Good morning all. and welcome to Tuesday. I oddly enough woke up before my alarm today. That is a much nicer way to wake up. Admittedly my day would usually not start on time if my alarm didn’t routinely go off, but it always nice to wake up without it. It makes me think its a weekend instead of a week day. Despite it being a Tuesday. So that’s a side benefit. Anyway, ready for the prompt? Good, set those times folks because it is ready… set… go!
Not one of my better ones. I’ll admit, this wasn’t my favorite sentence. But even with a starter I didn’t particularly like, I still got something.
Tuesday, October 27th: He could only hope his wounds didn’t become infected.
He could only hope his wounds didn’t become infected. For now that was more of an issue than the actual wound. It wasn’t debilitating. It was more irritating than painful so he didn’t feel the need to mention it to the others. After all what could they do? They could check to make certain it didn’t become septic in the heat or from some nameless thing found in this swamp, but he was already on top of that. When they broke for lunch he tottered off into the brush, claiming the need to answer the call of nature. He cleaned the wound as best as he could with what he had, wincing at the whiskey he used to disinfect it and then smearing antibacterial ointment over it before taping a bandage over the wound. He hoped the whiskey would kill anything there and the antibacterial ointment would prevent anything new rom arriving.
He liked to think of it as a mix of old and new medical advice working in harmony for his benefit. Not for the first time since he felt the pain he wondered what it was that actually cut him. Whatever it was he hadn’t seen it. He just felt the whip of pain across his side. ‘Luckily it isn’t deep he thought to himself as he followed along with the others. They had been in this swamp for what seemed like ages. On the map it looked no more than half a mile across, but he was certain they walked more than half a mile.
Truthfully though he couldn’t be certain. The mud at the water’s edge sucked at his boots and often they had to skirt around unexpected patches of water where the slim strip of muddy land they were walking along was worn away. Cypress roots arched like wooden cages just above the water and he was certain that there were things hiding behind the cages. Things with eyes that watched and waited. He wasn’t certain what they waited for but he didn’t like to dwell on it. He stepped down and felt the mud squelch over his boots and seep into his already water logged socks, the cotton material wicking it down to his toes which he was certain had gone completely prune-y several hours ago.
He wondered if he could get some sort of toe rot in only a half a mile of walking. He doubted it. As he contemplated the potential demise of his feet Dan stopped and he ran into the back of him. The connection jostled his side and he tried not to cry out. His side was painful. Was it more painful than before? Was that the sign of infection or did he have to become feverish? He didn’t know.
“We’ve passed that tree before,” Dan said, calling his attention away from his body. The others stopped as well and all of them looked at the tree Dan was pointing to. To him it looked exactly like every other tree in this place, twisty and turn-y with almost polished looking wood. To him it looked as though some one buffed parts of the cypress around him and then hung them with moss and other slimier gunk to disguise the fact that they had been polishing trees.
“How do you know?” Charlotte asked.
“There’s my broken shoelace. I dropped the end of it there and it’s still at the foot of the tree.”
“Maybe it just looks like your shoelace but isn’t,” Sam said. “There are a lot of string-like things around here.”
Everyone looked down at what could be a shoelace or could be just something that looked like it. All of them hoped it was just something that looked like it. Dan shifted his foot forward. The string was the same color shape and size as the rest of the shoelace. There was no mistaking it. It was Dan’s discarded lace. Which meant they had in fact somehow managed to walk in a circle.
Ten til Midnight 