Prompt: A quote from Diane Johnson's L'Afaire. "It was clear the driver was hurrying on his rounds, perhaps fearing the people would be stranded in the worsening storm."
Goal: To write ten minutes using the prompt without stopping.
Note: Julia and Rick knew what their ending was before they started. D-L had no idea until she had the three-minute warning to finish up. It was clear to her that it could be a chapter and her ending would morph into chapter 2. The fun of these group free writes is the similar and different each of us takes.
Rick's Free Write
To say that Pierre was distracted was understatement.
His daughter had announced that morning that she was leaving home, and slammed the door. As he watched her strut down the street, small suitcase in hand, his wife, Emilie, had one of her anxiety attacks.
It had taken an hour to get her calmed down, and even then she was still touch and go.
He had to make his deliveries or he wouldn’t get paid. But he decided to look for Marie first. She wasn’t on any of the streets around. Probably holed up at her friend’s, Samantha, the American expat. Or had hopped a train to visit her boyfriend at Uni. Snobbish prig.
He finally had to abandon the search and start delivering his dry goods to neighborhood shops. Instead of the usual cheery greeting, he got a lot of gruff “You’re late”’s.
Two more deliveries to go and the rain was coming hard now. He pressed the accelerator to round a corner and heard a thump about the same time as the lightning and thunderclap.
Should he investigate? No, he had to deliver before the customers closed their stores.
Marie lay on the side of the road, bleeding and soaked, and unconscious.
D-L'sFree Write
It was clear the driver was hurrying on his rounds, perhaps fearing the people would be stranded in the worsening storm.
Jacques wanted to go faster but the danger of skidding was too great.
As the wipers did a semi-good job of keeping the windshield clean, he tried to look for any skiers but saw none.
Global warming? Bah! Global cooling. This winter there had been more snow than there had been for the last 12 years.
What was that up ahead? It looked like a woman and a boy running, skies slung over their shoulders.
He braked and skidded. If they hadn't jumped, he'd have hit them.
They rushed to his van, threw their skies away and jumped in.
"Go!" the woman yelled. "Go!"
It was then he saw a man emerge from behind the row of pine trees lining the road. He had a gun, some kind of hunting rifle.
He stepped on the gas, praying he wouldn't skid. A bullet pinged off the back of the van. "Get down," he yelled to the woman and boy.
Only after three curves, did he feel they were safe from the gunman and he slowed to a less dangerous speed.
"Do you want to tell me about this, or do you want to go to the police station? he asked.
Julia's Free Write
”It was clear that the driver was hurrying on his rounds, perhaps fearing that people would be stranded in a worsening storm”.
She didn’t often take this route, nor public transportation, but with her grandson sick in the hospital, she realized more how fragile life could be and was not willing to take any extra risks, especially with the latest weather forecast predicting a bad storm.
She still had her driver’s license at 85 and was sometimes afraid of losing it.
She made it to the hospital and had a very good visit – her son and wife were there as well, all hoping that having survived the avalanche that killed several of his friends, he would make it.
None were believers, yet in times of crisis, thoughts tended to send up a “prayer”.
And she was on her return trip and the storm had truly broken. A flash of lightening, a deluge of hail. Just as he skidded off the road.
In the front of the bus, she was the first in the water: St. Peter was there to meet her. As she looked at him, she said “fair enough, I’m glad you took me and not Joel”!
Julia has written and taken photos all her life and loves syncing up with friends. Her blog can be found: https://viewsfromeverywhere.blogspot.com/
Rick is an aviation journalist and publisher of www.aviationvoices. com
D-L has had 17 fiction and non fiction books published. Check out her website at:. www.dlnelsonwriter.com
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