Morning all I hope you had a great week and are planning a fantastic weekend. It is time to face the last prompt of the week. Are you ready? Excellent. Let’s go. Timers set for fifteen minutes and lets see where this takes us.
I kind of like this. It has a spooky feel to it. I think that this is going to be a prank played on Andi but I think something is going to happen. Not entirely certain what, but I think I am going to have fun with this one. After all it is October. if you can’t have fun with spooky stuff now, when can you?
Friday, October 2nd: It was bright red.
It was bright red. Andi thought that would be a good descriptor. Everyone told her that as part of the final directions. After the last turn she was just to continue on until she saw the house. It was bright red.
She wasn’t certain why someone would paint an entire house red. Even though her mind conjured up images of a fire engine red house, she was prepared for something paler than descriptions painted it.
‘Maybe it is a shade of Salmon that leans more red than pink,’ she told herself. She figured that even with variations, she should be able to see it.
She didn’t. Andi drove down the length of the rural route until it ended. The road met a cross route and did not continue on the other side. She ran out of road.
‘And not a single red house.’ She checked her directions. As there was no one coming in any direction on either road she felt safe idling at the stop sign. She checked her hand written notes. She checked the gps map she had pulled up on her phone.
This was the road. There was no red house. She had seen several houses along the way but none of them seemed occupied. Most seemed long abandoned. She looked on the map. Turning right on the cross road would lead her deeper into the wilds of the county. Turning left would lead her back towards the nearest town. Thinking that even if it was back tracking a little, there were likely more gas stations along the way into town, she turned left and headed back towards civilization.
‘Or what passes as civilization in the back woods of Farston County.’
She was fairly certain that it took more than two people to be considered civilization and as she hadn’t seen a single person since she left the highway, she wasn’t certain this counted. “I will be happy to amend my designation if I find another person,” she decided.
She made the turn and continued on. The road was swooped through curves and then straightened out for stretches. Still thinking about the red house, she looked for buildings along the way. She saw a few dilapidated buildings. Most of them looked as though they once served some sort of agricultural purpose. What that purpose was, she couldn’t tell.
“Someone might,’ she thought. City born and raised, agricultural buildings were in picture books and television shows. She was fairly confident she could identify a silo and a barn but that was about the extent of her building knowledge when it reached agricultural purposes.
“Even then I would have thought barns would be red.” They always were in her childhood picture books. Alert for the color red and acutely aware of not finding it, she figured this county missed the red for barns memo.
“Or the red wore away.”
Most of the buildings she passed were composed of gray wood. Any paint, red or otherwise was long gone. On a few she could see strips of white so she thought white might have been the building color of choice at one point.
Ahead she could see signs for a gas station however as she approached the pumps looked like they were stuck in the nineteen fifties and the building attached looked like it closed shortly after the pumps were installed. She continued on. The gps told her the highway was close and she thought that perhaps the highway might be the best option. If she didn’t see any gas stations at the on-ramp she would get on the highway and backtrack her route. It may take her out of the county but she hadn’t really wanted to go on this trip anyway.
“I can tell them something came up.” She decided. The extended emptiness was beginning to bother her.
