Looming
29 Nov 2020Today’s prompt: “Turn to the obituaries section of the newspaper, and choose one person to write about. Imagine a scene in that person’s life.”
It’s a beautiful day for skiing – the slopes covered with pure powder. You’re bundled up tight and enjoying the rush downhill. The only drawback is the blinding sun glaring off the snow. As if in answer to your unspoken prayer, a shadow draws across the sun, cutting off the glare and turning the day to perfection.
“Hey,” a man calls to you as you ride your three-speed English bicycle through a shadow to work at the pharmacy. “What kind of bike is that?”
You curl up next to the fire with your paperback copy of Misery, jazz wafting from a nearby radio. The shadow flickers across the floor as Annie hefts her axe.
You stand over the Beetle’s engine. The heat was oppressive; your shirt was sticking to your back. And then a shadow passed overhead. After changing out the oil and the spark plugs and giving the whole thing a once-over, you close the trunk, step back, and look first at the car, and then up at the cloudless sky.
The shadow caught up with you yesterday, when a steel girder dropped from a crane in a freak accident and crushed you as you passed by the construction site. Was it there, waiting for you your whole life? Who can say how fate designs its web?