Morning all and welcome to a rainy Wednesday. Actually with the rain, the heat, the mist and the trees in their full greenery if you squint it looks sort of like a tropical jungle. Just don;t look too hard at the leaf shapes. As the grass pollen is through the roof this morning I have been sneezing my head off and looking at the world through watery eyes so It looks especially tropical. I suspect it may inspire a story setting later. But for now, let’s see if it affects the prompt. Shall we begin?
Well that didn’t actually work out like I expected. No jungle in my prompt. Still, it is a bit of an interesting start. Pieces to work out before I’ll know what the story is though. Perhaps later today that can be an afternoon adventure.
Wednesday, July 5th: The exhaustion weighted his eyelids.
The exhaustion weighted his eyelids. His eyes behind them felt dry and itchy. He had been awake too long and his body was letting him know it would not be tolerating much more of this abuse. He smiled, remembering the all nighter’s he pulled when he was much younger and how easy they were.
Those days were gone. Now his body needed routine. It felt as though one step off the deviated path and all sorts of things went wrong. Aches and pains appeared when there had been none. Twitches and twinges plaquing him.
‘And this is well off routine,’ he told himself.
Still it was almost done. One more detail to cover and then he could step away and let the exhaustion take him, give his body the rest it wanted.
He picked up the last piece, the final one and slotted it into place. There was a satisfying click and a soft hum. He felt the hum more than heard it and knew once it was concealed, as long as it wasn’t touching anything but the soft pad he built for it, no one would hear the hum. It’s soft sounds would be lost in the day to day noises. If it were but some miracle noticed, it would be dismissed as something else. One of the other many appliances in the space.
‘Lord knows there are a lot of them,’ he thought as he shuffled to the wall. The panel had already been removed and the place prepared. This was his final step. He delicately placed the latest device to enter his home into the padded cavity. As his fingers left it, the vibrations lifted and he could not hear the hum.
Carefully he closed the wall panel back up and made certain that everything looked as it had before.
‘I will check when I wake,’ he told himself, knowing that his own tiredness could cause him to miss details. There would be time though. Even if he slept longer than usual or more deeply, he had time before the others returned. He would check when he was fresh to make certain nothing visible remained. It was important that they not know.
There was always the possibility they would be asked. He smiled. None of them had ever cared for the details of his life. He left, he worked, he came back. At best they might be able to tell someone his title. None of them had a clue what it meant or what he did. Which was fine. Knowing the details of his work was dangerous. But they never asked and he now found the fact that they never asked any questions relieving him of the guilt of keeping this secret. He whole life when he was away from them was a secret, what was one more.
‘And it relates to my work,’ he said. ‘It could actually be considered the goal of all my years of work. The culmination.’
He let out a dry chuckle but somehow the thought made him sad. It all came down to this. He felt tears prickling. They were almost a relief to his dry eyes.
‘Just tired,’ he thought. ‘That’s all.’
He shuffled back to his room and kicked off his slippers. He slid off his robe and threw it over the chair. Knowing he would be completely spent by the time he was through, he opted to change into his pajamas early. There was no one to notice and he would be spared the need to change now. He pulled back his sheets and climbed into the bed. He tucked himself in and found the old lullaby his nursemaid sang to him running through his head.
Ten til Midnight 