Morning all. ready for the last prompt of the week? Fabulous. Let’s set those timers and see where this takes us.
It took me a while to figure out where this was going. I think after I do the fifteen minute novel post I may circle back and do another fifteen minutes on this. I just don’t think I can stop until I know what is in the letter.
Friday, July 24th: The hiccups wouldn’t stop.
The hiccups wouldn’t stop. Sam tried everything. She tried drinking from a cup backwards and only proceeded to get water up her nose. She then sputtered and couched for ten minutes to clear the water from her nose. When she finally stopped coughing, she was red faced and bleary eyed, but still hiccupping.
She tried putting a sugar cube on her tongue, pressing it against the roof of her mouth as it melted. The hiccups didn’t stop and she felt like she had to brush her teeth.
She followed another old wives tale and put salt on the end of her tongue. She spit it out and went to rinse with mouthwash. She was certain that trying that particular trick after the sugar trick and brushing her teeth was part of the problem, but she also knew she wasn’t just going to sit with a spoonful of salt in her mouth.
‘They didn’t even give a time limit for that.’
She wondered if anyone died from high blood pressure while still having the hiccups.
Living alone and thus not having anyone to jump out of closets and scare her, she opted for a horror movie fest. She hiccupped her way through three gore spattered films spending most of her Saturday on the couch. She jumped and cringed and in the end still had the hiccups.
The knock at the door came when she finished the third movie and was contemplating the scaring power between two additional films. It startled her as she rarely got any visitors. Her house was located at the end of the neighborhood in one of the many cul-de-sac it boasted. When the neighborhood was being built two of the houses slated for the cul-de-sac were never built, the land sitting empty and then a year or so before she bought her house the one other house in the cul-de-sac burned down.
Faulty wiring was blamed and discovering that her own wiring was very much in need of an upgrade, she had it rewired during her renovations. There was a bit of a dogleg to the road so the entrance to the cul-de-sac was not generally visible until you were driving past. Most of the world tended to forget she was even here. As she got her mail at the post office, instead of the house, it meant even the postman often forgot her.
She went to the door, looked through the peep hole and saw a man in a delivery uniform. It was one of the companies that specialized in certified letter delivery rather than on-line shopping packages. He pressed the bell and then stepped back from the door so as not to appear to be crowding it. She appreciated the gesture. Given the space, she had enough time to slam it closed should there be a problem, so she opened it. The man smiled.
“Ms. Watson?” he said. She nodded. “I’ll need you to sign.”
She opened the screen door and took the offered electronic sign in pad as he took an oversized envelope from his bag. She handed him back the signing pad and he handed her the letter.
“Have a good evening,” he said as he turned away.
“You too,” she replied automatically. She looked at the sky. Ure enough it was edging into evening now. She took a deep breath and realized her hiccups were gone.
“Apparently I needed a real surprise,” she said.
She closed and locked the front door. As she didn’t need to scare her hiccups away, she put on an old murder mystery instead. As it began to play, she opened the envelope.
Ten til Midnight 