Prompt #14

      Telling stories has always been a great love of mine.  When I was younger I used to share a bed with my little sister.  I would lie awake long after we were supposed to be in sound slumber and tell my little stories.  They were mostly what would be called “fan fiction” because I stole the entire cast of The Justice League.   

     Those stories were our secret, and she loved them.  I would tell her enough of the story to get her into it, and then leave off with the best cliff-hanger I could muster, and tell her to go to sleep.  The rest of the story would have to wait for the next night.  Some days she was so impatient to hear the end of the story that she would beg me to tell her the story early.  One day, the secret slipped and two of my other sisters heard about my story-telling.  Their curiosity was peaked, and that night my audience grew.   

     How did we all listen without getting caught?  We had a secret door that connected our rooms and before we crawled under the sheets we would prop it open.  I told the story just loud enough to be heard, and my stories went on.   

     But what was it like to be a creator of stories?  For me, it was like manipulation.  Not like it though, it was manipulation.  I would look for key-words that sparked a cringe, or a gasp.  I would try to find cliff-hangers that really killed them.  I grew as a writer and story-teller during those days.  Even though the stories (that probably weren’t very good anyways) are lost to faulty memory, the things I learned have stayed with me.  I’ll keep on manipulating readers if I can.