Good morning all and welcome to Tuesday. I took most of yesterday off for MLK Day and I feel much better for the three day weekend. I’m sure tomorrow I will feel like the week has evaporated and there is far too much to do, but today, I feel fine. So shall we jump into our morning prompt? Fabulous.
I like this one. I am not entirely sure where it is going, but I like it. I don’t know why but i am finding everyday calamities more interesting to write about than massive things like asteroids or large scale invasions. Maybe it is the very personalized battle fronts. I don’t know, but I do like this.
Tuesday, January 17th: It was sinking.
It was sinking. There was no doubt about it. Not now. He took measurements each day, recording them down to the millimeter. He had a notebook, but wanted everything to look more official so he went into the house and pulled up his spread sheet. He recorded the numbers in the chart and then converted the whole thing to a line graph.
Seeing the numbers in a steady line was even more disturbing than seeing them simply added to the list of daily measurements. There was no doubt about it. The shed was sinking. In the past five days it actually sunk eighteen centimeters.
Mike leaned back in his chare and stared at the indisputable evidence. This wasn’t him being paranoid. This wasn’t him being confused. This was not in his head. Often everyone else thought he was too worked up about things in the neighborhood. There were things in the suburbs others believed normal that he, as a lifelong apartment dweller in a dense urban environment found strange.
He knew it amused the others. He was trying to curb it and learn to exist in this alien environment, however the sinking shed was not part of his imagination. And he had proof.
It was what to do with that proof that he had to think about. He could call someone official. He was certain there was some sort of homeowner’s insurance claim he could make. After all sinking sheds weren’t an everyday occurrence.
‘But I promised after last time…” he recalled. When they first moved in there was an incident involving the giant trash cans that he found disturbing. Thinking the worse he called the local police. After that debacle he promised his wife, Elizabeth to run things like this past her before calling an authority.
“so I’ll talk to Elizabeth,” he decided. He printed out his numbers and the graph they created as evidence. Paper in hand, he went to find his wife. He found her in the living room, curled up and reading a book, unaware of the calamity of the sinking shed. He hated to disturb her peace, but it had to be done. He promised.
“Elizabeth,” he began.
She looked up from her page, her eyes blinking owlishly for a moment as she left her story and reentered the real world. As her vision cleared she saw him and frowned.
“Something happened?” she asked. She eyed the paper he held suspiciously.
“The shed is sinking,” he told her. He didn’t believe in sugar coating things and gave her the news directly.
She lifted an eyebrow. “Sinking?”
“Yes.” Mile rattled his paper in the air. She held out her hand and he passed it over. Elizabeth scanned the numbers.
“Sinking,” she repeated. She uncurled herself from the chair, setting her book aside. “Best have a look at it then.”
Her feet were only clad in socks as she never wore shoes in the house. She padded across the living room to the back door. Beside it were the shoes she used in the garden and she quickly slipped them on her feet before opening the door and stepping into their back yard. She still had his numbers in her hand and Mike followed, anxious for her opinion.
She walked to the shed and looked at it. She then walked to the side and peered at it from a different angle. “It certainly is listing,” she told him.
Ten til Midnight 