writing prompt

Hike, Part 2 – Silence

Read part 1 here first.

George sat on his rock well past twilight and into night time, but Rod Serling didn’t show up, despite what his brother, Rob, had said. The silence was heavy, the lack of insect voices or small animals shuffling about in the underbrush was unnerving. George felt like he was the only person left on earth. Perhaps he was.

He got off his rock and sat on the ground with it at his back. Eventually he dozed off. By the time he awoke, to a tapping on his shoulder, his neck ached, his rear-end was numb, and the sky had turned a deep indigo.

“George!” said a voice. George opened his eyes and saw it was Rob.

“What are you doing back? And why didn’t your brother show up?”

Rob shrugged. “Maybe because he’s dead?”

“As good an excuse as any, I guess. Hey, do you know the way back to town? I think I’m a bit lost.”

“Why didn’t you ask last night? I just came from there. Not planning to go back.” Rob looked up. “Oh hey, there’s Rod now.”

Rod Serling, or the ghost of Rod Serling, crawled out from behind the rock and sat beside George.

“George,” Rod said, “have you ever considered that bump on your head from yesterday might have made it unwise to go to sleep?”

“I’m beginning to think so,” answered George. “Am I dead?”

Rob spoke up, “Is this the new show, Rod?”

“Rob, it’s what we call, the Dawning Zone.”

Hike

A two-hour hike had turned into a six-hour-long ordeal. George sat on a rock and thought about where it had gone wrong. Was it possible that the bump on the head from not ducking low enough under the fallen tree made him miss the signpost? The markers along the trail were bright red. Then again, now that he looked around, everything seemed black and white, like he’d stepped into an old television show.

“You have,” said a voice from behind him.

“Rod? Rod Serling?” George asked the stranger.

“No, I’m Rob. Rod was my brother.”

“So, I’m not in the Twilight Zone?”

“Technically, no. This is just the sunset zone. Rod will be along in a minute.”

“Isn’t he dead?”

“Well, yeah. Technically.” Rob stepped closer and ran his hair over George’s scalp. “You really should have that looked at.”

“You’re telling me,” said George with a small laugh.

“Okay, gotta go. Say hi to Rod for me.” With that, Rob ran away down the trail that George had walked up.

To be continued

#SoCS – Together

I think the wind blew us together, one stormy night. How else would you explain the randomness of our meeting? I, alone at the bus stop and you, pulling up in your car to give me a ride. You told me I’d missed the last bus. And it was raining so hard. When we got to my house you offered me your umbrella. You came back to get it the next day. And then, we kissed. It was the best kiss I’d ever had.

We were meant to be together, you and I. But for a fair night, it would never have been.

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This post is part of Stream of Consciousness Saturday. You can find the prompt here. Check it out and join in the fun!

Fragile, Haiku

Fragile as I seem
Only one thing can break me
It is your leaving

Slog – a Poem

To usher the day in,
a coffee, made with love,
a kiss goodbye,
and I’m off.

Though my hours are long
and my patience sometimes short,

I come home each evening,
a dinner, made with love,
a kiss goodnight,
and that’s us, day out.

***
Slog is the word of the day at The Daily Post.

Pler-plerpex … perpul…

“So, I gotta… I gotta say. I’m juss not happy.”

“Want another beer?”

“Ssurrre. Thanks, Buddy.”

“No prob.”

“Hic!”

“So you’re sayin’ you’re not happy. I can understann.”

“You can? ‘Coz I can’t. I don’ know how she coulda done it. How could she mess ’round on me?”

“I dunno, Bud. I mean look at ya. You’re a good-lookin’ guy.”

“I know, righ’? I’m juss plerpex… plerplex… plerplexed.”

“I think you mean perpulx…pexed. Perpexed.”

“Perpexed? Nah, it’s plerplexed.”

“Whatever.”

“Yeah, I’m convused.”

***

The word of the day at The Daily Post is pler… plerpex… perplexed.

Radical Thinking

What if gravity pulled us to the poles and the equator. The cold people and the hot people, throwing harpoons to pull ourselves to warmer climates, building ladders to hoist ourselves over the planet, where we could meet others unlike us. The tanned and the pale. Would we exchange harpoon designs and ladder architecture, or hold our secrets close to our hearts.

There where the weather is temperate, maybe we could be too.

***
Radical is the word of the day on The Daily Post.

The Chronicles of Mary, Part 9

Mary was good at her new job in the kitchen of her former accounting firm boss’s country club. Not only that, she enjoyed going to work every day for the first time in her life. At least up until the incident.

Right from the time she learned how to use a knife as a little girl, Mary’s enthusiasm sometimes got the better of her. She perfected chopping at a very early age, much to the terror of her mother, who couldn’t keep her away from the cutlery. And so it was that Mary believed she was genuinely helping when she decided to teach the teen volunteer how to slice a carrot in under fifteen seconds.

After that, Mary was reassigned to washing dishes.

***

At A Story A Day today, we were to write our protagonist’s flaw.

Stump

“Honey, we’ve been walking for sooo long! I feel like we’re just going around in circles!”

Ralph raised the binoculars to his eyes and peered through them for the umpteenth time. The woods in the distance were dense. They were made up mostly of dark, shadowy pines, but the occasional maple dotted the way. The birds were both abundant and weird. Rather than chirp, they buzzed. One of them had picked up Spot, their old springer spaniel, three days ago, and flown away with him.

“You can see for yourself, we’re following the road, Martha.” He didn’t want to scare her, but he thought a couple of times that he’d seen the same tree twice.

“I think we should set up camp soon,” Martha said, tiredly.

“Sure, okay.”

“Do you think we could build a campfire tonight?”

Ralph sighed. “And where, exactly, are we going to get wood from?”

“We could just chop up a bit of the road,” she suggested with a shrug.

Great, thought Ralph. Then if we are walking around in circles, we’ll come across the hole in the road and Martha’ll go crazy.

“Please?” Martha begged. “It’s been weeks since we had a hot meal.”

“Yeah, okay.” Come morning, while we’re walking I’ll give her the binoculars and just change lanes when she’s not paying attention, he decided. The lanes both to the left and the right seemed endless.

***
Stump is the word of the day on the Daily Post, and our assignment for today on A Story A Day was to paint a vivid setting. How long did it take you to figure out where they are?

Recharge – #SoCS

The close-minded man is mortified when it turns out that the world has two moons. One is the same which the men land on – the other hangs outside his window at night and is made of cheese. He views it at first as a figment of his imagination, but being close-minded, that only last for a few seconds. Then night after night he opens up his window and pulls it down and eats it, only to find it hanging there again the next night, as if it has recharged itself.

The cheese moon has no cycles he realizes after a week. It is always full, and after a month, when he has grown three sizes larger, he sees that it will not go away.

The close-minded man’s mortification eventually turns him to petrification: his unwillingness to believe in the cheese moon transforms him into a petrified chunk of cheese, staring out his window at the cycles of the moon, and a piece of cheese hanging from a string, held by his upstairs neighbour.

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Brought to you by The Daily Post and Stream of Consciousness Saturday, which you can find the prompt for here: https://lindaghill.com/2016/09/09/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-sept-1016/