May 5 - written by Christopher Rohan

Week 21

4-18-22 - Prompt: Fluctuate

It started as a low murmur deep beneath the ground. Few perceived it, even fewer took note. Yon had a care for such things, but the department head at the university brushed it off. In fact, he quite literally flicked Yon’s report right off his desk in dismissal. The man was a knob. He’d said he’d wait for other universities to report any findings. It was a very small university, to be fair, but dismissal of information was possibly the least scientific thing to do.

It was strange. Not many in the scientific community would shrink back at the prospect of discovering a major geological event. Yon couldn’t believe the response. He continued to track the event until one day it stopped. He was a junior in his undergrad at the time and he’d tracked it over the course of three months. During the remainder of his bachelors, he looked for the event, but there was no evidence that it had occurred. It quickly became obsession and his course work suffered, He missed his opportunity to apply to grad school and he walk off the university grounds having barely passed his classes.

It was a couple years after his initial findings that it occurred to him that the slight fluctuations in his readings implied some trajectory, and another eight years after the first event that he tacked some similar readings. He’d followed the path to a remote Norwegian fjord. A local let him lodge in a small fishing shed while he continued his research as the world’s scientific community progressed completely unaware of Yon and the deep geo-murmurs.

The new findings came and he had no need for the delicate equipment he’d stolen from the seismology lab at the end of his undergrad, as out of the floor of the waters emerged the arm of a massive creature.

5-2-22 - Prompt: Oxygen

John woke to the incessant beep beep beep of alarm and the strobing orange of caution on the back of his eyes lids. He lifted his arm and shifted to turn his body on his bed, but there was not the resistance of his standard issue sheets or the dense foam mattress beneath. Instead he found his body against nothing at all. He forced his eyes open with a flutter and searched for focus and orientation, but found none. The flashing continued even after he spoke silence to the noise. 

A face—his face—reflected orange with the strobing and he realized that he was in a space suit. He thought it strange that it was all so unfamiliar, and he couldn’t shake the grog from his head. He walked himself through the steps of reassociation he’d learned in basic in the event of space syncope.

“First,” he began to say to himself, “address any ocular deviation.” He blinked once, twice, three times slowly, then began to flutter his eyes and he could feel the fatigue wear away. He moved his eyes side to side and up and down, then rotated. His face reflected a painful expression he’d never seen before. At least my focus is okay, He thought.

“Second,” he continued out loud, “check your vitals.” He lifted his left arm as a piercing pain shot through his shoulder. He froze as every sinew on his left side felt molten. “Okay,” he said between hyperventilations and grinding teeth, “John, you have to check your vitals.” Slowly, he lifted his hand and brought his other to meet it, pressed a few buttons from memory, and his vitals flickered onto his visor, blurred with his reflection. A warning read a rupture in his suit at his left shoulder. That didn’t make sense. If that were the case, he should be dead. His weary eyes read on. “Battery at thirty percent, oxygen at 20,” he read aloud. The numbers danced and shifted as his eyes still couldn’t quite handle the light. He blinked and rolled his eyes and came back to the readings. Oh, he thought, oxygen at two percent.

5-5-22 - Prompt: Cacophony

I walked as if in delirium. A fog lay about the cold ground and familiarity welcomed me into its whitherwandering embrace. I was not in a mood, or particularly susceptible, but I went were the fog took me, always downward. Noise bounded from the streets below and I welcomed the company. Turning a corner, I found revels the likes of which I had not seen. The vine abounded. 

Its root was near the corner I’d turned, and found its winding, thin and weak, begin to wander along the wall next to where I meandered. It came to a door as I did the same, and at it was a man, pleasant and calm.

“Come and enjoy with me the fruit of a good day,” he said, and I yielded.

His company was kind, but my mind wandered with the fog and I saw from my seat the vine growing beyond his door. Stronger it looked and I desired to see where it would go. I wished the man well and fell with the fog onto another man. He must have been pained, for he carried himself with a limp.

“Come and sooth your wounds with me,” he said. 

Yielding again, I sat with him and we shared with one another our sorrows. Again, the fog still rolled and I beckoned to its call. Again the vine gained strength beyond him. It now spread into many branches, many of which were dead. However, one was still lively and this one I followed, as did the fog, growing denser. Soon, all I could see was the twisting vine and it made its way to the very heart of the revels. Many were the people here and I found myself winding and twisting like the vine, to the door of a woman.

She was striking in appearance and from her lips came promise of contentment to my wandering. She looked at me, her eyes were dark.

“Stolen waters are sweet,” she said, “and bread in secret delights.”

Behind her door I saw trees of many kinds, some in flower, others in fruit. I took her by the hand, overcome with her promise. The trees beyond at once descended into fall. As I walked bellow her bower they soon began to whither. A fright took me and I began to pull away, but her grip was great and I succumb. 

Do not go, I beg of you, to her door. Do not take her hand. For she devours simple men and her door is death’s door.