As we drove to meet Julia we still didn't have a prompt. As we were about to turn right at the monastery that looked like a castle, we saw her. Rick couldn't get at his camera, but I could reach mine. What the three of us did with the prompt was similar unlike sometimes when we focus on different aspects of the prompt.
Rick's Free Write
She shielded her eyes against the sun. It was already getting hot – nearly 30°C. By mid-afternoon it would be approaching 38, about 100° Fahrenheit. This was the third wave of heat in as many weeks.
Why had she agreed to meet Melissa in town? She would prefer to chill on the couch, binging Netflix.
Where is that damn bus?
Jen has visited Switzerland in her gap year. Met a dashing software engineer on the ski slopes at Crans Montana, married and stayed.
He was now president of his own tech company, earning north of three million francs a year. So no need for her to work. (Not that she had any skills with no degree.)
But no kids. She couldn’t. So she was relegated to arm candy at parties. And shopping.
Jen took the bus because it made her feel less privileged, less trapped.
That, and the took away her license for too many speeding tickets in the Maserati.
D-L's Free Write
Rita glanced at her watch then down the road. No bus.
The heat pounded down. Why, oh why had she worn a black T-shirt. In December she would welcome the heat.
She turned to the lake. Boats dotted the blue water which was flat. Why shouldn't it be? The leaves on the vineyard didn't have a ripple. Ripples were forbidden in a canicule. Canicule, a lovely word for heat wave.
There was the bus.
The doors opened.
Shit! No air conditioning.
One old man.
Ben wasn't on the bus. How could he have missed four buses? They came every seven minutes. Typing in his name into her mobile she got the same recording about calling back.
Liar.
There had better be something wrong or their would be.
Julia's Free Write
I wonder as I wander…
The opening lines of a famous poem, but also of her current state of mind.
Mind you, her current state of mind wandered more than she did.
She couldn’t blame it on age either like many of her mom’s generation, seeing as she was still in what was, debatably, known as the prime of life.
No, she had had all of the advantages of a lower upper-class upbringing: food in abundance with a lot of the exotic; toys in overabundance; a good private school education; a degree that got her a good job.
Then she did the expected and married. Even that seemed O.K. at the beginning.
Slowly however, he alienated her friends, then her siblings.
Not knowing quite how to get out of the situation, and not daring complain or explain to anyone, she was alone.
One day, she cracked and, as trite as it sounds, followed a novel approach – arsenic in his food.
She no longer wondered as she wandered down to the bus stop and turned her back on all that she had known!
About the Free Writers
Rick Adams is an aviation journalist and publisher of www.aviationvoices.com, a weekly newsletter reporting the airline industry top stories . He is the author of The Robot in the Simulator. AI in Aviation Training.
Visit D-L.'s website https://dlnelsonwriter.com, She is the author of 15 fiction and three non fiction books. Her 300 Unsung Women, bios of women who battled gender limitations, can be purchased at https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/300-unsung-women-d-l-nelson/1147305797?ean=9798990385504
Visit Julia's blog. She has written and taken photos and loves syncing up with friends. Her blog can be found: https://viewsfromeverywhere.blogspot.com/
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