In Your Pocket

Howdy people! I hope you’ve all had a great ‘writing week’?! It's been a busy period personally and professionally so this week's prompt falls short of personal standards, but it would have felt wrong not turning anything in.

I challenged Diane who is taking part in this year’s NaNoWriMo and writing in the Indie Ink, based on those two facts, she already ROCKS! Her piece has a lovely flow to it, you can't help but sing along - nicely done!

I was challenged by Tara Roberts and you can find the prompt at the end of this post.

“Excuse me sir, I think this is yours.” Jack said, handing the wallet back to the unsuspecting mark. He’d scoped the guy from across the street coming out of the tube station exit. He had on a long grey trench coat covering a blue suit. It was close of business for the day so the tie had been loosened and his top button, undone. He’d walked past Jack without realising his wallet had been lifted, something Jack was becoming increasingly proficient at. There wasn’t even cause to bump into the guy for effect. He’d learnt some time ago to blend into a crowd and Houdini a wallet so fast it might as well have been, magic.

Before the mark’s brain could put the puzzle together, Jack offered an explanation. “I’m a thief and I just lifted your wallet.” He’d learnt long ago too that it was good to tell the truth, often it was so unbelievably true; people simply couldn’t believe it. He even smiled as he said it which further confused the mark, and without much thought the mark decided that he’d simply dropped it, took it, said ‘thank you’ and walked off checking the contents. Jack watched him walk away, bemused.

An hour or two went by and surge after surge of people came from the station, each with a varying degree of fatigue showing on their faces. Jack picked a few at random and with relative ease came away with over ten wallets and purses. A good bout of thievery he thought to himself.

“Excuse me sir?” said someone from behind.

Jack whipped round to face a familiar looking man dressed in a tracksuit and running shoes, though frustratingly he couldn’t place where he knew him from.

“Can I help you?” Jack asked, all the while trying to place the face.

“I think you dropped this.” the man replied.

In his outstretched hand was a wallet. It was the exact same one Jack had too. Instinctively he checked his pockets and much to his surprise they were empty.

“How-?”

Before Jack could complete the sentence the guy tossed the wallet to him and sauntered off whistling towards the train station. Upon seeing the back of the stranger he realised where he’d seen him before.

Unsure of what just happened; Jack ran over to the thief and finished the question. The answer he received was unbelievably true.

Tara’s prompt was: "I still have checks left, I can't be out of money!"

A Smile and a Spasm

Whoooop dee whooooop! Here we go again ... ;-)

This week I was challenged by Brett Myers, please go to his page and read his Indie Ink prompt, it’s superb! Mare has taken a prompt from yours truly but I’m not in possession of the URL just yet so please head over to her page closer to the deadline to find out if she rocked the crap out of it!

I’m trapped in this piece of fiction that I can’t seem to put down, so if you want to read the entries leading up to this one then click on: 1, 2, 3, and 4. You can find the prompt at the end of the post.

5

Apparently Lisa hadn’t grasped the concept of breaking bad news to people gently. Her sentence hung in the air far longer than needed, and Louise’s silence made me feel even worse.

So, I wasn’t going to live for much longer ... How the hell do you come to terms with that? I had the notion that I was probably going to die in a lot of pain, like a morbid icing to a cake.

It hadn’t got to me before but, now I’d been greeted with such fabulous news the weather outside made me feel all the more depressed, like each droplet of rain was as heavy as an anvil, crushing any hopes I might have for some solution to my current predicament.

“Sam, we’re here to help you,” Louise tried, “we think we can help, but you have to trust us.”

I really didn’t have many options. I didn’t even know what was supposed to be happening to me except for the inevitable. Knowing you’re going to kick the bucket really sucks!

Lisa put a tentative hand on my shoulder and I could sense how awkward she was with consoling people, given the chance I believe she’d have told me to ‘man up’ but Louise was the one wearing the stern look on her face, and pointed it directly at her twin sister. “How do you feel?” she asked me.

“Well, now you ask – different. Different, in not such a good way too.” I replied.

In the minutes since Lisa telling me I was going to die in a-round-about kind of way, I’d been noticing an itching sensation underneath my skin, all over my body, like every inch of me was slowly heating up.

“Are you feeling warmer, like someone just turned up the heat in a sauna?” Lisa asked, the flow of the sentence wasn’t lost on me. Her question was as good a description as I could think of. That was exactly how I felt! Like some idiot had poured more water on hot coals and didn’t bother to ask me.

It was my right leg that cramped up first sending me off my chair on to the tiled floor clutching at my thigh. The girls jumped to action, one at my shoulders the other by my feet holding me as steady as they could. I must have gone into a series of spasms because the entire room shook violently, or maybe the room actually shook, I wasn’t sure. Both girls as far as I could tell seemed to be having a hard time holding me down. How I was able to comprehend what was happening was as confusing as not knowing why I was convulsing in the first place, but for reasons unknown to me, my brain was still able to assess the situation quite clearly. I couldn’t see Louise who had a hold of my shoulders and arms from above my head. Her brunette hair hung in my face, it smelled vaguely of vanilla. It was a small comfort.

Lisa had a hold of my legs from the knees down and applied so much pressure that I thought she was deliberately trying to hurt me. A pain so intense, so deep and guttural shot down my spine; hard and fast, and for a moment I thought my back broke in half. I convulsed wildly, screaming and thrashing until I kicked out of Lisa’s grip and my barefoot connected with the side of her face. I’d never seen anyone fly across a room and through a wall before, until that moment.

The force and intensity of that spasm bridged my back and I could see Louise’s face now. It was upside down from the position I was in, and a weird but calm countenance was etched over her features like she’d enjoyed seeing her sister penetrate stone and plaster. The thought of kicking someone so hard confused the hell out of me, as well as not knowing if I’d killed the poor girl. More thoughts collided into themselves all too fast to unpack, and the crazy world I was occupying slowly faded to black.

"This week Brett challenged me with: Why was that person smiling at me like that?"