1)   Choose one of the 4 images provided in the file marked “Daily Themes Images” under “Resources” on the classes server. From this image construct a narrative for what is happening in the scene that would sit alongside the image (that is, your reader will also be looking at the image).

It started with a pop. Then three succeeding pops a crick and then a loud CABOOM that made Julia scream. She could hear the animalistic wail echo through the vast neighborhood as her father’s car shuddered to a stop.

“What…what just happened?” She asks herself, half expecting a response. The situation vaguely reminds her of a movie she’d seen with Stephanie on Halloween.

To her disappointment, nobody answers. Not that Julia earnestly expects a response. She had just hoped. Just one tiny voice out in the darkness receding into nothingness. It is a twenty minute walk home at least, plus it was late. Julia is frightened.

“Can anybody help?” Nothing.

Alone. Julia is alone. She gets out of the car and walks down the street. She considers knocking on a stranger’s door and asking for help. But it is so late. Maybe she can figure something out and avoid getting into trouble. She dully continues walking, eyeing houses for signs of life, torn.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid!” Julia knew better than to leave Frank’s place so late all on her own. She should have insisted he join her and walk back home. But Julia was embarrassed to ask. She was already one year younger and didn’t want to look like a baby. Frank likes the cool girls. Julia so badly wishes she were cool.

Her parents are going to kill her, she just knows it. Her Dad’s temper is impossible to settle. This car is his baby, to boot, and she isn’t allowed to drive it. She isn’t supposed to go out after 11P.M., let alone on a Tuesday night. She draws her hand to her cheek in anticipation of a hard slap.

She turns back, defeated. Maybe she should just wait in the car until the sun rises, and then find help. The night street is no place for her.

And then she sees him.

Who is he?

Mystified, she approaches the passenger side of the car.  She reaches out her hand to the man’s shoulder. He is dressed nicely, she notes. Through the shock and tired delirium she wonders if he has come to rescue her.

And he grabs her arm and digs his nails into her skin. She cries in pain. Shrieks rattle the mailboxes and windows. She can hear her veins popping. They echo, too.

Pop. Pop. Pop.

2)   There is a form of bibliomancy called “Sortes Virgilianae” in which predictions of the future are determined by randomly selecting lines from the Aeneid.   First, determine what your Aeneid is—that is to say, the book that seems most important to your sense of yourself.  Then determine a way to randomly select a line from that book.  Once you have a line, use this as either the first line or the last line of a theme—this can either be fiction or nonfiction, just don’t make it a “reading” of the line in terms of literary criticism.  Use the line to generate something new—don’t use the same characters, situations, and so forth from the source text (i.e. no Harry Potter fan fiction!).

(Catch-22)

Climb, you bastard! Climb, climb, climb, climb!

How had I gotten myself into this disastrous situation? First, kidnapped in India. I narrowly escaped that mess. That was all through the magic of money and bribery. No one in India can deny the sheer power of a couple of hundreds. But this – THIS was a problem that money, for once, could not solve.

Climb! Up! Up! Up!

How had I found myself here, actually? The memories dimly flickered before me. I graduated UConn without any idea of who I was or what I wanted to do. My parents, divorced (they always are), threw thousands at me to “find myself.” My buddy from the lacrosse team and I picked random countries in Europe and Asia and went for it. He got kidnapped, too, but had lost it. He went home as soon as the boat dropped us off on the safe shore with the other hapless tourists.

Damnit! Shit! Climb!

I journeyed to Ecuador by myself on what I had left and found myself a job. My parents have no idea. I began working as a tour guide, working as an expert on the Amazonian jungle to journey hapless tourists like me through the mad jungle.

Climb, climb, climb!

Nature had a mind of its own today.

So here I am, dangling on a frayed rope over a 70-meter waterfall, my rope frayed and my legs flaying in the air. I grip onto the slippery rock in front of me. Cold water slams into my face. An errant twig pummels me in the gut.

I’ll make it through. I’ll survive as my hapless tourists scream and squeal below me.

Slowly, I begin to scale the rocky wall before me.

Climb!

3)   Write a theme that includes or becomes a long curse directed towards something—the snow, for instance or cancer or Valentine’s Day or the discontinuation of Twinkies.

I hated you the moment that I laid my four eyes on you.

As a kid, I’d preferred video games to playing outside with other kids. I had a tendency of dropping and crushing my glasses when playing tag or football or whatever. Sometimes maybe the kids would throw them to the ground and stomp on em’ themselves. My folks “weren’t made of money” and didn’t “appreciate” having to buy me new ones every other week. The video games weren’t cheap, neither. But I saved up my tooth fairy cash and lunch money just to buy the newest, best releases.

Playing in other worlds was much better than living in my boring, black-and-white reality. Being called a nerd all the time stings. I never got used to it and hated the other nerds all the more for it. School was the worst since I couldn’t even escape in my daydreams. The other boys made sure of that and reminded me how much I sucked on pretty much an hourly bass. I ran home after class every day to the electric glow of the TV screen. After a while, I would stay up for days without more than two hours sleep cause’ even my dreams were too dull.

And then you came.

When Dad brought home his new PC from work I thought it was ugly and ignored it for a week or two. One day he had me play with it, I’m not sure why. And then he introduced me to you, Internet. And I was never the same.

I became addicted to interacting with others just like me online. The broken, the abandoned, the forgotten. The resentful. The nerds. We could talk in chatrooms and share ideas and exchange tips on our favorite videogames. I even nabbed my first girlfriend in a chatroom. I didn’t sleep for four whole days straight after Dad logged me into Yahoo.

Internet, you have robbed me of reality. I cannot go into a coffee shop without wondering if the WiFi is free, I choose airlines based on the Internet availability in the terminals,  I mechanically check my e-mail on my iPhone every minute, I cannot meet someone without mentally devising their eHarmony profile in my head, and every time I see something weird or funny I wonder how many karma points I can rack up on Reddit for it.

I went from being disconnected to all too connected. I could have had a shot at normality, Internet.

4)   For today, let us pay our respects to the ancestors.  Write a ghost story that you have heard or experienced.

When Angela and I stepped into the house with the realtor, we knew it was the one. We told Sheila, our realtor, that we were willing to put a payment down on the spot. Nothing seemed amiss, but I suspect Sheila knew what she was getting us into. I saw a crack in her realtor’s façade, a quick glimmer of doubt, something all too real in her expression. But we went ahead and moved in.

Seven years passed. Sure, we heard the rumors, and knew about the house’s murky past. We found the doors tucked away in the back of closets that led to connecting tunnels and rooms. An entire network existed below our house. They reeked of death. Dead bodies, tucked away deep, surely resided below. The former owners had hidden away and tortured their slaves here for decades. When Angela and I found the rooms, we had the doors covered up, but there was nothing we could do about the tunnels.

Ben is our only son. Ben is the reason we started having trouble. First, he routinely began talking to himself. He told us he was speaking with the others in the house, and we thought it was a hackneyed prank he had picked up from too much television. But then things started moving around the house, doors opening and closing, mirrors shattering, silverware thrown across the room in the middle of the day.

We decided to move. Across states, even.

But the spirits followed us, and the bizarre behaviors continued. Ben that they have unfinished business. And they are going to take care of it through us.

1)   Looking over the dream notes that you kept all week, flesh out one of the dreams into a theme. You can shape this and craft it anyway you would like—and bear in mind you have an audience.

My roommates have been talking a lot about karma and energies. I used to think it was a load of bullshit. If you’d asked me a month ago if I believed in the psychic powers of the human mind, I would have laughed in your face. But now, I’m not so sure.

I started having dreams. I never dreamed before this past month. I mean, I’m sure I dreamed, but I could never remember. Didn’t really think much about it, to be honest. But the dreams, they were so vivid. And I could control everything about them. Flying, transforming, meeting famous people, all under my command. I couldn’t control what people did in my dreams though. That was up to them.

I had a dream about my ex. She came to my house – my old house, the one I had when we were dating – and begged for me back. We walked up and down the cul-de-sac and I refused her, reminding her how she had cheated on me. She cried and cried in her purple dress before walking off. Mind you, I haven’t spoken to this girl in real life for three years.

The next day, I get this call from an unknown number. And it’s her. She wants to visit me. I let her, and the whole weekend is this cry-fest that I can’t stand at all. I hate drama. But I was curious. She wore the same outfit as she did in my dream. The purple dress. And she said the same thing. Cried the same way. It drove me crazy.

And then the dog. We have this dog at home, she wasn’t too old, maybe six years old, supposed to live for six or seven more years. I had this dream she was in my arms and I was crying and she was so weak, whimpering, dying. I woke up with tears pouring down my face. I call my Mom, confused, to make sure the dog is okay.

“We’re putting her to sleep today. She’s got a tumor, and she’s in terrible pain.”

Mind. Blown.

And it keeps happening. I summon events and people from my past with a simple dream. But the thing is, they are always sad. Something bad always happens. I hate going to bed now, not knowing what nightmares I’ll carry on into everyday life.

The dreams have been happening less and less often. I think I should talk to someone about it, but I’m scared of what they’ll think. And say.

Maybe I can dream about it.