Good morning all. This morning the computer seems much happier with me. Maybe it was all the files I cleared out. Perhaps it just had some sort of electronic indigestion. Who knows? But I am not going to poke it. Everything works fine. So I am going to let it keep working. And I am going to be working too. Let’s start off with the morning prompt. Are you ready? Good, then let’s get into it.
Interesting. I might have to think about this story a bit, but I think I might come back to it.
Tuesday, February 8th: It was not an easy death.
It was not an easy death. He lingered for quite some time, life slowly fading out of him. As they watched, separated by the chasm it seemed that each drop of blood pulled just a little more life from him.
It was heart wrenching to watch, yet none of them could turn away.
They were crossing the rope bridge when the attack came. Most of them made it to the other side. Several were lost, falling to their deaths as the supports for the rope bridge gave out. A few were left on the other side to face their attackers. The others left behind died swiftly, but this one last man was left to bleed out slowly.
Carley watched as the last of the life finally faded from his eyes. She wished she had at least learned his name. She knew the others who died, those who fell into the chasm and were lost and those who died swiftly would soon be erased from her memory. He would linger forever.
‘And I didn’t even know his name.’
She shook her head, finally able to look away. She didn’t know the names of the others either, but now she felt connected to them. Before they had just been strangers. They could have been good strangers or bad. Now, good or bad they all shared a bond. She could see it in their faces. She took a deep shuttering breath and rubbed her hands over her arms, giving herself a small hug for comfort.
None of them knew how they got here. None of them knew where here was. And none of the faces around them were familiar. Three hours ago, they all woke up in the clearing with no idea how they got here and no idea what was going on. Carley remembered going home the night before. She had a few after work drinks with those from her office. She took an uber home, went into her apartment, showered, dressed for bed and climbed into bed.
Then she woke up in the clearing.
‘I suppose I should be grateful I’m not in my pajamas,’ she thought. She tried to shake off the feeling of the man’s death, the lingering pain that seemed to stain the air. When she woke she was wearing jeans and a long sleeved t-shirt. She had on sneakers. All of the clothes fit her as she would expect, but she couldn’t recall ever seeing them before. They all had a crisp, out of the box feel to them. It added one more layer to the mystery and the fact that someone dressed her like a doll while she was unconscious wasn’t something that made her terribly comfortable.
‘At least they chose something practical.’
“Did anyone get a good look at the soldiers?” someone asked. Carly looked over happy to be drawn out of her own thoughts. The man who spoke was looking off across the chasam. He wasn’t looking at the bodies but rather staring out across and looking in the distance. It was where the others who attacked them came from and where they disappeared after they realized they couldn’t cross the chasm.
“I think we all saw the soldiers,” another man said.
The first one shook his head. “The way they were dressed, I mean.”
Ten til Midnight 