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Deleted Dreams: bringing your deleted words to life

I tweeted a late night thought a little while ago:

During the night, all your scratched out & deleted words rise into the air to make their own stories. 

A reply from the lovely @bobbibowwoman, "Damn, bet it's a good one", made me suddenly think about the idea of actually giving life to deleted words
- all those lovely, juicy words which don't survive the creative cull. I then floated the idea to a lovely group of writing-minded folk on Twitter.

I wanted the words to be genuinely deleted ones, to be interesting (not just 'the' or 'that'), and to keep the challenge consistent, I suggested a non-negotiable 99-word limit.

The brilliant @jabe842 and the awesome @alexalvar7 very kindly threw a couple of their deleted words into the pot, to make up this first wonderful batch of Deleted Dreams Word Prompts:  

Tattoos, rang, questionable, prosthetic, sultry.


(And may I say, what an absolutely wonderful combo of nutty words to try and weave into a 99-word story!)

Here's my effort - after, believe it or not, much, much editing.
--------

Baited Breath

Tank woke up.

Tattoos of rain rang on the tin roof; the night air was sultry, languid - kinda romantic except for the zombie apocalypse.

Tank survived for weeks before finding other survivors. He couldn't trust them. The ringleader seemed willing to sacrifice hurt survivors to kill zombies. She had hacked off her bitten arm, cauterised it, and now used a prosthetic modified with blades.

The unquestionable stink of rotting flesh hit him.

Zombies!

Tank froze. Where was everyone?!

Hoarse breathing sounded, too close to his ear, climbing into a screech. Tank realised he was alone - he was bait.


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