Photo by Maxim Nikiforov on Unsplash
This flash is from a writer’s group challenge where we had 5 minutes to write a store based on the opening line of “Even though it was hot outside, Sheila was shivering.” Below is what I hand wrote (including my scribble outs), followed by the story that developed out of it.
The write-out something:
Even though it was hot outside, Shelia was shivering in the shade. Two steps from the where she stood under the grand oak tree was bright hot sunshine hot sunshine. (Yes, I wrote hot sunshine, didn’t like it then dropped it back in when I couldn’t come up with something better.) Kids ran nearby, thro moms chasing them with sunscreen. Flowers droop bent toward the bright light while their leaves drooped from the heat.
And she shivered. Ice cold. Unable to move. Frozen in body and time since January. She could see everything, smell the flowers by day and hear the crickets by night.
Isolated from everything.
“Help me,” she wanted to whisper…to scream. Stpu
All she had done was walk home from work across the park that night
“Help me,
Stuck between one moment and the next; shivering between minutes.
Time for the group got called here so the “story” ended and I read it to the group. But I didn’t exactly like how it ended up. I didn’t know why she was stuck in time. I had thought maybe she had been attacked in the park that night. (Hence the cross off.) Maybe by magic, maybe by normal bad guys. Maybe someone crying “Help me” lured her in, or maybe someone had begged for help for real. Was it magic, a curse, science fiction gone wrong, what had happened? On the drive home, I figured out something. Now this concept really doesn’t have legs to become a full story or even a good short story, but I do want to get at least the answer to my questions on paper.
The “developed” concept:
Blistering late afternoon sun heated the air hazy as the sun slowly climbed in the sky. Within the shade of an ancient pine, standing on next fall’s rotting needles, Sheila shivered from the cold despite the heat everyone else was experiencing.
She had been frozen since mid-February coming home after working an extremely long shift on Valentine’s Day as a waitress. Men had left actual green-backs on the tables as an extra tip on top of generous numbers written against their credit cards to impress their dates, giving her cash in her pocket which hadn’t been reduced by credit card companies and the boss taking financial transaction fees. Sheila had been a little worried about cutting through the park with nearly two hundred dollars on her person, but it was after midnight in the middle of winter. Only the dumb and the desperate would be out, and very few of those with a storm carrying snow coming down from the north. The first flecks of ice bit her cheeks driven by the wind as she pulled her short jacket closer to her body.
The brittle winter wind kisses still stung her cheeks months earlier. Freezing and frozen, but not dead from exposure, Sheila watched unmoving as mothers ran backwards, reverse chasing sunburnt children with bottles of lotion. She wanted to scream “help me”; she wanted to be have the opportunity to fight the tears that would course down her cheeks the moment she could react instead of being stuck between minutes, observing the past.
The parking lot filled as more families loaded their cars, leaving after a long day of fun. The higher the sun climbed, the hotter the afternoon air got. Sheila suspected she would be seeing Fourth of July celebrations soon and tried to remember what she had done that day after work. Would she see herself in the park watching rockets reassemble mid-air or had she been further away, toward the river?
As Sheila observed the day in reverse, the children’s glowing red sunburns faded, to be replaced with the first smears of the suntan lotion applied over drops of mustard and salsa from their picnic lunches. Fathers returned to work and mothers fanned themselves as they set down the trash spread over the tables and picnic cloths around the park. The children returned from the playground equipment to reform everything from hamburgers to tacos one bite at a time, depending on their family’s traditions.
Sheila’s mouth would have watered if she had hunger, if she could react, other than being frozen and watching endlessly the cycle of families going and coming to the park each day. Those enjoying the Christmas lights put up by the park service had been the hardest to watch because she knew what was coming for them, what had come for her that February winter night.
Eventually the early families hasn’t arrived yet, leaving commuters jogging the circuit or walking their pets before going to work, or, from Sheila’s perspective as time slowly peeled backwards one minute before the next, went home and climbed out of their beds after a restless night sleep.
Sheila wondered for the thousandth time when this curse would stop. When she would be warm again. She watched as the morning dew rapidly condensed as the sun set into its dawn.
Would it just be a year and she would live forward again? Would it be her lifespan and she would wink out when passing her birth or fetal formation? Would it humanity arriving on the shores of American? And which version, her ancestors arriving or when humans crossed the land bridge during the ice age? When life began on land, or life began on the planet? Would she be hovering midair as the earth formed, then wait another million-billion for the big bang? And what was before that? She shuddered at the thought of just what eternity unmoving would mean.
If she came alive again when people were here, could she warn them of the future? Had she been sent back from that moment when she had ducked under the pine trees boughs to escape the wicked wind for just a moment before continuing home and saw the brilliant light and the shockwave of sand and city parts coming right at her, promising the warmth she had been craving the whole walk home, and then exponentially more, providing enough blistering intensity to strip her flesh from her bones…to help them? Be a chosen one like her friends who had time to read books talked about.
Could she help them or was whatever had struck the city written in stone?
Had she been thrown out of time and now was permanently frozen between moments?
The thought made her tremble in fear or exhaustion, she wasn’t sure which.
Wait.
She had shivered.
She could move.
As the early dawn gave way to true night, Sheila tried to step forward.
(first version of the story, words: 97; second version of the story, words: 820; first published 7/29/2026)