"Didn't you hear?"
Today’s post is based on a writing prompt I shared in a previous Daily Drafts & Dialogues post. Keep reading to see what I wrote, and to access more writing prompts.
What I wrote below is based on the following writing prompt: Write a scene in which someone asks, "Didn't you hear?"
“Didn’t you hear?”
I was standing in front of my family’s diner when I saw the tanks roll down the street for the first time. Tanks, meaning multiple… tanks… rolling down my quaint small-town street located in the outer-most regions of small-town America. Tanks that made the small-town street buckle under their weight and size and desert-hued foreign colors.
One of them, the tanks, nearly ran over Mrs. Polaski as she tried to cross the street to overnight one of our award-winning apple pies to her cousin who lived somewhere outside Des Moines. And another nearly ran into the one that nearly ran over Mrs. Polaski when the one that nearly ran over Mrs. Polaski came to an abrupt halt. And the tank that was third in line, the one nowhere near Mrs. Polaski, but closer to the florist shop, had a uniformed man poking out of it. The uniformed man was rail-thin with shaggy light brown hair and a bullhorn in his right hand, which he was using to warn everyone to clear the street and go inside ‘or else.’
Intuiting that I would not be able to ask the uniformed man with the bullhorn in his right hand poking out of the tank what was going on and why, I stopped Mr. Fletcher before he could duck into the hardware store, which was next door to my family’s diner.
“Didn’t you hear?” Mr. Fletcher asked, his mouth agape in stupefaction. I shook my head no, because no I hadn’t heard anything that would explain the multiple tanks rolling down our small-town street on an otherwise typical Tuesday afternoon. But he didn’t seem to believe me or care because before I could ask Mr. Fletcher a follow up question in response to his (now blatantly rhetorical) question, he turned around and took off running down the street in the opposite direction from me and the tanks, apparently no longer needing nails or wood or whatever else one would need to acquire from the hardware store.
Needless to say, Mr. Fletcher did not satiate my curiosity or subdue the growing panic welling up inside my chest. The crescendo of chaos surrounding me was of no help either, as the small-town street continued to buckle underneath the spurts of people running in and out, in and out, in and out of doors with high-pitched chimes on them, hustling about with nowhere else to go, pre-ordained agendas and plans for their Tuesday now blown to smithereens.
What was really happening on my buckling small-town street? I didn’t know.
I hadn’t heard.
I knew that I should feel scared and do what I was told by the anorexic uniformed man commanding me to retreat and hide indoors. But I didn’t know for how long I should retreat, or why.
I hadn’t heard.
I hadn’t heard anything about anything.
Yet soon enough, the pervasive silence of what I did not hear, what I could not hear, as I stood suddenly and starkly alone in front of my family’s diner, as if to protect it and its fading memories somehow, seemed to be enough to understand the gist of what mattered most, at least. Survival.
But I hadn’t heard, so I was too late to realize…
As the third tank in line rolled by, the anorexic uniformed man poking out of it turned to me and…
[Write what comes next, then share what you come up with in a comment or chat thread below.]
I might revise, edit, or add to this draft in the future. Stay tuned.
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© All Rights Reserved by K.E. Creighton; Creighton’s Compositions LLC. The above work is a piece of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the literary perceptions and insights are based on experience, all names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
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Today’s Writing Prompt
Writing Prompt: At the Gym
Write a scene that takes place at a gym.
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