Jan. 20 - written by Christopher Rohan

Week 7

1-14-22 - Prompt: Bandit

The man wore a mustache, tussled and twirled, across a wearied and road-filthy face. A scruff of a few days off a trail shave covered his sharp, browned jaw. In the gnarled knuckles of his right hand he carried a tattered, leather sack, and in his left he held the ebony grip of a six gun with a long, dark barrel trained at my forehead.

“I’m gonna need you to fill this,” he said as a lanky arm sleeved in a stained wool reached the sack across the counter and through the bars that stretched the length to the ceiling.

I wore a short bowler in those days, ignorant of the blazing sun of southwestern Texas, and I felt a certain jealousy for the man’s wide and flat brim that cast a shadow over his dark and focused eyes even inside the walls of the Bank of Sutton and Rheims.

“Yes, sir,” I said out of fascination more than fear, “what sort of bills would you like?”

The ruffian looked back with a questioning glare. “Have you ever been robbed, son?” he asked. I didn’t say anything, and just looked dumbfounded. “Don’t matter nohow. I’m looking for a certain assortment of gold dainties that your Mr. Sutton swiped off the scattered bodies of Pueblo after he and his cronies snatched their souls from the living.”

1-17-22 - Prompt: Ecstatic

The sun hadn’t even considered waking by the time my oldest sister and I were sitting on the couch directly across from our glittering Christmas tree, bursting with presents. The two of us were always early risers, but Christmas morning brought more than just presents. Wonder filled our sleepy eyes as our multicolored lights bounced off gold, red, and silver garland. Bulbs dimly reflected our blanket-wrapped bodies. The room held, just for a moment, a peace unaparent throughout the rest of the year. Even my eleven year old mind softly swayed between gifts and grandeur.

“When on earth is every one else gonna get up?” I’d asked.

My sister just stared in silence sipping a steaming cup of peppermint tea. The tea mingled with the fir tree and refreshed the senses and invigorated the anticipation. Floorboards creaked in the next room as mom began to stir. A loud yawn—she always was a loud yawner—and the shuffling of feet, then the door opened to a squinting and gentle smile.

“I’m not surprised at all that the two of you are up,” she laughed.

“Mom!” I said a little too loud for the early day, “when can we start tearing into these boxes?”

“Shhhh, just let me wake up a bit first,” she replied with one of those whispers that isn’t quiet at all.

“But when can we start?” I loud-whispered back.

“When your brother and sister are up.”

My heart sank at the thought. 

“But those two could sleep all day!”

“Alright, I’ll tell you what.” she conceded, “You and your sister can wake them up, but, wait,” she quickly said as my feet had already begun rushing to the stairs, “but,” she repeated, “you have to wait until the sun is up.”

I returned to the couch and plopped down, half annoyed and half not caring in the slightest for the sheer joy of the day.

“I’m gonna make some tea,” she said with a wry smile, “Sue, would you like some more?”

Sue just shook her head.

“Monkey, you want some hot cocoa?”

My annoyance was gone.

1-18-22 - Prompt: Star

We’d been traveling just under twelve years on a direct path toward the Sentinel, a nearby star that shifted in hue recently. Of course recently was relative as it was about 3000 light years away. The decision was to gather readings from the formerly red, now yellow, giant over the span of a decade. The problem was that it had shifted a few millennia prior. Regardless, science is science, and my noble calling was to collect data that those coming after me would analyze. It was all for the sake of knowing the universe around us.

Thankfully, not long ago humans had developed the infinitely useful ability to generate wormholes and it didn’t take long for the ability to determine where the exit would be. One had to be very specific however to avoid inadvertently exiting within a neighboring star, planet, asteroid field, etcetera. So, to bring us safely where we intended to go we had to drop through the hole about ten light years away from our destination. We did and we’d engaged the sub-light engines and spent the next twelve years in preparation. They were all in vain.

The faint whir of the engines slowed, then stopped as the whole crew—twenty four of us—gathered on the bridge to see the star, the object of our twenty-year focus. 

When traveling toward a source of light at the speed of light, an unexpected visual phenomena occurs. White light splits into its many facets and colors dance from the focal point. It is truly stunning. As the engines stopped the colors came together then all was black with a ball of light at the center.

All was as expected, but one thing. The great light before us was not a star. What lay before us was the great, glowing, balled up body of a serpent.

1-19-22 - Prompt: Turtle

Lem watched the horizon as a large storm began to cover the hills. It raged, flashing and cracking, and the hills could do nothing but bear the onslaught. He knew those hills, the towns would not fare well, however, that was not his concern. What he needed to do was tell Lord Barrett of the incoming menace.

Quickly he raced to the descending stair and made his way off the dome to the reading room below. It did not matter the urgency, Lem was always filled with awe at the reading room and again now as he burst through the door.

The apparatus was long and tapered in many segments that shifted and spun at the command of a few dials near the bottommost and narrowest end that floated just above the floor at the height of a man. It stretched toward the night sky at a steep angle and reached beyond the domed roof that covered all the delicate instruments below.

A short man stood upon a tall stool peering through a small eyeglass. Lem didn’t understand how any of it worked, but the lord conversed with the skies and gained much wisdom therein.

“Lem,” shouted the short lord, “why have you burst through my door?”

“I beg your pardon, but there is a storm on the horizon that looks to disrupt your converse. It is coming from the west and south.”

“Ah, those are a nasty sort.”

“Yes, it has that look. What heading should we take?”

“Tell the helmsman to head to the west with a slight northward lean. That should lead us to safety.”

“Yes, my lord,” Lem said quickly and made his way to the wall where a sort of horn lead to a long, copper pipe. A lever was next to it and with a few quick flips of the lever came the voice of a gruff, but kindly man, the helmsman, out the horn. Lem relayed the direction, and the helmsman replied with an “aye”. Faintly reverberating through the pipe came inarticulate shouts, as the floor beneath them shook and swayed. 

At the bottom of the mound on which the reading room stood, below homes and storehouses, guardrooms and defenses, were the leading stations. Two long and massive chains came from them to the bridled mouth of a colossal turtle. Slow and gentle strides crossed miles at a step as the village made for safety.

1-20-22 - Prompt: Suction

“We’re approaching the contamination, sir,” said a tingy, reverberating voice from the; coms.

“ETA?” replied a large, nebulous mass of a man with the click of the radio.

“About an hour.”

“I want us there in a half,” commanded the captain mercilessly and with a jolt the craft shifted to a higher gear. The captain’s mood was never good, but today served to increase the disdain he had for all things. The sanitation crew of the new colony had a lot of work ahead. The plan was to expand the domes from three to ten in the span of five years, a reasonable plan in normal circumstances, but not now. The colony pressed too near the Spread.

The Spread was a sight to behold. The nearby sun reflected in dancing brilliance off the surface of the toxic sludge, and the clockwork geysers shot a gas that caught the light in rainbows. It was the envy of all the colonists to have such a view, but very few had the experience of Captain Ulster Skrugg. The cost for such a luxury was too great in his opinion. They crew dropped like flies in this line of work, so deadly was the bile. The only way for the elite to have such a view was to remove the Spread into the train of empty tanks to be deposited on less desireable landscapes.

Onward went Sanitation Tanker 000134, clipping along at two hundred miles per hour.

“Take me to the bridge,” Ulster said and his chair responded, slidding along two narrow tracks through the doors of his quarters and into the passage then toward the doors of the bridge. The dark metal doors skreetched and clunked as they opened, so reddened and worn with rust and grime. At the helm was the source of the tingy voice, a lean and mottly young man with a wild look of detox.

“First look said an hour, but it should be sooner, captain. At double time we’ll arrive in twenty.

“Good.”