From My Sketchbook: Portrait #2

This one took a little longer to finish; not because it took me that long to draw it, but that I never actually got around to working on it very often.

From My Notebook: "Sleep Talking to the Pentagon"

Here's another writing prompt I've recently done to try to get myself back into the mood to write (which I haven't done for a while because life likes to get in the way.) This prompt, called "Sleep Talking to the Pentagon" is from Writer's Digest, a large source of inspiration and resources for me. This is what the prompt said; "As a child, you were prone to night terrors, sleep talking and sleep walking. Now as an adult, you have long since grown out of your old habits. That is, until one night. You awake to find yourself in an unfamiliar place on the phone with a Pentagon official."


“Where are you now, sir?” The voice on the other line speaks calmly. Too calmly. He thinks I’m unstable, and right now I’m questioning my own sanity as well.

“I’m sorry…” I pause, embarrassed to go on, “…what was I just saying?” In an empty street, under a flickering light post, standing at an old phone booth; I am completely confused. I don’t know how I got here, and I most certainly don’t know what I was just saying… or to whom. On the other line there’s an uncertain pause.

“A bomb. You said there’s a bomb. Sir, please, where are you?” A bomb, really? That’s what I had just been… oh no, not again. Not another episode; not another night walk, another night talk. I had left those in the past, that’s where they’re supposed to be… not disrupting me here in the present.

I laugh uncomfortably.

“Oh, that! Whatever I just said, scratch it. Haha, it’s a curse really, talking in my sleep!” The silence on the other side doesn’t sound amused. “Listen, whoever you are, I’ve got a bed to get back to!” I hang up. Let’s hope this doesn’t come back to haunt me.