Daily Prompt: Life Line

Daily Prompt: Life Line

by michelle w. on August 12, 2013

You’re on a long flight, and a palm reader sitting next to you insists she reads your palm. You hesitate, but agree. What does she tell you?

Photographers, artists, poets: show us HANDS.
http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2013/08/12/daily-prompt-hands/

I’m not really interested in having my fortune told, I don’t believe in all that mumbo jumbo – but this is a long flight to Singapore and I am going to sit next to this lady for a few hours. What’s the worst she can tell me? That I am going to die? We are all going to die at some point.

I hold out my hand, palm upwards. The lady goes quiet, closes her eyes, grasps my hand in both of hers and squeezes. Then she releases my hand and opens her eyes.

She’s performing this strange ritual rather publically in the middle aisle seats. She makes no eye contact, no reassuring sounds or words, she stares at my palm and slowly starts tracing the lines with the smooth skin of her own index finger.

“Your fate line is very faint and your heart and life lines are long. You express your emotions freely but you are selfish in love.

…. You have suffered an emotional trauma.

Your head line is short but you are very creative, you enjoy adventure and have enthusiasm for life (fairly obvious I would have thought as I am on a plane!)

Your life will be full of momentous decisions. (Better neat my indecisive nature then!)

Your life line shows that you have plenty of vitality and strength (I’m still listening to you aren’t I?)

You are a self-made individual, you had aspirations from early childhood. Your palm is ‘Fire’ (that links to my zodiac) and this means that you are; spontaneous, enthusiastic and optimistic, sometimes egoistic, impulsive and insensitive. (Nice!) You are an extrovert, (well that one’s easy!) You do things boldly and instinctively.”

She stops for a moment and looks up at me.

“Do you recognise yourself?”

“Yes thank you, very accurate.” That is what I said, but I couldn’t help thinking she had taught me nothing at all.

Alastair’s Photo Fiction – The Ambush/ I scream

 This is my entry for this weeks photo fiction challenge from Alastair. To find out more about this prompt click the photo… it’s active, be careful of Paul’s Ice Cream Cart though… you don’t want to set that off!

The play area had been fenced off. All they could do now was sit and wait. Between the four of them, they had clear sighting of all exits roads and paths. There was no escaping this ambush, they just had to bide their time. Hiding in plain sight had been the Commander’s idea and as far as ideas went, this was a pretty good one. Nobody would suspect what was really inside Paul’s Ice Cream cart or ask where Paul was.

Like true professionals these soldiers were able to keep expressionless faces as they listened to the information coming through their cleverly concealed ear pieces.

“3 o’clock, approaching the yellow gate, East of target. You have about 2 minutes.”

Within seconds the soldiers stood up, rising as one unit and crossed over the road to the play area. Paul’s Ice Cream cart was ticking away the seconds until impact. They just had to lay the lines now and it would all be over.

Picture It and Write – Fear

This is a great challenge – check it out – click the icon.

by DiggieVitt on Flickr

“Tell me about it…” said Dr Wainman.

“I think it all started in childhood, well these things normally do, don’t they?” Eliza looked up half expecting a reaction. She would never get used to the silence he allowed her to fill with her own stories. He never said much and held a mask of an expression, lively enough to show he was listening and deadpan enough not to give away any hint of emotion. It drove her crazy if she was honest, but she still went to her weekly sessions, she knew the only way to get rid of the demon was to talk about it.

“I think it was a problem even before father left…” Eliza wasn’t aware of the tears streaming down her face as she twisted in her seat and tried to fill in the details of her memories as Dr Wainman asked carefully stitched questions, prompting recall from deep inside of her.

In the end she held onto his closing words. She always did. It was the only time he ever said anything. This week he told Eliza that fear didn’t exist.

This concept blew Eliza’s mind – it was like learning that we imagine colour as everything we see is only black or white or some shade of subtle grey. That was the day she wondered why we spent so much on interior design. Now Dr Wainman was telling her she could avoid all her dark feelings if she could let go of fear – which was a manifestation of what might happen and the irrational concerns she had were never likely to become reality. The probability was low, off the radar in fact.

Dr Wainman was trying to focus her mind on something she could accomplish, move her forward rather than allowing her to remain a tortured prisoner of her past.

The truth stunned her. She had created the monster. Her own mind had conjured up fear to protect her from the real harm that was happening to her mother. The fear in this case did not fulfil its role. She could not be kept safe by it. Her mother had nowhere else to go and neither did she. All these years since, reliving the nightmare… that was her hurting herself.

How could she move forward knowing her mind was this broken?

For the first time EVER in any of the writing challenges I participate in I have taken the essence of the image and used that in a non-literal way. (In case you’re still wondering where the birds are!) 😉