Morning all. I don’t know about you but I am more than ready to jump into a routine week. So let’s see if we can at least start this week out in a regular fashion. If you feel like taking bets on how long it will remain so, feel free. For now, we will just start with the morning writing prompt. Timers at the ready and off we go…
I am rather pleased with this. There is a little more fluffing out of the scent that needs to be done, but it feels like a murder mystery in the making. I haven’t done one of those in a while. It will require more plotting and thinking before writing, but I like it. A lot of potential for a monday morning and a great kick off to the week.
Monday, June 26th: I am getting hints of caramel.
“I am getting hints of caramel,” he said. He sniffed the glass and held it up to the light before bringing it down for another sip. I nodded sagely as though I understood what he was talking about. I took a small delicate sip of my drink. The whiskey burned a trail across my tongue and down my throat.
I had tasted good whiskey before. Many times in fact. My family owned and operated a distillery. One that had been in our family for generations and won many awards. Not that I ever mentioned that here.
Here I was relatively irrelevant. I was an assistant. It was my job to look after them, not to be a person in my own right. I doubted if anyone in the room could even recall my last name. Randolph, my employer I suspected, never bothered learning it in the first place.
I swallowed and stayed quiet as Randolph and his friends commented on the whiskey. The stuff was pricy and it was made with all the bells and whistles. It was also in a distillery owned by someone wealthy who they admired. Which was why they were praising it so highly.
‘They might actually like it though,’ I thought. I had long since realized that if it was priced high enough Randolph always thought it was good quality. This was not good quality. It was in fact a bare shaky step up from rotgut.
I kept my face set into pleasant lines but took no more sips from the glass as the others continued their sipping and praising. I tried to remember what the new owner’s claim to fame was. I was fairly certain it had something to do with airlines. I couldn’t quite remember if it involved producing planes or airplane fuel. The taste of the whiskey made me want to lean towards fuel, but I was fairly certain that was only my taste buds and esophagus complaining.
As I watched Randolph move around the room, my duties reduced to standing out of the way and making sure that if he had too much to drink he could get back to his suite with no one really noticing the over indulgence, I thought about my position. I took this job because I needed time to finish my research.
On the surface, this job was perfect for that. I would look after the details of Randolph’s life for eight hours a day and then leave to work on my own things. That wasn’t how it was turning out. Dealing with Randolph was talking up more and more of my time and eating into my research time. I had already composed my resignation letter, I just needed to find the proper time to give it to him. I was thinking after this trip would be a good idea. I just didn’t want to get off the plane and then hand it to him. I was planning on that morning. We had only routine events planned for the next week. This trip came up as a last minute surprise for Randolph and I was required to attend with him.
Ten til Midnight 