t have that kind of money…”
Mary relaxed a little, waiting for her friend to finish.
“…So I thought, Mary might have seen more, right? The purple dye is hard to find in the wild, but you lived there all your life, so – I was wondering.” Her hands were clenched tightly together, but her eyes remained hopefully curious.
She thought for a moment. Grey memories flowed through her, falling back into older visions of fading colour. Visions of a younger forest, full of flowers and trees and animals, before she was taken away from them. “I’ve seen a few, yes.”
“Oh?” Her friend’s face brightened. “What were they?”
The visions became clearer. “Flowers, mostly. Thistle, Lavender, Catmint…Foxglove, Wisteria…” As she spoke their names, a shimmering image of each flower formed within her hand, shining for a moment before fading into the next.
Daisy’s eyes went wide, a smile breaking across her face as she looked upon flowers she’d never had the chance to see before.
Mary looked upon those same illusionary flowers, and all she saw was grey.
She knew they were purple. She knew from Daisy’s reaction that their colour was right. She knew, because they had been conjured from her memories of colour, when her sight was bright and living.
But no matter how beautiful, how vivid those memories may be, she simply couldn’t make her darkened dead eyes see them in anything but blacks and greys. For her, colour was now secluded within her dreams.
Or they would be, if she could dream…
“Mary? You okay?” Daisy’s voice, worried once again.
Mary opened her eyes. “No. Not really.” She attempted a smile. “But you do make my days a little brighter.”
The Taste of Purple
By MasaCur
Miki wandered around Sakurami’s fourth floor, made up of labs for the science classes. She hadn’t spent much time up there.
One of the rooms had a bunch of students in it. In the far corner, a pink-haired girl was looking at a violet fluid in a test tube, a thermometer suspended in it.
Miki walked up to her. “Hi! Whatcha doing? I’m Miki, by the way.”
The girl glanced up at her, then grabbed a pair of folding safety goggles, and passed them to Miki.
“Oh, uh, thanks. But they don’t go with my hair,” Miki replied. She placed the goggles on the lab bench.
The girl narrowed her eyes, then grabbed the white board, and wrote furiously on it.
I’m recording the temperature of this solution, she wrote. It displays an amazing endothermic reaction to oxygen. .
“Oh! You poor dear. You must be deaf!” Miki exclaimed.
The girl frowned and wiped the board clean, then wrote on it again.
I’m not deaf. I have social mutism.
Miki gasped in surprise. “You’re a mutant? What’s your power?”
The girl glared at Miki. She was only drawn away when her phone beeped. She glanced at it, then wrote the temperature displayed on the thermometer.
Miki got bored. She saw a flask with more of the violet liquid in it.
“Making a new flavor of soft drink?” Miki asked. “Can I try?”
Without waiting, Miki popped the flask open, and took a sip of it. Then a swallow.
“What are you doing?” the girl screamed.
Everyone looked over at them.
“Oh my gosh! Me drinking this gave you the ability to speak!” Miki said with glee.
“You don’t know what’s in that!” the girl shouted. “It could have been poisonous!”
“It tastes like purple.”
The girl stared at Miki in disbelief.
“Purple isn’t a flavor; it’s a color!”
“No, it tastes like how purple looks.” Miki shook her head. “I thought you science types were smart.”
The girl clenched her jaw and glared at Miki. On the white board, in large letters, she wrote, Get out!
Purple Purple Purple
by Barney the Dinosaur
Purple purple purple purple purple. Purple purple purple purple, purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple. Purple purple purple, purple purple purple purple purple purple purple, purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple. Purple purple purple purple.
Purple purple, purple purple purple purple purple purple purple. Purple, purple purple purple purple purple purple purple. Purple purple purple, purple purple purple purple purple, purple purple purple, purple purple purple purple purple purple purple, purple purple. Purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple, purple purple purple purple. Purple purple purple purple purple purple purple, purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple. Purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple.
Purple purple purple purple purple purple purple.
Purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple. Purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple:
“Purple purple, purple purple purple purple purple purple purple; purple purple purple purple purple purple purple. Purple purple purple purple, purple purple purple purple purple — purple, purple, purple purple. Purple purple purple purple purple, purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple.”
Purple purple purple: “Purple purple, purple purple purple purple purple purple purple. Purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple.”
Purple purple purple purple purple, purple purple purple purple purple purple.
Purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple. Purple purple, purple purple purple purple purple purple purple. Purple purple purple purple, purple purple purple purple purple purple purple, purple purple:
“Purple purple purple, purple purple? Purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple purple.”
Purple purple purple purple purple purple!
Purple Purple.
Blame It On The Alcohol
By Marx
“Yurrrr sho prettyyyyy….”
Laila glared over to Matt, continuing the appearance of struggling to hold up his weight as she helped him home. “And you’re drunk. Matt… I’m so disappointed in you… You’re better than this.”
“…’ma teenager… ‘shupposed tah-du shtoopid tingsh…”
Laila’s eyes narrowed further as she saw that Matt had an aura of erratic swirling energy around him, and his own eyes were flashing between normal and solid black. “Everyone else gets to be stupid. You don’t.”
“Why…? Cuz… ‘m… speshul…?”
“Yes!” Laila growled back in frustration. Matt shouldn’t even have been able to get drunk in the first place. And even if he did, his powers had been mostly healing in nature to this point. He was like this because he WANTED to be. And she couldn’t stop the reckless, inadvertent spell without raising Heaven’s alarm, which would be very bad. “You have no idea the danger you’re in right now.”
“Speshul… heh… Just meens… everbuddy thnksh’m weird… und ‘m… lone all th’ time… I hate being special.”
Laila felt herself being overcome with emotion as her eyes began to well up. She knew this was partially because of Matt’s magic chaotically responding to his own emotions, but she also knew it was because she hated seeing him in pain. “…I’M here for you. You… know that, right?”
Matt let out an awkwardly slurred laugh. “Course y’are… ‘my besshfrenn…”
“Which is why you need to listen to m-”
“…ven if yuu don’ like me… th’way I like yuu..”
Laila’s eyes shot wide, unable to stop the tears slowly falling down her cheeks. “Don’t you dare! I… Matt, I CAN’T. It’s not that I don’t-… We-… Dammit, Matt, this is too complicated a situation to explain to you while you’re like this!”
“…not compulcatered… I… like yuu… yuu dunn feel tha same… But… got… jealous… uff Caitlyn…”
“Caitlyn was a DEMON! She-” Laila came this close to punching Matt in the face. But she decided instead to be the adult here. He wasn’t ready for an explanation yet. And even if he was, it surely wasn’t happening tonight.
Dye
By RVMPLSTLTSKN (The Saga of The Deep One’s Wake)
“Father, why does Vienas wear different colors than us?” Baby asked.
She was knee-deep in the surf, her tattered shift waterlogged and stained. Padas didn’t think much of the past, but today, his daughter deeper in the sea than she’d ever been, her questions turned his mind to the before-time. How to explain the castes to a child who had only ever experienced the freedom of animals?
“Her clothes were dyed. You’ll have some like hers one day, when you’re old enough.”
“What is dying?”
“It changes the colors of clothes. It makes them pretty, no?”
She nodded. “Too pretty for work.”
He chuckled, “You can’t run around naked.”
“Klajonas did.”
“He got sunburned, remember?”
“Is that how you dye clothes?”
“Part of it. The sun bleaches clothes, then you boil ingredients like a soup and throw cloth into it.”
“Into soup?!”
“Nasty soup, made of piss and snails.” She laughed while he fished around in the surf for a snail. It was the wrong kind. “You remember the red-mouthed snails?”
She nodded, “They live on the big rocks.”
They live by Juru’s temple, Padas thought.
“In the dye, they make the best purple,” he said.
“What’s purple?”
“The color on Vienas’ shroud.”
“Oh.”
“Raimundos taught us to use the snails. They almost died out until Juru taught us their seasons.”
“Who are they?”
“Raimundos was a great man. He made the Everflame.” The little lie was easier than the truth, just as Vienas had said.
“Our fire?”
“Yes.”
“Where does he live?”
“He lived here, in the city.”
“In our house?”
“No, in another house. One of the big ones.”
“Can I meet him?”
Padas regarded her, shaking his head. His gaze drifted to the sea. “He’s dead.”
In a solemn whisper, Baby asked, “Did the snails get him?”
Padas’ laughter echoed on the waves. “No, no, a much bigger fish did. That’s why we have to be careful with the sea. No more boats for us, the big fish might get us.”
“Yes, Father.”
They worked quietly, gathering clams and fish in tide pools.
“Did he know Klajonas?”