Good morning one and all and welcome to Friday the thirteenth. I know, a day of ill omened luck, but to be honest, I always end up having better than average days on Friday the thirteenth. So bring on the day. As well as the last writing prompt of the week. Are you ready? Good, then lets go.
This seems like something fun to play around with. I may mark it for a possibility of a fifteen minute novel next year (or some later date) I think it is definitely one I’d need to think about before diving into though. Still, it is bookmarked.
“Of course,” she said, half bowing as she dragged her errant offspring away.
Friday, August 13th: It was my only means of escape.
It was my only means of escape. It wouldn’t have been my first option. In fact if I had any other option, I would have taken it. This option seemed tailor made to play on all of my deepest fears. It was dark, it was in an enclosed space underground It was filled with water waist deep and impossible to see through and I could only guess that it let out somewhere at the end of the tunnel.
It was my only means out of this place. I searched for weeks looking for another option, one I was a little more confident in pulling off. There were none. Now I knew if I wanted to escape, it would be through the tunnels. Decision made, I bided my time until the optimal moment.
My jailer, even though he preferred a friendlier term, like host, was confident that there was no way out for me. He was being called away. He told me so himself and brought in stockpiles of food for me so that I would not starve in his absence. The stocks weren’t much. But they would keep me from starvation if I rationed them well.
“Just think how happy you will be to see me return,” he said with a smile I suspected he thought was friendly. “Think of what a feast we will have then.” I waited until
He left that morning after double checking all of the locks. The day was newly broken when I saw the back of him. I waited until he was out of sight. Then I took stock of the items in my possessions. While the stocks weren’t much, I could fit them all in the pack I planned to take with me. I made it in the hours when I was sewing.
I kept a piece of embroidery slowly growing so that he thought that was the task I set myself to occupy my mind. I admitted that I was slow to him, thus explaining how glacial my progress and he seemed to buy it. When his eyes weren’t on me, I worked on the bag with materials I found in one of the forgotten store rooms of my prison.
There were piles of moldy and half-forgotten garments, but there were also items like sail cloth. Buried under a pile of rope I found an old rucksack that was in desperate need of repair. There was a huge hole in the side as though someone shot a bolt from a crossbow straight through it. There were darker stains on the cloth that I didn’t want to think about. At the moment I couldn’t afford to be picky. I used the sailcloth to repair the rucksack and after my Host disappeared, I fitted the largess of his supplies into the bag.
I was nervous, but more worried about being caught trying to escape than trying for the tunnel at this point. So I waited until dark to try my luck. As the tunnel was underground, I didn’t think that the darkness would be an issue. It would be dark above, just as it was below.
My nerves only held until dusk. The sky was painted crimson when I decided it was late enough to go. The wait was fraying my nerves. I lit my lanterns so that anyone set to watch me would think I was still in the tower occupying myself before going to sleep. Then I descended into the tunnels. I knew that one, they carried sewage away from the tower, but it had been decades since the tower saw active use and so the smell was relatively clean. It was earthy and damp, but not horrendous. I eased the rusty gate out of the way and then pulled it shut behind me. I took my care in breaking through the bars as I worked the gate loose and the gap was well below the waterline.
Ten til Midnight 