The bird is back. I am convinced it is evil. I will ignore it and write my morning prompt. I suggest you do the same and ignore the bird.
Okay this might be my favorite prompt from the week.
Friday, October 7th: I can not find my toothbrush.
I cannot find my toothbrush.” He said. James stepped out of the bathroom and looked down the corridor. There wasn’t a sound coming from any of the other rooms. That didn’t surprise him. It wasn’t a time of day when many of the others would be home. His schedule differed from theirs and so he only saw them in passing.
Sadly this was not the first time his toothbrush had gone missing. It was believed by the house at large that if he wasn’t around then what was his was communal property and could be picked up and used by anyone. His step brothers had a habit of appropriating anything that struck their fancy or even something they thought he liked. Slowly James had stopped keeping anything important at the house. His step mother often teased him about his room looking like a monk’s cell. There was taunting behind the words and he smiled and ignored it.
That usually caused her to frown, until she remembered her personal mantra that frowns caused wrinkles. At that point she would smooth her face into a pleasantly neutral expression that she felt was less taxing on the skin and then walk away. He knew she encouraged the boys in what she termed their high spirited antics. After finding several expensive electronics used and broken when he returned from work, James started to slowly relocate all of his things to a small storage unit. It was on the other side of town but located between his job and university so he had ample opportunity to visit. Discovering he kept only minimal things here, other items had become targets. His toothbrush was the latest.
It had disappeared six times in the last month. He had taken to carrying a travel tooth brush in his back pack. After he stopped buying replacements, his tooth brush would find it’s way back to the bathroom and usually smell suspiciously foul. He left it and just used the travel one.
‘Just three weeks left,’ he told himself as he made his way out of the house. That was how long he had to last in this house. Three weeks. Once the date arrived he would go to the lawyers and collect the paperwork. And then he would be gone.
He wondered if they knew or cared. If they knew he wondered if they would remember. He somehow doubted it. He wasn’t someone they usually spent time thinking about. And remembering dates wasn’t a strong suit for any of them. He just had to make it three more weeks.
There was a countdown in his head. He had gone from years to months and now as the time grew less than a month he switched to weeks. As the weeks slipped by, nothing changed at home. The few things he left there went missing periodically and he was treated with the same careless dismissal. As his personal count shifted from weeks to days he was glad to see that nothing changed.
Then the final day arrived. He left for school as he always did. He took his classes and when they were done he went off to work. He had a half shift scheduled for the day as he had his appointment. He told everyone it was a doctor’s appointment. He didn’t want the word Lawyer bandied about by anyone. He finished his shift and drove off to a part of town he almost never visited.
Ten til Midnight 