Writing Exercise
Visit an antique shop, thrift store, or resale store. Pick an item. You don’t have to buy it, but take pictures. Write a story based on that item.
Side Note
I had a lot of fun with this one because it inspired me to go to an antique shop. I love going to antique shops and have found a few items that are now in my house. The item for this short story, I actually bought and love it. So this one might be one you all may want to try yourself. It’s a lot of fun going to antique shops. I used to not think so, but now, I can’t wait for our next trip to one.
My Writing
The red crackled glass of the antique lamp beckoned to the young woman. She brushed her long, curly black hair back behind her shoulder as her amber eyes stared at the lamp. It mesmerized her. She just couldn’t take her eyes off of it.
“Tina?”
Tina turned to see her friends watching, and she laughed. “Oh, hey, guys. I was wondering where you all went.” She glanced back at the lamp and, without a second thought, grabbed the bronze brushed base, pulling it off the shelf. “I’m going to buy this and a few old perfume bottles I had seen at another stall we passed.”
Tina headed back down the aisle they had just came from to another booth. She gazed over the old perfume bottles before she grabbed six of the ones she liked the most. Tina already knew where she was going to put them in her house, too. She rejoined her friends. “Okay, i need to put this down before we check out the rest of the booths.”
Two hours and four bags later, Tina walks into her house, exhausted. She was ready to find the perfect places for all of her new items, especially the mesmerizing lamp she had bought. Tina sat her bags down on the island in her kitchen and got into the one with the antique perfume bottles. She gently cleaned off the dust and sat them on the kitchen window ledge just above the sink.
“Finally, something to put on this bare ledge,” she said as she stepped back and admired how they looked. “Now to find a place for my lamp.” She picked up the lamp she had placed beside the bags, not being in its own bag because it was too heavy.
Tina stared at the red crackled glass again, being drawn to it. She dusted it off, but couldn’t stop staring at it. She heard some noise behind her, but she was too engrossed with the lamp to realize that her phone was ringing. When she could finally pull herself back to reality, she saw it was nearly 10 pm. She looked around, confused because it had only been 3 in the afternoon when she had gotten home. She set the lamp down, shocked that she was no longer in the kitchen, but was now standing in her office.
“How…?” She left the office and grabbed her phone off the island in the kitchen. She saw that she had missed ten calls from her mom, three from Sarah, one of her friends she went to the antique store with, eight from work, and five from her boyfriend, Fred. “What in the world happened?”
She set her phone down and that was when she noticed her hands were bloody. Tina screamed and ran over to the sink to wash the blood off. She looked for a cut, but her hands didn’t have any cuts. She dried her hands on a kitchen towel that hang from her oven handle and looked down to see blood on her jeans and shirt. Tina ran to her bedroom where she stripped off her clothes and instantly looked for an open wound, but again, there was nothing on her body.
“I must be tired and imagining that there is blood on me. Maybe it is just ketchup,” she muttered to herself and headed into the bathroom.
Tina took a quick shower, dressed in her pajamas, and crawled under her covers on her comfortable bed. She made a mental note to call everyone back tomorrow morning and apologize for not hearing her phone ring. She would tell them she was busy, but not about the lamp or how she had spaced out for several hours because of the lamp. They would think she was crazy.
Tina fell asleep and dreamed of her new lamp. In the dream, she plugged it in and flipped it on. Purple splashed up against the wall behind it and it drew her to it like a moth to a flame. Her entire dream was of her staring at the lamp. She swore she heard someone talking and screaming, but she ignored it all. She just sat in her office chair and stared at the beautiful lamp.
In the morning, she woke up and felt like she hadn’t slept at all. Her body ached, and she stretched her neck, wondering if she slept on it wrong. She focused on the room and gasped when she saw she wasn’t in her bedroom. She was sitting in her office chair and the lamp was on, the purple light shining eerily on the wall behind it. Tina looked down at herself to see she was covered in blood again. She screamed and ran out of the office. She tripped over something and fell hard on her hands and knees.
When Tina to look behind her at what she had tripped over, she couldn’t believe her eyes. Tina screamed when she saw her boyfriend laying in a pool of blood along with her mother and her boss. She crawled away from the bodies, crying and shaking her head. They weren’t dead, and she couldn’t be the one who had killed them.
Tina jumped when she heard a knock on her front door. She pushed herself up and walks to the door as if in a haze. The knocking turned into a violent banging, her whole door shaking from the force.
“Police! Open up!”
Tina covered her mouth, scared and froze, not sure what she should do. The lamp! The lamp somehow made her kill her mom, her boss, and her boyfriend. She should destroy it! She needs to destroy it!
Tina rushed to her office to grab and throw the lamp to destroy it, but the door slammed open. She looked over her shoulder to see police with guns drawn rush into her home. Tina went to her desk, yanked the cord out of the wall, and held the lamp up over her head, ready to throw it down into the ground and destroy it. She cried out when someone ran up behind her and quickly pulled the lamp out of her hands.
“No! That lamp is evil. It needs to be destroyed. It made me murder people.,” Tina said as she felt someone roughly pulled her arms behind her back. “I have to destroy it to stop it. No, please, let me destroy it.”
The police cuffed her and dragged her out of the house, kicking and screaming. She kept screaming about the lamp being evil and how she had to destroy it before it could force someone else to murder their loved ones.
3 Months Later
“Kristy, what are you staring at?”
Kristy looked back to see her friends staring at her. “Oh, just checking out this really pretty red lamp. I think am going to buy it. It’ll look great in my office on my desk in my apartment.” Kristy picked up the lamp with the red crackled glass and the brushed metal base. “Are we ready to head out?”
