Let’s see what you come up with. Leave a link to your prompt story in the comments below.

Eye Contact: Write about two people seeing each other for the first time.

Celia dipped her pen back in the ink pot at the corner of her desk and waited until the drip suspended on the tip elongated, coalesced, and plopped back down into the rest. Writing this way ticked her off, but she needed money for her trip to New Mexico, and she would rather scratch out faux-antique documents at her grandfather’s book shop than stock shelves at the Safeway. Another dip, wait, drop, and she finished the curlicue on a ridiculously complex P.

The chime over the door sounded, and she dropped the pen onto its stand with a sigh. The drawn out process of writing that P felt like her summer. Boring. Eons long. If this were a romance novel,  she thought as she made her way to the front of the shop, that would be a hot guy with muscles and a rakish smile looking to spend $1 million on a rare book.

The man who shuffled his feet just in side the door was twenty-something, but that’s where the similarities between Celia’s imagination and reality stopped.

“Can I help you?” she asked. She stopped at the corner of the counter a safe twelve feet away from the customer. Her grandfather always warned her about maniacs. Crazy men who liked to grab young women. Celia, who had been there done that at college and handled it just fine with a well-placed knee, didn’t share his fears. Besides, the guy looked like a stiff breeze could take him out.

Pale fingers twisted near his waist, and his head bobbed around a bit as he took in the shelves and book displays to either side. “Maybe,” he said in a voice almost too soft to hear. “I’m looking for an old… well, ancient… It’s a rare, really special… I mean…”

Wow. The poster child for social anxiety, Celia thought and pasted what she hoped was a friendly, comforting smile on her face. She took a step closer and crossed her hands in front of her.

“It’s hard to explain,” he said and then looked up into her eyes.

A kaleidoscope of colored lights dazzled across the ten feet that separated them. His eyes, dark and light and illuminated in some way, grabbed hold of her consciousness and seemed to suck all thought from her mind.

Holy shit… was all she managed before her thoughts skipped away from her. Images of mountains, deep forests, eyes gleaming from dark caves, blinding rays of some other sun flashed through her mind.

“I’m sorry,” he said and squeezed his eyes closed tightly. He turned and fumbled at the doorknob.

Celia blinked and her grandfather’s shop came back into focus. Her feet carried her forward. “Wait.” She held out a hand.

His hand paused on the door. His feet came to a stop, and he shifted his body slightly back toward her. He did not look up. “Can you help me?” His voice came as soft as eiderdown, as deep as nightmare seas. He rubbed a hand across his eyes. “Help me.”

Well, there you go. 15 minutes. What did you come up with?

I crouched on the edge of the log and watched things flow by while listening to the screams of whoever he had found on the highway. One part of me liked them. One chunk of who I now was in this dying world liked them. I fished useful things out of the flow and carried them back upstairs when the screaming was done.

“Shelter. Food. Water. All Welcome!” He had taken me out to see the sign the second night. It leaned against a dead Chevy in the center lane of the Pike. A line of cars clogged the shoulder. The people who saw the sign and followed it parked neatly despite everything.

Kaleidoscope memories. I spun myself from river fisher to Scheherazade – whatever me he didn’t want to kill. I didn’t know what it was. I just stuck with what worked.

“Hey, Joe,” I said, voice light and smile easy. My gaze darted around the room expecting gore and finding none.

He perched on the edge of the bed, one foot propped up on the opposite knee, fiddling with the frets of an electric guitar that hadn’t existed two hours before. He strummed a tinny A minor, D, G, then an off-tempo Pop Goes the Weasel before looking up at me.

Another spin. Another grope for the right me. What did he expect in response to this? I met his eyes for a second then looked away at the prints and papers taped to the wall. I strained my ears for any sigh or grunt that would signify a change from okay Joe to the thing that tore travelers apart and left me to bucket brigade them down to the river.

I tapped a brief rhythm on the side seam of my filthy jeans with two fingers. Conciliation. Risk.

He looked down and picked at a toenail. “How’s the river today?” he asked, just like he always did.

I spun back to river fisher, safe waters, a comfort spot. I slung the sack off my shoulder. “Some net, dead bird too far gone – I let it flow – and this.” Someone had hacked off the baby doll’s black hair. Its blue dress showed silt lines and what could have been old blood on one sleeve.

Joe shot to his feet and over to me. My gaze shot over his shoulder. My ears opened up. I shut my mouth. Fisher gone. Watcher, waiter back. Would he accept this offering?

He took the doll, cupped its head. “We’ll keep it.” He drew my gaze and reached up to cup my cheek with a wet hand.

The first time he had touched me and I fought against the urge to recoil. My mind spun loose. I had no clue what me to be. My eyes went everywhere, my ears, my lips opened then closed silent, my mind flowed in fits and starts like soup over a log.

I was still alive when he turned away to put the baby on the bed. He slumped down beside it, his gaze consumed with its plastic blues. “Take care of that,” he said and waved his hand toward the bathroom.

I got the bucket.

An hour later I crouched on the log again and watched the water flow. My mind settled like a marble in a maze, tucked into some safe corner, inert. A partially inflated plastic bag snagged on a branch and I leaned out to pull it to shore.

A clatter of stones behind me brought me to my feet. A young couple no older than me scuffed boots down the path cautiously. The woman wore a Mexican blanket around her shoulders. The man carried a backpack and a hatchet.

Spin. A friendly smile. A direct, open gaze. Eye-contact.

I raised a hand in greeting. “Hello there.”

They were brother and sister, Tim and Meg. Had driven from Smithfield, they said. Wanted to get to the lake. A barge community had sprung up, according to a man they met heading south to find his family. But they saw the sign and stopped. Maybe stay a night? Maybe trade?

My smile widened with practiced ease. “Come inside,” I said, showing my teeth. “Meet Joe.”

We stood in a clump on the worn rug. They took in the artwork on the walls, the stained doll, the electric guitar, the everything, the nothing. The girl looked nervous and she caught my eye.

A mad vision of people on green barges, families, gardens, things that made sense flew through my head. Me, maybe with an arm around Meg’s shoulders, with Tim grinning through his beard. Birds overhead. Clean water flowing. I blinked.

River fisher, waiter, I turned to the door and eased it open.

“David,” Joe said, the first time he had used my name. “Why don’t you stay?”

Our eyes met. The vision spun away. The pieces of me whirled like plastic gems in a kaleidoscope, yellow and red. They spun, then they stopped. I pushed the door closed again and locked it.

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I tried to write the POV character as teetering on the edge of sanity and self in the face of the end of the world and his only protection being a violent madman. In the end, the gravity of the situation – his reality now – wins and, after a brief burst of hope for normalcy, he tips over into being what the man in the room is. I hope that all seems obvious from the story.