Wednesday September 30th, 2020

The exercise:

Deadline day was surprisingly quiet. Perhaps... a little too quiet?

Anyway. Write about: ups and downs.

2 comments:

Greg said...

I'm guessing, from how late you posted, that you fell asleep before reaching the laptop for the evening :-D

Ups and downs
There was some more hooting but it seemed less exuberant somehow, as though the creatures making the noise had not achieved their aim, or perhaps were now after some other, less exciting, goal. The running lasted as long as last time at least, perhaps even a little longer still, and then, finally, the streets of the city were as quiet as a graveyard once more.
In the distance, after what felt like an hour but probably was only a quarter of one, the lights reappeared slowly, as though wary of attracting attention again, and over in the east the sky started to lighten and the sun started to come up.
Ben, still standing next to me, stretched. "Think the creatures only come out at night?" he asked.
I shrugged. "Hard to tell. If they did there might be people living here still, just barricading themselves in tightly when it gets dark. But then prudent folks would up and leave somewhere as dangerous as this anyway. Maybe they all moved down to Elizabethtown and they keep coming back here to pick up the stuff they left behind."
Ben laughed, and inside we heard Jimmy stirring. "I didn't see anyone in Elizabethtown I thought could make a pretty little fish like the one we found."
"I'm not sure monsters would chase Josie out of any town she settled in," I countered, and then Jimmy called to us, asking us what was so interesting outside.
"You get some more sleep," said Ben. I glanced at the sky; there was probably still an hour before it was properly morning, so I nodded. "I'll tell Jimmy about the events of the night and see what he thinks about the boat."
"No scouting expeditions," I said quickly. "Either we all go or we all don't. I'm not rescuing your ass from anywhere again."
"You can rescue Jimmy's and if mine happens to be there alongside, well, you can pick it up as a bonus," said Ben with a big innocent grin, so I stomped inside to tell Jimmy that Ben wanted to talk to him.
I was woken, slightly to my surprise, by the smell of woodsmoke and food cooking, and found that Jimmy had been assigned cook-duty.
"Not much left," he said. "Would be better if we didn't stay here more than another day, but we could stretch it to two if we have to." He handed me a pan with a fried egg and some strips of meat in. "Or we might be able to help ourselves from the dock where the boat is."
"Ben talked you into looking it over?"
"Hah!" Ben walked in and sat down. There was a smear of egg at the corner of his mouth. "He talked me into it as soon as he saw it."
I groaned. "Two against one then. I suppose we have to go and see this thing."
Ben's smile is something I'll hold against him until we're both dead and buried.
"Right," I said. "Look, I would say, at the risk of missing the boat altogether, that we take this slow and cautious. We know that there are things running around in here that the boat-owners don't want to meet much, so they'll have lookouts posted. So we go slow and we climb buildings whenever we can, and we get as good a view as we can from as far away as we can."
Ben nodded, and Jimmy shrugged. "Best plan for now," he said. "Though with all that climbing stairs there’s a lot of ups and downs! And plans always change later anyway."

Marc said...

Greg - honestly? I legit forgot. I have no idea how, but I realized the next day that I hadn't posted anything. I think I got distracted, maybe with a Netflix show? And then just went to bed without thinking about it.

Looking forward to the boys going to have a closer look at this boat.