My Scareuary 2024, Entry 6: "The Star Seal" Writing Sprints

Note: The Star Seal is the story I've formerly referred to as "Statue Horror".

It's been a while since I worked on my Scareuary stories. And by 'a while', I mean a handful of days - though it feels like weeks. I'm going to continue drafting the story in this blog post. I don't expect to finish it, and in fact, since I'm under the weather at the moment, I might not even write as much as I want to, but a little bit is better that nothing, right?

As I go back over what I've written and plotted already, I'm slightly concerned about the realism of the situation. Do archaeologists work in museums? Can they conduct research in museums? I feel like, logically, the answer there must be a resounding yes. So we're going to stick to that.

I also made a couple of quick social-media covers for this short story using free graphic resources from Pixabay:

I'll probably illustrate something myself later on when I have the time, but for now, these are fine. They're kind of almost on-theme, so they'll do. 👍

Alright, with that out of the way, let's get into those writing sprints. As always, it's 10 minutes per sprint. 

He was only a few minutes into his examination of the seal in an archival room when the shelves around him began to wobble, the precious items in boxes juddering loudly. Underneath him, the ground swayed back and forth violently, and loud creaking and groaning and rumbling was heard everywhere. 

An earthquake!

He scrambled underneath the table, taking the star seal with him. Holding the cylindrical item in his hands, he watched as items fell to the ground around him, some priceless pieces undoubtedly damaged beyond repair, and heard the sounds of more of them landing on the metallic surface of the table. He paid little attention, then, to the heat emanating from the star seal.

The noise, the shaking - all of it was overwhelming. His heart, beating with a strength he did not know it had, was going off like a warning drum, and his breaths came in sharp, deep gasps and inhalations. Dust came down in rivers as the ceiling cracked and split, and for a terrifying moment he imagined himself buried under the rubble of a three-story building, crushed or suffocated to death.

He did not know how long the quake continued, but it had been long enough that his legs were numb when the shaking finally weakened, and then eventually stopped. He crept out from under the table carefully. Would there be an aftershock? Was it safe to come out? What if the whole structure fell down around him, right now? 

It was only then that he realized the stone cylinder in his hands was hot. Uncomfortably hot. He passed it from one hand to the other like a hot potato, confused. It was unnaturally hot - abnormally hot - and something about it gave his a queasy sort of feeling in the pit of his stomach, as though he was forgetting something - as though the answer was right there.

He rushed out of the room, back to the place where the statue had been laid to rest for him to examine.

And that's another ten minute sprint down! So far, so good. We've reached the point in the plot where the archaeologist will find the monster in the place of the statue:

While trying to decipher the writing on the star seal, an earthquake shakes the entire building; it lasts for some time, and when it is finally over, the archaeologist rushes back to the room where he left the statue to ensure it hadn't toppled over or gotten damaged.

I'm sure there's going to be a little editing work waiting for me when I look at the overall draft, but for now, I'm only going to push forward. No editing just yet. 

When I do get to the editing, though, there will probably be a few different kinds of revisions to be made - description, tone, and probably some consistency between the different snippets I write for each sprint. 

And now to start another 10-minute writing sprint:

He reeled back almost as soon as he reached the threshhold. The room was as he had left it, though the statue that had once been lying on the table was now shattered - giant shards of stone scattered on the table and floor as though the thing had been hollow, and not carved out of heavy, dense rock.

Worst, yet, was what had hatched from the statue - the monstrous thing that stood there now, atop the table. Frozen at the entrance to the room, he could only watch as this beast - some kind of winged, reptilian thing with talons, but which had a head vaguely resembling that of a human woman - turned to face him. Its eyes honed in on the cylindrical seal still gripped tightly in his hands.

If his heart had been pounding before, surely by now it had stopped, frozen in silence just as the rest of his body was. The grotesque creature leaned toward him, almost looming over him, and let out a terrible screech. It was only this noise that broke him out of his fearful daze, and he rushed back out of the room and into the call, stumbling somewhat in his haste to get away.

The thing did not follow him. He ran and ran, tripping not once but twice in his hurry to escape, but when he finally reached the front doors of the museum and banged on them, the security guard who answered his call was the picture of ignorance. 

"Monster?" he asked, glancing around. "Screech? I didn't hear or see anything." 

"You must have - you must have heard something!" the young man exclaimed frantically. "It was just moments after the earthquake - just seconds after - "

"There hasn't been an earthquake," the security guard interjected, the irritation clear in his voice. "Sir, you need to calm down. If you've broken something, you can take that up with the museum in the morning."

He couldn't get the blasted man to understand him - to listen to him, let alone believe him. Everything he had experienced so far that night, he had written off completely. No earthquake, no ear-splitting screech - nothing. How was that possible? 

And that's another 10 minutes. I keep playing a little game, racing with the clock, challenging myself to write more than I did in the last sprint. But I think that comes at the expense of fleshing out the writing a little more. Like I said before, I'm definitely going to have to edit this thing for more description and some tonal adjustments. 

But that's enough for tonight. In these 20 minutes, I've written a lot more than I was able to this whole past week!