Daily writing prompts from June 9th, 2008 to December 31st, 2022
Wednesday May 20th, 2020
The exercise: Write about something that is: preventative. Not a day goes by that I am not grateful for living where I do during this pandemic and not, say, a couple hundred kilometers to the south...
I think most non-Americans are a little relieved not to be living in America right now. The news reports on Trump are increasingly bad and he seems to have given up even pretending to do his job properly -- or even finding out what he's supposed to be doing in that job. Europe is relaxing restrictions and still watching carefully to see how the COVID cases respond; Trump... he is incapable of talking about anything other than himself.
Preventative “You can’t just type his name in?” The Inspectral sounded genuinely surprised but didn’t stop heading down the stairwell. Collins was watching him, wondering when he’d start to fade again, but he was remaining quite solid-looking. “How do those things work at all then?” “They’re phones, Harold,” said Ethelred. He was taking the stairs two at a time. “You need to know the number of the person you want to call. Nothing changed with that!” “I’ve seen people just tell their phones names and they call them,” said the Inspectral. “Yes, you can store the names and the numbers together inside the phone,” said Ethel. “Like you have your phone book in there.” “Then—” “There’s no central phone book you can just download to look other people up in.” “Oh.” “I can give you my number,” said Collins. He recited it quickly, and Ethel tapped it into his phone as they reached the bottom of the stairs. As they hurried through the basement towards the tunnel to the airbase Collins saw splashes of blood on the floor and noticed that they were getting closer together. Either William was losing more blood or he’d stopped holding his arm protectively. “Ok, calling you now,” said Ethel. “Did you lose it or something?” “Not exac—” “It’s ringing but it sounds funny,” said Ethel, holding his hand up. “Oh, it’s cut off. Where did you leave it—” Ethel’s words were drowned out by a chime like that of a church bell, but so loud that it was like being inside the bell as it was being rung. Collins fell over, completely uncertain where his feet were, and he was both relieved and concerned to see that Ethel and the Inspectral had stopped too and were looking confused. The whole room seemed to shake for a few seconds, and then the noise died away and Collins got his knees underneath him and one hand on the floor to push up with, and then the whole world chimed again. Adams screamed, and they all looked round. She was coming out from behind a pile of boxes near the broken brickwork, backing up as the bats poured out of the hole in the wall. A black cloud of wings, spread outwards like ink dropped into water, filling the space near the ceiling across the whole room. Adams was screaming non-stop and dropped to her knees as well, her hands thrown up to cover her head, moving constantly as she tried to conceal all of her hair beneath them, as though this was preventative for bats getting caught in there. There was a flash of light, and then silence returned to the world. It took Collins a few seconds to realise that he couldn’t hear anything; there was a kind of high-pitched non-noise that he slowly worked out was his brain’s response to no input from his ears, but the bats were seemingly silent and Adams must be screaming still but he couldn’t hear her. Then the bats began to circle, and slowly to settle down on all the available flat surfaces.
Greg - he is quite the study in incompetence and ego. The degree to which he is getting away with outright dangerous behaviour is deeply concerning.
Woah. Well then, that... well, that seems about the right response to the device being interfered with. Yeesh. I hope everybody is okay. I mean, Adams is obviously emotionally scarred for life, but you know, other than that.
2 comments:
I think most non-Americans are a little relieved not to be living in America right now. The news reports on Trump are increasingly bad and he seems to have given up even pretending to do his job properly -- or even finding out what he's supposed to be doing in that job. Europe is relaxing restrictions and still watching carefully to see how the COVID cases respond; Trump... he is incapable of talking about anything other than himself.
Preventative
“You can’t just type his name in?” The Inspectral sounded genuinely surprised but didn’t stop heading down the stairwell. Collins was watching him, wondering when he’d start to fade again, but he was remaining quite solid-looking. “How do those things work at all then?”
“They’re phones, Harold,” said Ethelred. He was taking the stairs two at a time. “You need to know the number of the person you want to call. Nothing changed with that!”
“I’ve seen people just tell their phones names and they call them,” said the Inspectral.
“Yes, you can store the names and the numbers together inside the phone,” said Ethel. “Like you have your phone book in there.”
“Then—”
“There’s no central phone book you can just download to look other people up in.”
“Oh.”
“I can give you my number,” said Collins. He recited it quickly, and Ethel tapped it into his phone as they reached the bottom of the stairs. As they hurried through the basement towards the tunnel to the airbase Collins saw splashes of blood on the floor and noticed that they were getting closer together. Either William was losing more blood or he’d stopped holding his arm protectively.
“Ok, calling you now,” said Ethel. “Did you lose it or something?”
“Not exac—”
“It’s ringing but it sounds funny,” said Ethel, holding his hand up. “Oh, it’s cut off. Where did you leave it—”
Ethel’s words were drowned out by a chime like that of a church bell, but so loud that it was like being inside the bell as it was being rung. Collins fell over, completely uncertain where his feet were, and he was both relieved and concerned to see that Ethel and the Inspectral had stopped too and were looking confused. The whole room seemed to shake for a few seconds, and then the noise died away and Collins got his knees underneath him and one hand on the floor to push up with, and then the whole world chimed again.
Adams screamed, and they all looked round. She was coming out from behind a pile of boxes near the broken brickwork, backing up as the bats poured out of the hole in the wall. A black cloud of wings, spread outwards like ink dropped into water, filling the space near the ceiling across the whole room. Adams was screaming non-stop and dropped to her knees as well, her hands thrown up to cover her head, moving constantly as she tried to conceal all of her hair beneath them, as though this was preventative for bats getting caught in there.
There was a flash of light, and then silence returned to the world. It took Collins a few seconds to realise that he couldn’t hear anything; there was a kind of high-pitched non-noise that he slowly worked out was his brain’s response to no input from his ears, but the bats were seemingly silent and Adams must be screaming still but he couldn’t hear her. Then the bats began to circle, and slowly to settle down on all the available flat surfaces.
Greg - he is quite the study in incompetence and ego. The degree to which he is getting away with outright dangerous behaviour is deeply concerning.
Woah. Well then, that... well, that seems about the right response to the device being interfered with. Yeesh. I hope everybody is okay. I mean, Adams is obviously emotionally scarred for life, but you know, other than that.
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