Morning all, lets get going on the day and see where it takes us. Timers set for fifteen minutes and remember don’t stop to ponder or edit. This is just about letting the ideas flow out without censoring the brain. Later we edit, but for now, we just write. So timers on and off we go.
My thoughts do turn to murder more often in the winter I find… Tis the season of crime writing I suppose.
Monday, January 13th: It was smashed into small pieces.
It was smashed into small pieces. Hank stared at the mess of broken bits and twisted wires. He saw the dents in the casings and sat down hard as he stared at it, his knees turning to jelly. He drew in a deep breath and could smell no scent of burning electronics. He sniffed again, hoping he was wrong. No. There was nothing. It was just a cold cinder block shed at the edge of the property. He could smell cold and a bit of damp but no burning electronics. This did not overheat. It did not break down. He feached forward and picked up the casing.
He could see the impact dent in the thin metal. ‘Hammer, maybe baseball bat,’ he thought. He set it delicately to the side and stared at the ruins. Someone did this.
‘Deliberately,’ he thought. He couldn’t bring himself to say the word out loud. It would make it real in a way he didn’t want. He stared at the shattered remains of the emergency radio, his eyes struggling to believe the truth. It was gone, nothing inside remained that he could reconnect and fix. Looking at it he was certain there were some parts that were actually missing. ‘Taken,’ Hank thought.
‘So that even if someone could repair the broken bits it still wouldn’t work.’
His mouth was dry and for a moment all he could do was stare, swallow hard and try to tamp down the rising panic. The avalanche cut off the only road to the nearest town and outside help. There was always the possibility that the two deaths at the hose were natural ones.
‘Twins die at the same time right?’ he thought he remembered some sort of old wives tale about it. He was willing to believe it right now if it would help.
‘Except the doctor thought poison.’
Hank took a deep breathe. He stared at the remains of the radio. This tended to lean towards the doctor’s deliberate death theory rather than accidental. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath to steady himself.
‘Okay,’ Hank told himself. ‘The twins could have been a target and now there is no point to killing anyone else.’ It was a slightly calming thought. While there were many people in the world who wished him dead, Hank knew that none of them were here. It was in fact why he was here.
‘We have electricity and heat,’ he thought. The hotel was often cut off for long stretches in the winter and had it’s own generator as well as back up generator. He looked at the remains of the radio and scrambled to his feet as a new thought hit him.
‘The generators.’
He scrambled to his feet leaving the radio behind. He left the small shack and raced back towards the main building. His feet sunk into the snow and his race back to the hose was slowed. His heart pounded. What if someone destroyed the generator? The snow seemed to weigh him down. It was falling heavily now where there were only a few delicate flakes when he agreed to go to the emergency radio and call for assistance.
‘How long was I in the shed?’ he though. He knew he took time to gather himself but in that time the snow seemed to have erased his path. The sun was going down and he could feel the temperatures dropping.
Ten til Midnight 