Author: R.

• Richard
• Lizzie
• Tom
• Norval Joe
• Planet Z

The topic of the next weekly challenge is Moisture

RICHARD

First Responders

We watched him.

Watched him as he toppled from the ledge, falling four storeys, until the concrete path below arrested his descent.

We ran towards him, time being of the essence, thinking that just maybe he’d survived the impact.

We reached his prone figure and I knelt down beside him, as Jack urged me to get the guy into the recovery position.

Then, with practiced efficiency, we did what we do best.

It was a good haul: We recovered his wallet, watch, mobile phone, cash and a gold tooth.

And we were out of there long before the ambulance arrived.

LIZZIE

“I’ve never felt so grounded,” he said.
She could see through him.
“Some girl I met online,” he said.
A whole lot of bravado, a cigarette hanging from his lips.
That snapshot she took of him… The ridiculous hat, the feather, the flower. Was it a rose?
Hopeless. Empty.
She still remembered the album crammed with photos of himself, only himself. Page after page, after page.
When she asked why, he grinned and mumbled some vague explanation filled with an under-layer of self-doubt he desperately tried to hide.
Grounded in his desperation, wanting to be seen for what he wasn’t.

TOM

Recovery

Hi I’m the Angle previously known as 103742 , but you can call be Bill, saves time. When I am asked, which isn’t often, why did you take place in the Great Falling? Well, I can tell you this, it had noting to do with pride. Heavens no, that’s a little gallows humor there. It was Jenny, actually Angle 8675309. She said want to go on a fall with me? What’s a fall I ask, angles don’t know shit about verbs, its that lacking free-will thing. So down we all go screaming cowabunga. Been in recovery ever since, making progress.

NORVAL JOE

When Linoliamanda finally took Billbert’s hand they quickly rose, the well and old man falling away below them. Having overshot Sabrina, Billbert made a quick recovery and returned to the girl standing by the well.
Sabrina held out her hand. “Let’s go.”
Billbert was hesitant. “I’ve never levitated two people. I don’t know if I can.”
“There they are,” one of the teens shouted as they appeared on the trail from the forest.
Sabrina shook her extended hand at Billbert. “Let’s find out, quick.”
As the group of teens ran toward them, Billbert tried to levitate the three of them.

PLANET Z

“Insert the Recovery Disk and hit ENTER.” blinked on the screen.
Erica opened her desk drawer and looked through the disks until she found one marked RECOVERY DISK.
Sliding it into the drive, the ejection tab popped out with a click.
“Here goes nothing,” said Erica, and she pressed the ENTER key.
A progress bar appeared, and a green line slowly crawled from left to right.
When it filled the bar, RECOVERED appeared on the screen.
Then it went dark, the system rebooted, and Erica waited for the familiar login screen to appear.
“I need a faster system,” she muttered.

• Lisa
• Richard
• Serendipidy
• Lizzie
• Tom
• Tura
• Norval Joe
• Planet Z

The topic of the next weekly challenge is PICK TWO: Recovery, Falling, Rotten egg, Some guy/girl I met online, Hopeless, Fog a mirror

RICHARD

Frozen

For the thousandth time since landing the job, I was questioning my sanity.

You were suffering from a special sort of madness to want to teach seven year olds, but to imagine they could be taught music put me in a whole different class of crazy.

Every day, I’d return home with an aching head, and in a foul temper: The distorted wail and crash of tortured instruments haunting my mind.

But, if the playing was bad, the singing was far worse.

Today, we attempted ‘Let it go’

Just try getting thirty, seven year olds to sing ‘Frozen’, in time!

LIZZIE

Is this what we’re supposed to see?
Is this the real face of…
Now is the time to be honest.
However, no one wants to tell the truth.
Everyone is hiding behind fake compliments.
Is this what we’re supposed to do?
Is this the real…
And that flower was so fragile. As fragile as they were, staring at it, wondering.
The two of them. Alone.
They were real. Yes, they were, together in that frozen pain of what was not, together as they had always been, mourning what could’ve happened but never did.
The two of them. Together. Always together.

LISA

An Ordinary House in an Ordinary Street

Do you want to see inside? It’s a silly question really; we won’t stop long.
Strange huh? Like an old lady house frozen in time. These are all his Mum’s things even though she died a decade ago.

Is that smell getting to you? Sorry should’ve warned you – that antiseptic does catch your throat a bit.

Let me just show you the cellar… Can you feel it? Like a chill that clasps you? It’s like a normal place but your body knows some bad shit has happened here. We’d better go: I think I heard his car pull up.

SERENDIPIDY

For hundreds of thousands of years, I was trapped beneath the icy permafrost of the Tundra: Frozen in time, a forgotten relic of the ancient past.

The earth warmed -climate change, so they say- and slowly, but surely, my icy prison released me from its bonds.

I broke free from its cruel grip and fought my way towards light, and freedom, reaching for the touch of sunlight, denied to me for millennia.

And now, I am free.

Unknown to science, immune to your modern medicines, no natural enemies, no modern remedies.

I’m back!

It’s time to take back my world!

TURA

Frozen in time
———
Since Einstein, we’ve known that the past is not gone, only frozen. The future too, though we cannot see it.

Everything that happens has always been going to, and always will have. Not one particle of all the suffering in the world will ever be extinguished, but exists for all eternity. The happiness too, but surely happiness is but a single grain of sand in a vast desert.

Each brief candle is forever being blown out.

You start by thinking about the speed of light and end up here. But you always were going to, and you always will have.

TOM

The Great ReDo
Benny felt the moment slide just out of reach. If she had been four steps closer. If the child to his right had been farther right. Then there was the sudden gunning of an engine. The light reflecting off the store front window. A single arrent piece of paper flowing across the street. One thing, a thousand. Spin the stack, put back, push forward, pause and move. Who can say it would turn out any different? It remains frozen in time. Outside the reach of the fates, furies, and fay. It remains frozen in space. Blink and it is gone.

NORVAL JOE

Billbert stared at the bottle cap and its inscription as if frozen in time. What did this mean? Then it hit him and he snapped out of his stasis. “Linoliamanda. Give me all the bottle caps.”
Once he had them in his hands, he shouted to Sabrina. “I’m throwing you some bottle caps. Spread them out away from the well.”
When the metal caps left the well, he felt his superpower return.
“Take my hand, we’re getting out of here,” he said to Linoliamanda.
She blinked. “Are you going to leave that poor old man down here?”
Billbert scoffed. “Yes.”

PLANET Z

Winterhaven doesn’t appear on any maps, but if you go looking for it, you’ll find it.
Cobblestone streets, wooden buildings.
Shops and houses around a central square with a fountain and a church.
The clock tower says five after two, it always does.
Every minute, a train rolls by the Winterhaven station.
It never stops, just rolls right on by.
Bobby uses a magnifying glass and tweezers to arrange moss and tiny trees around the church.
Little adjustments every day, something goes here, move another thing there.
When the catalog arrives, he reads through it, imagining what next to add.