My advice to you if this election week produced any stress for you is to take the time this week to put your stress into something else. Escape into a hobby whether it’s music, writing, running, exercising, working, driving, talking with friends and family, eating lots of awful food — whatever. Get away for an hour or even a day. De-stress.

One of our professors gave us a topic sentence/picture prompt just as an assignment he usually gives out for his class. The assignment is to take the sentence he gives you and make it the beginning of your story. After that, it's free range from there! I used it as a way to de-stress after this past election week.

The sentence was, “I was walking down the street and I found a cat in a tree.”

Anyway, here’s what I wrote about with that topic sentence/picture prompt:

I was walking down the street and I found a cat in a tree. As I approached the tree and got closer to the cat, I noticed that the cat was blue with big green speckles on its back. When I realized this, I also noticed the sky was pink and green and the ground beneath me was so far below. Soon, I was floating as high as the cat, and the cat — scared now, started hissing at me. Each hiss seemed to be minutes long with few breaks in between, spewing water onto my face and neck. The water was surprisingly cold…

I open my eyes to rain dripping from my windowpane onto my pillow. I sit up to shut the window and lay my head down again. It is so cold in here. I wonder if I paid the electric bill this month because the heat clearly is not working. It’s just so cold. I turn over on my side to face the window above my head — it is open again. I shut it again with a little more girth and lock it. Pulling the covers over my head to maintain warmth, I turn to my other side and curl up into a ball. I peak my head out from the covers, only to be facing the window again - wide open. Cold rain is dappling onto my sheets and my pillow - this time harder than ever before.

I shut my eyes and think, how do I get the window to stay closed? The water is rushing in and gushes of water are spewed on my entire body.

When my eyes flash open, hands scrambling to slam the window shut, they open to a wide, ferocious ocean — my balance tampered by the violent rocking of a ship's wooden floor, and the sea crashing around me. The waves push the ship — waters gray and angry. The wind is howling at my ears — screeching sounds of doom.

I hear screams and shouts from fated souls, telling me to hang on, pull the masts, and hold tight to the rails, but when I search the ship with my eyes, I see that it’s empty. I’m the only one aboard. Whatever crew was here is gone now, swallowed by the sea.

Remembering phantom voices, I sprint to the main mast and pull hard on the ropes, only for the powerful wind to pick me up and fly me around like the sails above. I’m holding tight to the ropes as a last resort, but I slowly realize the rope was never attached to the ship in the first place. I stare up at the gray, damp, and cold clouds which soon encase me. Everything is still.

Glancing down at my feet, I realize I’m in a floating person-sized basket. No, it’s not just a basket, it’s a hot-air balloon, I notice the heat from the flames keeping the balloon afloat. I look down at my view around me and see a clear, blue, vast lake. In the distance, I see tall purple mountains. Everything is finally calm.

I look up to appreciate the rising sun only to find the clouds are what is keeping my basket afloat - not a balloon. The cloud basket is drifting to a cliff and on that cliff are two people, This must be it, this must be where I’m supposed to be. It’s nothing, I recognize, but my gut tells me otherwise. I see two familiar faces and they belong to my parents.

I open my mouth to call out to them, but no sound comes out. I try to reach out to them, but I’m not close enough to get my hands to touch theirs. I quickly turn my head to see if there is anything in the basket to help me get to them and realize there’s nothing. When I swing back around their gone and instead I’m staring at a wall.

It’s the wall in my room that my bed is against. My covers are off, my pillow is on the floor, there’s drool on the sheets. I look at the clock and it’s 1 p.m. I touch my throbbing head, and grab an already used tissue that was laying by my side. As I empty my stuffed up nose into it and cough up some more phlegm - I see the bottle of Nyquil on the bedside table.

“Well, that didn’t work.”