2014 has arrived, and with it the ever familiar vows, promises, oaths, pledges, lists of things to do, and what have you have been uttered aplenty. Mine is short but hefty.
1) Finish the final draft of the book manuscript.
2) Find a literary agent or figure out the self publishing business.
3) Find fresh gainful employment that is not a short term contract.
4) Travel more.
5) Read more.
6) Write more.
For #6 I've challenged myself to write a short story or to do story writing prompts each day for 365 days. Today marks the first day of that challenge. Yes yes, I know it's the 3rd of January already (4th by the time this is posted) but we all know how post holiday recovery goes. With that in mind, I gave myself a few days buffer for the starting of the challenge, and will go until the 3rd of January 2015.
SO, here we are. Story prompt was the name of the game today. I found this great little site Writing Prompts That Don't Suck the other day, and really liked it. So I went with prompt #605 to start the year of writing more. I tend to take no more that 15-20 minutes for prompts as a rule and I always use a notebook. With that in mind, this is what came out.
The Observer
The first time I noticed the phenomenon was probably far from the first time it actually occurred, and no one else has caught on to what's happening even now. To be fair, not too many small town folk in this busier and busier digital age notice public objects disappearing and reappearing. Especially something as forgotten about as our oh so cherished bronze bird statue in the middle of the town square fountain.
You see, I'm an observer. Noticing things is what I do. My family doesn't understand what I do at all, and to try and explain it further beyond this simple point would be pointless, as it would just confuse them even more. My sister already thinks I should be in the "Loon Bin" as she calls it, and some days I think she may be right.
I can't explain most of the things I observe, and the ones I can, make me sound totally nuts. If you are anything like me, you know what I'm talking about. It's impossible to sound sane when you are telling your mother that the magnetic fields in the air caused an abnormality event to occur which dragged her car sideways across the local shopping mart parking lot into a lamp post with you in it. At one point I'm pretty sure she thought I was possessed.
I was ten then.
Twenty years have passed since then, and I have cataloged every event I've witnessed since. All seventy three hundred of them. Then there are all the other events I've read about and researched, or seen on the news, or learned about form the few other observers I've come across in my travels. As you may have deduced, that's not very many with my "condition" and all. Every day has been the same since that first event. Until now.
"What's different," I hear you asking?
Now the events are occurring in sequence, and with purpose. Dark purpose, and no one in this town I've called home for thirty years is any wiser.
They are coming, and unless I can figure out who or what they are, and what they want, life as we know it will end. Badly!
I hope you enjoyed it, and if you would like to join me on this challenge, I'd be happy to share this journey with you. It's always good to have a writing group to get/share prompts & short story topics with. It's a great way to learn and grow in the writing craft as well.
Cheers,
Rob
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