Morning all. The first Friday of the new year. Can you believe it? I know a lot of you are still on vacation and truthfully I am half on vacation. I will work a bit in the morning so Monday will be smooth but other than that, I’m mostly going to knock around the house in pajamas. There may even be a mimosa later. But for now, there are things to do. So let’s jump into the morning writing prompt. Timers set for fifteen Minutes and off we go.
I like this. Kind of leans a bit more dystopian. Not exactly the brightest way to start a new year, but I kind of like it anyway.
Friday, January 2nd: She flung her arms wide and spun in a circle.
She flung her arms wide and spun in a circle. She watched the world spin around her wanting the dizzy blur. She felt her balance slip and she tried focusing on one spot to keep her feet underneath her. She failed and went spinning, tripping and falling to the grass below.
The ground felt harder than it had when she was a child. The grass less of a cushion, the earth less forgiving.
She lay there breath coming in heavy gasps as the world spun around her. Laying flat on the ground in the back yard she could almost swear she felt the earth on it’s slow rotation under her. Slowly her vision cleared, the world no longer felt like it was shifting.
It took a longer time for her breath to come back. She realized that it wasn’t just the exertion of spinning but the impact of hitting the ground that knocked it out of her. Still in time, her heart slowed and her breathing evened out. Samantha lay thee on the grass. The grass itself was cool but the earth below felt colder almost icy.
Whenever she did this as a child she remembered warmth.
‘It was also summer,’ she thought. Somehow her memories never assigned it a season. It just was. She remembered the sun shining, the bugs making noises in the woods and everything being warm.
It was colder now, no longer summer, but then everything felt just a little colder now. She wasn’t certain when that changed. There was no definite thing she could point to and say, yes, this is when I started to feel the world becoming dark and cold.
Yet now laying on her back in the grass, the bright cloudless bowl of blue sky above her, she had to admit the world did feel like it was dark and cold. Everyone was angry. Everyone was rushed, and mean and cross and shadows were gathering in places she never remembered seeing shadows before. Every day it felt like some sort of storm was inching closer.
She didn’t know if it was just her or if others felt it. That odd sense of wrong permeating things. She knew if she mentioned it to anyone she knew they would tell her she was imagining things. Or that she was just down. They would tell her to get out more and stop brooding. Maybe suggest downloading the newest Gary Wasterman cineflick and have a good laugh. After all who didn’t smile at Gary’s antics in his anti gravity world.
Their smiles would be bright but empty, their concern fleeting. She knew that there would be some who would suggest the enhancements. She had always shied away from them but knew others took them routinely. In fact, most she knew took them routinely. The Department of Healthy Living issues pamphlets and trial supplements on a routine basis.
She was given her share and always flushed the pills. She read the leaflets. They always seemed overly bright and a tad sinister. She never mentioned the sinister part. Often in conversation she would tell others she took the pills. She would say she loved the standard ones. Occasionally, when she thought people were looking at her too long, she would admit she ran out and then make a point of ‘restocking’ the daily tablets everyone took. She would then measure them out, flushing one set per day and making sure to pick up a new set on the day marked on her calendar.
Lately though no one was watching her. She supposed she was no longer young enough to be interesting, or threatening. She suspected everyone believed her renegade days were over and that if she didn’t take the pills she would just suffer in silence and not be a problem to anyone but herself. She wasn’t sure if she found this a relief or an insult.
Ten til Midnight 