Morning all and happy Monday. I hope everyone had a fab weekend and is ready to get back into the weekly routine. So wiggle those fingers and warm up those brains, it is time to jump into the morning prompt. Fifteen minutes on the timer and off we go.
This is not what I expected to come out. i have no idea what I did expect, but this really wasn’t it. It seems like one of those prompts where I need to set the timer for another fifteen minutes just to figure out where this is actually going. Then I will be able to see how I feel about it. But for now, it is not a bad way to start a week.
Monday, July 17th: She was extremely thirsty.
She was extremely thirsty. It was in fact what woke her. She sat up in bed and ran the back of her hand over her mouth. Her lips were dry and starting to chap. She frowned and sat up. He nightgown stuck to her body and the sheets were damp. She lifted a hand to her head and found her hair damp with sweat as well.
“Hot,” she said, still only half awake. Her voice croaked. Why was it so hot in here.
‘Fire.’ She thought. The word burned away the last fog of sleep. She sniffed. There was no smell of smoke. She listened, there was no crackle of flame, no sound of the alarm. The fire alarms were installed throughout the house, and she checked the batteries on a routine basis. In fact, she checked them all out the week before. They were all working and now they were all silent.
Still, she slipped out of bed. Thinking that if the house were on fire, she would not want to be escaping in just her nightgown and underwear, she quickly pulled on her clothes. It consisted of the jeans and long-sleeved t-shirt and bra she pulled off just before bed, but because she had been too tired to take it to the laundry it was on the floor by the bed. She wanted to be dressed, but she didn’t want to take too much time. She grabbed clean socks and put on sneakers thinking she might have to run. As she did, Jane thought about her important papers. They were all in the lock box underneath the bed. She tied her laces and grabbed the box. She slipped her phone from the charger into her back pocket and knew she had everything she needed if she had to flee the house.
As she moved, she continually sniffed. She smelled the scent of her own sweat, realizing she was still overly warm and that beads of sweat were still at her hairline and rolling down her neck to stain the neck of her shirt. She hadn’t imagined that even if she didn’t smell fire.
She moved to the door and gingerly touched the doorknob. It was room warm, but it wasn’t hot. She took a deep breath and opened the door to the hallway. It was just as hot in the hall, but there was no fire, no scent of burning. She cautiously left the bedroom. In the hallway she stopped at the thermostat. The internal thermometer for the house read 92 degrees.
That wasn’t right.
Heat was pumping through the vents. That wasn’t right either as the dial was set to cool. She turned the dial, and nothing changed. Hot air still pumped through the vents. Jane left the thermostat and keeping her important papers in hand, she made a circuit through the house. It wasn’t a large one, just a two-bedroom one story bungalow so there was little to search.
Having found the thermostat, she was reasonably certain it was the reason for the heat, but wanted to check for fire anyway. Finding nothing she opened her front door and stepped outside. Summer was still brutal even in the early morning hours, but there was a breeze. She walked over to the tree where a long ago resident nailed a thermometer. She wiped off the dirt. Outside the temperature read 86 degrees. The humidity was high and she knew the sun would send the temperatures skyrocketing.
Jane pulled out her phone and checked the time. Seven am. She wondered if it was too early to call the people who serviced her system. The heat pumping out of the vents couldn’t be good for the system. She pulled up her contacts and scrolled to the number. ‘I can at least leave an emergency message,’ she thought. As she pressed the button, she wondered how much internal heat it would take before something melted, or sparked and blew up the house.
Ten til Midnight 