Jan. 4 - written by Christopher Rohan

Week 4

12-23-21 - Prompt: Signal

Fog began to crawl its way through the bush and bracken. Jan was lost and not even the bright face of the moon could find him. All was mist and shadow. A chill run down his neck quickly shuddered through his whole body. He tried to see something, anything that looked familiar, but everything changed once the day died to night, and now the fog.

The shudder continued, shaking his knees. His mind began to race, hen was the last time he saw that light? It seemed like ages ago, but he was sure it couldn’t have been more than a half mile back. 

“I swear this was the right direction, but I should have been there by now,” his voice sounded hollow as the fog gobbled it up and swallowed it whole.

Suddenly he realized he’d been turning this way and that. In the fog, all he could see was the wet grass no more than a few feet around him and all he could hear was the quick thumping of his heart, at least, until he heard the crunch and snap of branches. 

He couldn’t say from where, the fog had wrapped the sound around him. The ground began to shake to the rhythm of massive strides with more snapping and crunching. Snap, snap, crunch, boom. Snap crunch crunch boom. Snap, boom. 

Everything he knew told him to stay where he was. In a fog and disoriented you could only make things worse by moving. But the sound kept getting closer.

12-27-21 - Prompt: Flighty

Today, Emma needed her dad to drive her to school. Normally she’d meet Danica and Carly at the corner of her street and walk with them, but today was an exception. She didn’t mind. It gave her an opportunity to catch up on her Tolstoy, something she wouldn’t dare to do in front of them. Her love for literature, and lately the Russian greats, was something she’d never talk about with them. They wouldn’t understand, and she deffinately couldn’t risk the ridicule. The three of them had picked on other kids for less.

Most people couldn’t handle a few pages of the books she loved to read, let alone her fellow sophomores. She’d resolved to keep it quiet, and turn off that part of herself whenever she was at school. In it’s place, she’d adopt the typical, pretty girl routine. She’d treat smart kids with contempt. She’d mock the weirdos. She’d flirt with the jocks. And she’d pretend like she didn’t notice the thoughts and feelings of others. She’d just pretend to care only about clothes and boys and herself above all else.

It was exhausting. She’d live multiple lives at all times. The one at school, where she wouldn’t have a brain, the life when her parents were at home, and the life of the characters in her favorite books. The lives in her books were the only ones that made sense. These characters fought for what they believed in, no matter the cost. She just spent her life pretending to be something she wasn’t, and making fun of the kids that were more real and more courageous than she was.

These thoughts floated through her head as she read. Frustrated that she couldn’t focus, she tossed her book on the back seat.

“Are you alright?” asked her dad.

“Yeah, I’m good,” she said unbelieveably, as the car rolled up to the front of the school.

12-28-21 - Prompt: Barley

Everyone laughed when Barley started his job at the barley mill. He didn’t care. He just loved the idea of working in such a strange place for such a strange man. The outside of the building was perfectly round and in the center of a walled courtyard. The courtyard was full of comings and goings, sacks of premilled and postmilled grain, and his fellow workers. The wall was round as well, and perfectly equidistant on all sides from the building in the center, but what really made the whole building spectacular were the wind blades.

The blades were made of wooden beams and canvas and they stretched from the center of the milling room to the outer wall, a forty foot distance. It was marvelous to walk beneath them. A rumbling whoosh passed overhead as the blades made their way around thier circuit. The design was simple enough. If one looked the length of a blade they could see that it made an L-shape. The canvas caught the wind as a sail and depending on how strong the wind was, the workers would raise and lower the sail along the vertical masts. The sails were extremely efficient and were taller the further they were from center. The outermost parts of the blades castered along on large stone wheels. At the end of the long days of milling, the millers would then lower the sails and let the blades come to rest for the night.

It was a marvel, and it made the little town very popular and made the builder very rich. Folks would come form far and wide to see the wind mill. Soon enough, other towns would call upon the builder and commission him to build one similar.

This was why Barley wanted to work there. He didn’t care much for milling, but he wanted to work in the building with the builder, a man the town now called Artemis the MIller. 

Barley sprang down the street with a contagious excitement. It was a small town. If you didn’t know anyone you came across, they were probably in town to see the mill. He was met with cheers and laughs. Some of the local kids, as He referred to them as they were not more than a year or two younger, joined in the parade.

12-29-21 - Prompt: Encounter

The road stretched for miles without a crossroads. Ren knew it would take him three days to traverse the precarious, ridgeline road before it descended back into the valley. Before it did however, there would be one last intersection. No one talked about it, but the diverging road was half way down the descent and wandered between the skeletal trees to a dark crack in the cliff wall. A chill crawled from the crack and sent the curious to quaking.

Ren stood at the crossroads, unable to shake the sinking feeling that he shouldn’t take the descent until morning. The sun seemed to flee before the darkness of the night, and he had to decide. To continue downward meant assailing the treacherous steps in the dark, but to stay meant sitting beneath the gaping maw of the wall.

He knew the wisdom of staying put. Enduring fear was better than entertaining foolishness, and in the passing daylight wood was gathered and tinder sparked. The fire was weak as it battled the dampness on the wood, and it’s light could not contend with the thick gloom. Ren made what little dinner could be rationed and tucked in for the night near the sizzle of the embers.

The night was still. A thick silence hung in the air. Ren’s eyes grew weary.

“You know, the critters love the firelight.”

Ren sprang to his feet, and peared through groggy eyes into the murky surround.

“Who’s there?” he asked.

“Just me,” came a reply, softly spoken.

“And who are you?”

“I might ask the same to you.”

“I think the one intruding on my rest should speak first,” said the entitled man.

“And I think the one who built his camp on my home is the real intruder.”

12-30-21 - Prompt: Snowman

Jerry’s snowplow was green with bright orange and yellow flames that kindled from behind the plow blades to licking tongues just behind the rear fenders. He washed it every day in his heated garage. He hand-rubbed wax on the blades after every wash. He installed custom lights of many colors, tall exhaust pipes, and a custom horn that played the highschool’s fight song, “Pounce, You Wildcats”. He was very proud to be the small town’s only plowman, but more than that, he was proud of his truck.

He’d drive his route, making sure to get the busiest roads first, but his favorite was plowing the three neighborhoods. All the kids playing in the snow would would stop what they were doing and wave as the freashly waxed blades would send the pure white snow in sheets into the sky. 

Now, if you ask most kids in the world, they would agree that the best snow is snowball snow, but not where Jerry was plowing. The best was the snow that falls when the weather is coldest, when it’s the driest and when it’s lightest. On those days when Jerry drove by he’d be driving a little faster, and when the blades threw the snow it billowed and cascaded in plumes like it had never stopped falling.

He’d make his rounds. He’d hit Main and North, then he’d wrap around the winding, many dead-end streets on the northeast side, swing down to the grid of the southeast side, and then the hills on the west. It would take about ten hours to clear the whole town. Often the kids would all gather on the north side, then get to the next neighborhood to catch him there.