Where would you be pleased to find yourself locked up overnight?
I thought I could come up with a story for this one, but the more I thought about it the harder it got to decide on a setting. I’m also working on like 12 hours of sleep since Monday and while most days I can function just fine on 6 hours of sleep, I’m still playing catch up from my vacation. It’s my own damn fault for staying up late reading but sometimes a chapter ends on a crazy note and you just have to keep reading. Also it’s my husband’s birthday and I did not schedule my time well. Whoops.
I think my own current rocky relationship with sleep infected my creative thinking with this prompt too. My first thought was “library” but then I realized one night would not be nearly enough time to fully enjoy being locked in. Especially once I’d find a comfy spot to curl up with a stack of books. I like reading, but I’m not that fast. A few hours isn’t really long enough for me to finish my favorite fantasy novels. And honestly, once I’d gotten comfortable and spent hours reading into the night, my eyes would definitely get tired and I would fall asleep before too long. I can’t pull all-nighters like I used to.
It would also depend on if I was alone or if there was a group. When I was a kid, I went to several lock-ins. My favorite was in fourth grade when my teacher and the teacher across the hall held a joint lock-in at the school. The building was old, and it served fourth grade all the way up through eighth. Mostly we stayed on the first and second floor, camped out in the gym or chilling in our classroom, but we did play manhunt after dark. Most of us had never been up to the third floor before and one of the older kids had spread a rumor the week leading up to the lock-in that the third floor bathroom was haunted. So of course some of us tried to go up and hide there.
There’s something eerie about a school after dark. It’s a whole different creature when the bustle of the kids is gone and all the classrooms are dark. It was also in a rural area so there wasn’t much ambient noise or light coming from town. It was also a school night. I remember being curled up in the classroom the next day after Mrs. B made us all waffles and let us nap most of the day away until it was time to go home.
Well even though this prompt didn’t spark a story in me, just a memory, I thought I’d end with a small list of settings for a lock-in. Maybe one of them will spark a story in you!
School
Library
Church
Mall
Park
Zoo
Abandoned Warehouse
Museum
Department Store
Old Mansion
Haunted House
Indoor Arena
That does it for me tonight. I’ve got a double header planned for tomorrow. More anecdotal/philosophical rantings than stories. I’m for real going to bed early tonight so I can get enough rest, I swear. Have a great day! I’ll catch you later!
Closet Full of Notebooks 