Morning all. When we have a Monday Holiday Wednesday always feels like a surprise, like someone pulled the week out from under me. Still We have reached mid week. Let’s see what our prompt for the day brings us. Timers set of fifteen minutes and lets wake up those sleepy brains.
Not sure where I am going with this but I like the character sketch of William that was created. I may have to use him somewhere rather than look for this to turn into an actual story line.
Wednesday, February 18th: His beard was unkempt.
His beard was unkept. Little curls rose randomly from the mass of it. As the curls seemed mostly gray while the mass of his beard favored a deep auburn shade, the curls looked like smoke. It gave the illusion that his beard was on fire. Fr a second she wondered if the effect was intentional, done for shock value.
Then she shifted to look at the rest of him. His eyes were dull with deep heavy looking bags beneath them, looking almost like bruises on his fair skin. His clothes were rumbled with several stains on his shirt. His hair looked as though he wet his hands and combed them through at some pint rather than using any tool. Even his left shoe was untied.
It was a strange look to see here and she wondered who it was and why he was here. Then she watched him walk. The walk looked deflated as though someone punctured the enthusiasm, but even deflated she recognized it.
“William,” she half gasped. She didn’t mean to say it out loud, but it came out as a soft whisper. He heard and turned, smiling tiredly at her.
“Emily,” He said. “I’d heard you decided to stay, I’m glad.”
Even his voice was softer, more tired than she recalled ever hear it. “I…did,” she said. While the vitality William seemed to carry around like a cloud was gone, it was the appearance that caught her off guard. He was never unkept. William kept a pair of scissors by his bathroom sink and trimmed any errant hair daily. It was part of his morning ritual. He brushed his teeth and made certain there were no toothpaste smears and then he trimmed his beard, often only one or two hairs at a time.
He was always most fastidious with his appearance. Emily couldn’t help give him the once over again. Something was clearly wrong.
“What happened William?” She asked. She knew there were probably more polite ways to broach the subject but they seemed inappropriate. William always favored bold and direct approaches.
“Oh this and that I suppose,” he said. He offered her a wan smile. Emily frowned.
“You look like something three days dead,” she tild him. He glanced down at him self and seemed a bit surprised by what looked like a mustard stain on his shirt. He began rubbing at it. A part of her wanted to caution hm about running it in as her mother would have, but the stain looked as though it had been there a week already and she doubted there was much he could do to either cause more problems or get it to go away.
“What happened, William?” She asked again, her voice gentle this time. He looked up at her.
“Connie left.”
Ten til Midnight 