All right, in an effort to distract myself from Pitch Wars, I've been stumbling around banging rocks together in hope of striking some sparks to nurse into a shiny new project. One of the rocks I've picked up is Vanessa Barger's lovely Wednesday Muse challenge, parameters of which are to write A Thing every week in response to a photo writing prompt.
So here's my first, which I feel a little weird about posting, given that I scrawled it down in my Home Economicon notebook at the kitchen table this evening over pizza and cider and have just now spent an hour embroidering it. Have a post-apocalyptic radioactive Silent Hill Toronto? Or something?
So here's my first, which I feel a little weird about posting, given that I scrawled it down in my Home Economicon notebook at the kitchen table this evening over pizza and cider and have just now spent an hour embroidering it. Have a post-apocalyptic radioactive Silent Hill Toronto? Or something?
Photo Credit: Ryan McGuire - http://www.gratisography.com
Jo's parka might have been the only colour left in the world: red like a flag or a signal flare. Through the skylights - still intact - the clouds hung flat and monochrome, the steel beams of the high vaulted roof slicing across them. Below the railway ties were graying too, regular as piano keys. The crushed rock they were set in crunched under her feet as she stepped off the platform. For now it was enough to keep the bare silver tree trunks mostly at bay. The returning forest had only managed to send a few slender sentinels under the station's eaves, sprouting in the middle of the tracks.
The clock above her head was gray too, its hands motionless at 11:24 and 22 seconds. Was that when it happened, she wondered, or had a battery kept it going on its own? How long had it taken to wind down?
She should check the dosimeter again, but the thought of sending its hail of chattering pops and snarls echoing into the empty city kept her hand hesitant on the dial. In the endless, breathless tomb of the subway, she'd held the promise of seeing the sky again out before her, brighter than her flashlight. Why was she still afraid? The snow sifted over the glass high above and her breath hung smoking in the air. Nothing else moved.
I won't go, she thought. I'll try the radio again. Jules has to be here somewhere. He wouldn't go far from the equipment. He can't have just vanished.
He would laugh at her if he saw her panicking. Not out loud, of course; he'd just give her that look over the rims of his glasses and smirk. She should never have left. But it would be getting dark soon. She touched the pocket of the parka, feeling for the paper crinkling inside. In old-fashioned type, the letters bruising the paper.
Reading her name had been like a charm. That was when the fear had broken over her. And then the realization that Jules was suddenly no longer crouched over the computer.
JOSEPHINE
GET OUT BEFORE DARK
THEY WON'T COME NEAR THE TRACKS
JOSEPHINE
JOSEPHINE
HEAD EASTBOUND TO
To where? Who were "they"? How long had she spent stumbling through the subterranean dark? How much longer did she have?
She glanced at her watch, then stared at it, scrubbing its well-worn face with her mitten.
It read 11:24. The reset button didn't change it. It didn't blink.
She was not going to panic.
The tracks ran out before her, arrowing between the broken-glass shells of the skyscrapers. She hoisted her pack and the dosimeter and followed them.
The clock above her head was gray too, its hands motionless at 11:24 and 22 seconds. Was that when it happened, she wondered, or had a battery kept it going on its own? How long had it taken to wind down?
She should check the dosimeter again, but the thought of sending its hail of chattering pops and snarls echoing into the empty city kept her hand hesitant on the dial. In the endless, breathless tomb of the subway, she'd held the promise of seeing the sky again out before her, brighter than her flashlight. Why was she still afraid? The snow sifted over the glass high above and her breath hung smoking in the air. Nothing else moved.
I won't go, she thought. I'll try the radio again. Jules has to be here somewhere. He wouldn't go far from the equipment. He can't have just vanished.
He would laugh at her if he saw her panicking. Not out loud, of course; he'd just give her that look over the rims of his glasses and smirk. She should never have left. But it would be getting dark soon. She touched the pocket of the parka, feeling for the paper crinkling inside. In old-fashioned type, the letters bruising the paper.
Reading her name had been like a charm. That was when the fear had broken over her. And then the realization that Jules was suddenly no longer crouched over the computer.
JOSEPHINE
GET OUT BEFORE DARK
THEY WON'T COME NEAR THE TRACKS
JOSEPHINE
JOSEPHINE
HEAD EASTBOUND TO
To where? Who were "they"? How long had she spent stumbling through the subterranean dark? How much longer did she have?
She glanced at her watch, then stared at it, scrubbing its well-worn face with her mitten.
It read 11:24. The reset button didn't change it. It didn't blink.
She was not going to panic.
The tracks ran out before her, arrowing between the broken-glass shells of the skyscrapers. She hoisted her pack and the dosimeter and followed them.
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