Good morning and welcome to the morning writing prompt. Time to shake the sleep out of the bran and see what comes out. Pens ready? Timer set. Excellent, I’ll see you in fifteen minutes.
My fifteen minutes posted below with only spelling correction but no other editing.
Thursday, October 8th: It had been raining for three days.
It had been raining for three days. John watched as it sheeted down. He sighed as the radio broadcasted no end in sight, at least not for the next few days. He was certain at some point the rain would stop. It couldn’t go on in perpetuity. From his front window he could see the street turned into a miniature river as the water rolled over the asphalt. The sewers were backed up and he could see the pater pooling like a lake around the one nearest him. The white concrete topper looking like a small island as the black asphalt below the water made the impromptu lake look dark and deep. If he looked to the left, as far as his window would allow and squinted through the trees between the houses, he could see the outflow pipe. It gushed water but to his mind looked less like a natural feature like a waterfall and more like a burst pipe. The urge to call a plumber was strong.
His house, his entire street in fact was built on a rise of land that insured they would stay dry. The street wound it’s way up the hill, but not all of the parts of the street were buildable. There were a lot of empty lots further down where building was a bad idea. The area was cut with creeks all of which tended to overflow when the rain decided to grace the area. The overflow pipe was less connected to the swers and more a means of controlling the many creeks so the houses that were built didn’t flood. While it meant there was no raw sewage currently being plumed into the air and that the pipe was actually working as intended, John still felt like calling the plumber.
Feeling the need to check on his own creek bed, John left the front window and moved to the back porch. He pulled on thick black rain boots and a neon orange rain poncho. The hood never managed to stay up on his head so he added a yellow rain hat. It kept the hood in place and made certain water didn’t roll down his neck. Without the hat it was almost pointless to wear the poncho as the water would just trickle in around the edges and soak him anyway. The orange and yellow made him feel as though he could be seen from outer space, but somehow John never got around to replacing them with something more sedate. As the area had been suffering under the seventh straight year of drought, an extra rain poncho seemed like a frivolous waste. Now the drought was broken and the rain seemed intent on bringing them all the water it missed in the past seven years at one time. Or at least that’s how it felt to John,
Dressed for the out of doors he opened his back door, hearing the squawk of rusty springs from his screen door,. It was another item on his soon to be replace list. The screen had holes that looked as though someone was intent on poking their way through it one tiny section at a time. While the aesthetics didn’t bother him, the holes were gateways for the local mosquito population. Superhighways for the insect invasion.
He stepped down the three concrete steps into the back yard, watching his footing on the slick concrete. The grass was more of a hazard, flattened by the rain, the wet blades locked together to form a smooth slide down the slope of his back yard. His boots squeaked on the blades of grass making him think he was stepping on small protesting mice. He knew if he lost his footing he would continue sliding down the slope straight into the creek.
‘And that would definitely be a problem today,’ he decided. The normally slow moving trickle of water that served as the back boundary for his yard was now a raging torrent of muddy water, hurtling lawn chairs and all other manner of debris past his house at a rapid pace.
Ten til Midnight 