Morning all somehow we have made it to Wednesday. Seems like a flash, an eyeblink. But I am catching up from being gone and have a long to do lists. The longer the to do list, the shorter the day I suppose. But we are here to kick off to day with a shiny new prompt. So timers set for fifteen minutes and off we go.
I think I want to spend another fifteen minutes getting the bones of this story actually. Just to see what it is really going to be.
Wednesday, July 22nd: Something was missing.
Something was missing. He could tell even though no one else seemed to have a problem with the room. Everyone else seemed to think nothing changed. But something had. He could feel it. There was a shift. It was subtle. He was certain if the couch had been turned backwards then everyone would have noticed instead of telling him he was seeing things that weren’t there.
Something was missing. He could feel it in his head, like a missing back tooth. Felt but not seen. He spent enough time in this room to have the feel of it and he knew something changed.
He just couldn’t figure out what.
He dropped it mostly because the others insisted nothing was missing. A few were beginning to look at him as though he was crazy. So he made up something. “Oh that’s right, I left my book upstairs,” he announced. “That’s why it feels like something was missing.”
“At least you are finally tidying up after yourself,” Mark replied. It was an odd statement coming from mark as he was in general tidy and only happened to leave the book he was reading on the table next to the chair where he was sitting when he was reading. Mark on the other hand was a complete slob.
He lifted his eyebrow at Mark’s comment but the others were not so quiet. Soon he was bombarded with comments regarding his own cleanliness. Only Carl didn’t participate in the comments. He smiled and seemed to go along with the others, which wasn’t unusual for Carl, now that he thought about it. Carl always held himself a little separate from the others.
As he watched the others torment Mark, his comment of missing forgotten, he realized there might be someone who didn’t want the missing item to be noticed. Carl would be the obvious choice of course, but he thought he might be picking on Carl because he was quiet and didn’t feel the need to jump into the middle of things. ‘It could be Mark,’ he thought. ‘With the comment about my tidiness. Or even one of the others.’
He was willing to admit if could be no one as well. He was not willing to admit it was nothing. He knew something was missing and he knew it would drive him crazy until he figured out what. He just might not want to let the others know about it. They didn’t notice the missing so there was no point really in reminding them of it, even if there was nothing nefarious behind it. He knew his brain would continue to work on the puzzle.
Leaving everyone to it, he went upstairs. Sure enough, he had moved his book to his room, placing it on the reading chair there. ‘As I was last reading it here, that isn’t much of a surprise,’ he thought. He intended to read downstairs, but Dennis and Mark were having a bit of a row in the common room and he didn’t want to get dragged in. Both tended to ask for back up when they argued and he didn’t feel either of them were right. That was a can of worms he did not want to open so he read in his room. Now back in his room he moved to his chair and picked up the book. He sat down but held the book in his hand. Instead of reading he leaned back and closed his eyes, picturing the room as it always had been, seeing the details and looking for what was different.
‘One of the books was missing,’ he realized. It was a slim volume but the lettering on the spine was gold and always caught the afternoon sun, nearly glowing. It was missing from the shelf. He felt something inside him relax. As he did there was a knock on his door. He opened his eyes and sat up.
“Come in,” he called.
Ten til Midnight 