Our car is in the shop and cafés are too far to walk, so Rick and I go out in the garden for our Tuesday free write. No "victim" walks by so we use for a prompt a line from The Life of Adele La Rue by V.E. Schwab: "But the darkness keeps coming."
D-L's Free Write
The darkness kept coming.
No moon.
No stars.
Only the headlights pushed pinpricks of light onto the forest road.
No other cars were out. Why should they be? They were in the middle of the Maine wilderness after midnight.
"You okay?" she asked Jack. "Not sleepy?"
"Don't worry. We'll get to your folks in time."
In time. Time for her father to die.
The forest's darkness didn't scare her. She'd grown up here. Her father's work was a botanist, a tree specialist. She'd learned to live with the loneliness. Her dog Skipper had been her only friend.
How different her life had been when she went to Boston University, returning only for holidays.
She loved her parents, loved Skipper, but she needed more things like the internet. She and Jack were a couple, but even in the city she valued solitude.
"Take a right at that big rock." It probably had been dropped by a glacier.
There were lights in the windows of her parents' cabin.
The door opened. Skipper hobbled out, his tail wagging at seeing her.
Her mother followed. "You made it in time."
Rick's Free Write
The darkness keeps coming. He couldn't shake the feeling of foreboding. No matter how many things went right during the day, he continued to have a sense of tragedy.
It wasn't just the recurring aches and pains of old age. The chronically sore back, the frequent stabbing pains below the should blades, the pinprick in his chest, that the doctor told him to ignore.
It was the occasional over arching sense of dread that something terrible was going to happen in their lives.
Yet life was overall good - even great. They were in love, they had sufficient money, plenty of good friends, lived in wonderful places.
Too good to be true? Too good to last?
He busied himself with his to-do list, ticking off small things. procrastinating on the big projects.
Why start something you might not be able to finish?
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