Morning all. I hope everyone had a fantastic weekend. I am personally sporting a ton of mosquito bites from watering the garden at dusk. Mostly the bites are easy to ignore, but there is one under my chin. It itches something fierce and I think I may have to actually break out the calamine lotion. Otherwise I’ll end up scratching my chinny chin chin all day as I work. on’t you just hate it when one single bug bite threatens to drive you mad? The others I can ignore, but that one… Regardless let’s kick off the week with the first writing prompt. Ready? Excellent!
I rather enjoyed this one. I just need to figure out if the well meaning neighbor calls the police or decides to confront the ‘burglar’ himself. Fun stuff.
Monday, June 21st: The lock snicked shut.
The lock snicked shut. It was a soft sound, a mere whisper in the night but I closed my eyes feeling as though I was shot. Behind my closed eyelids I could clearly see my house keys. They were sitting in the bowl beside the front door inside the house.
As I was now standing outside the back door of the same house, it was not a pleasant image to contemplate.
The cat wound around my ankles and mewed up at me. “This is your fault,” I whispered to it harshly. It swiveled its head to look at me as if it knew what trouble it caused and was delighted. It then turned away dismissively and sauntered down the garden path towards the back of the property. There was no rush to it’s evening stroll.
“Ant why should there be?” I asked myself. My thin pajama pants and light t-shirt were inadequate to the night breezes and I wrapped my arms around myself as I looked back towards the house. “It isn’t even my cat,” I grumbled as I looked for ways to break into my own house at three am.
A few days ago my sister dropped the cat off. As was usually my sister was gushing over with burbled excitement, the words flying too fast to really follow, much less refute. Before I managed to catch my breath, she was back out of the door and her cat was investigating my living room. The name of the cat I caught as her beau d’jour pulled his car away from the curb was Swizzlekins. There was no gender attached and I had no intention of looking. In my quieter moments I did wonder which gender would be more offended by having such a moniker appended to it, but ultimately decided it was equally humiliating for any living creature.
I certainly wasn’t going to use it. Giving the creature a new name however felt more like admitting there was the possibility that my sister would not return for it. On occasion this happened. Things, both inanimate and living were dropped off and often never retrieved. All of my house plants had come to me in this manner as had my fish and ski equipment. I wasn’t ready to admit that the cat might be a permanent addition so I referred to it as cat. It looked both amused and relieved.
My search of the house revealed I left the back window to my upstairs bathroom slightly ajar. I studied the small back porch and the various protrusions and thought that with effort I might manage to reach the window without causing too much damage to either self or property.
Deciding nothing would be gained by waiting. I moved to the edge of the back porch railing. I was easily apple to scramble up onto the railing and then use part of the lower trellising as footholds to hoist myself up to the small roof of the porch. To my surprise I found a Frisbee on the roof. I tossed it down to the yard as I sat on the roof catching my breath.
“Only a little way to go now,” I said, trying to pep myself up for the last bit of burglary.
Ten til Midnight 